Anyone else a bit chilly?

Climate change, not a topic people take lightly. With many sides to the story its hard to decide who to believe, and to know what is really happening...and papers are not helping in informing the public just what is happening in their world.

I went out yesterday and bought 4 newspapers; 'The Sun' 'The Times' 'The Daily Express' and 'The Independent'. From these 4 I found...no articles that are focus on climate change...big disappointment on my behalf. However, one article which I read in 'The Daily Express' was titled "Welcome to Artic Britain". Now, everyone in Northampton (should) know that it snowed on Tuesday (28th October 08), I certainly did, I walked home in it! It made me think, it has been many years since I last saw snow in October. So the climate must be changing. The article itself does not focus on climate change, just that it snowed and it shall continue to snow.

Now this may be an assumption, but I personally think that the papers are trying their best to not focus on the way our planet is changing, unless a natural disaster ensues, then they all flood to get the story first, to panic the public and tell them how bad weather is caused by climate change and we must do something to stop it from happening!...No, just, no. Climate change is happening, but tabloids and broadsheets are not taking it as seriously as they should.
After finding no article in 'The Sun' on climate change, I instead searched for any articles which relate to climate change on their website. Luckily one had actually been posted yesterday

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/special_events/green_week/article1871745.ece

This article talks about how scientists are trying to find new ways of combating climate change, with such methods as 'Giant mirrors' and 'covering the sea with algae' (for absorption of CO2). As it is a newspaper article, I’m very skeptical on the information presented to me, I need more scientific proof then what I read from a journalist, who probably knows less about science, and could care less about it, as long as they sell enough papers. I sound very bitter here, however, it is only due to the fact that it concerns me that the public are not being presented with all the facts and both sides of the story of climate change. How it not only affects our environment, but also our economy.

What seriously concerns me is that the facts behind each article are the same and are published over and over again, just with different scary head lines to shock people into buying news papers and feeling sorry for their actions. This is not a sustainable course of action to take; it is essentially just a scare tactic. I have read articles whereby the underlining story is how to increase sustainability, but have only read these in specific geographical magazines (such as the one my last blog was based on)

The public may find sustainable development a boring topic, as they are just being told on how to live more sustainably, and who really likes to be told what to do? Newspapers give a good portrayal of what is happening now with climate change, but so far do not seem to be emphasizing just how important sustainable development is to save the future, even if it is just to help save tomorrow from ourselves.

"Why are there 6 pedals when there are only 4 directions?!"

Right, being as this is the first blog I have EVER written, I left it to the day before it’s due to write it, my bad.

However, this has actually worked out in my favor! On my travels to town and then park campus today (Wednesday 15th Oct) I stopped in WH Smiths to see if I could find a new scientist magazine to give me inspiration, instead I found this: http://www.geographical.co.uk/Home/index.html

I found a few articles which relate to the topic of private cars, as covered in the UK Sustainable Development Strategy. http://www.defra.gov.uk/sustainable/government/progress/data-resources/sdiyp.htm

I read the (short) article in this Strategy and observed the graph. It kind of surprised me a little, as you can see in the graph that the CO2 emissions dropped before rising again, and even now the levels haven’t reached what they were in 1990.

Sat here pondering, I try to anaylse why this could be. Well as household income has increased over the years, people appear to earn more money, not taking for granted that the price of everyday living essentials has also gone up. But with this increase in wealth, peoples spending habits sky rocketed, which means that people can afford to buy their own car, or maybe even perhaps a second or third car (depending on how lucky they are with their increased pay checks)

This inevitably means that there are more cars on the road, and as most cars are a major source of emitting CO2, the CO2 emissions have increased, but not to the same high levels as in 1990. Don't get me wrong, I’m all for saving the planet and I believe something must be done to prevent any major climate changes, but I do not see the results observed to be too unnerving. With modern technology these days, scientist have been able to find ways of making fuel cleaner and making fuel consumption more sustainable, so that we can keep this valuable harmful product for future generations to come. Cars have been developed whereby they can run on "gasohol", as quoted by my A level chemistry teacher, which is a mixture of hydrocarbons and ethanol to make a fuel that produces lower CO2 emission. And let’s not forget hybrid cars either, specially developed so that you will only use half the fuel consumption of that of a normal gas guzzler.

But what I find more interesting is how incredibly adaptable our planet is. This is where the "geographical" magazine comes in.

On page 11 under a page heading of "climate watch" there is an in brief article about "Pristine Forests Are Better Storehouses"

the opening line quotes "the carbon storage capacity of untouched forests has been underestimated by the worlds climate change experts, according to scientist at the Australian National University (ANU)"

This proving that we still know very little about our world. But the article then goes on to say that

“pristine forests can store 3 times as much CO2 as a plantation forest”

This is basically saying that naturally growing forests are able to store a lot more CO2 from the atmosphere then forests that we humans have planted ourselves to help combat the high levels in the atmosphere. Ironic don’t you think? Not only that but these clean forests store the CO2 for longer as well…so as we put more into the atmosphere, and then continue deforestation, we just make it worse for ourselves. After all, these untouched forests would be more than happy to hold all this extra CO2 we are producing, well not so much producing but releasing back into the atmosphere.

Right, to summaries, CO2 emissions have increased, a bit…after a 9% decrease...due to more households using more energy. However, cutting the number of cars on the road would not ultimately reduce the emissions by a lot; though it would help (use buses people!)

But to finish this blog, I will leave a quote from this article which says “untouched forests are more resilient to climate change and disturbances than plantation forests”

Maybe we should stop blaming cars so much, and focus on saving these forests first, after all, they are rather pretty as well you know, which "direction" will you take?

Anyone wanting to read this magazine, just ask, your welcome to it