8 Ways Climate Change Isn't Messing Around

3. A Bit Of Myth Busting

Thanks to the ever-helping hand of the media, there's a lot of misinformation and, frankly, wilful ignorance about climate change, so let's get a couple of things straight.

"It is caused by the hole in the ozone layer"

That big old hole in the ozone layer (or more accurately holes) put there by our love of those naughty CFCs is a Bad Thing, but it's not really a major contributor to climate change.

Cancer? Sure. Cataracts? Deffo. Respiratory diseases? You bet - just not climate change. The warming of the planet is caused by an increase in greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide and methane which trap more of the sun's warmth into the atmosphere.

"But I recycle, I'm doing my bit"

First of all, good on you. Second of all, it won't help with climate change. Environmentalism isn't a big one-size-fits-all kinda deal, we're actually f**king the planet from lots of different angles, and therefore we need to devise lots of different solutions. Recycling your plastics and stuff will do a whole load of good for the wildlife and general not-living-in-a-rubbish-dump feel of the planet, but warming is caused by our energy consumption.

You could argue that recycling means that we'll have to manufacture fewer things, but the actual recycling process uses energy too. You can try to lower your energy consumption, but this is the kind of problem that needs to be solved by governments on a global scale by finding an alternative to burning fossil fuels. You're better off helping to put pressure on governments than unplugging your TV at night.

"Manmade emissions are nothing to natural ones"

The good thing about pointing the finger at Mother Nature is that she can't point back. The bad thing is that Mother Nature will just decimate our planet and destroy our crops instead.

It's true that the Earth's natural processes on land and sea emit about 26 times more CO2 than humans. But the thing about that is that the natural processes are in balance, whereas the human contribution is in addition to these natural emissions. This means that ours are not compensated for in the same way as the natural ones.

Couple this with the fact that we have a nasty habit of destroying natural CO2 absorbing things like rainforests and filling them with greenhouse gas emitting sources like power plants and cows and you can begin to see where that pesky little temperature spike comes from.