Humans can’t cause climate change? Think again!

A single volcano erupting can put enough of a sulphurous mess into the atmosphere to cause rapid cooling of the Earth. The effect lasts up to a year…

Now, take a look at the next picture…

How many factories do you think there are in the world, just like the one in the photo, pumping out smoke containing all manner of pollutants? And how many cars? How much crap does one aeroplane pump out over the course of just one journey? How about those patio heaters, do you think they’re just warming the air a little so you can sit outside in November in Bermuda shorts? What about the burning of not only gas, but coal and oil?

Climate change obviously has natural causes. Like the volcano in the first picture. Climate change is also caused by nearly all human activity that, somewhere along the line, involves the burning of things. Lots of volcanoes, if you will, large and small, even tiny and apparently insignificant. It all adds up. And we never let up. Volcanoes, they take holidays that can last tens of thousands of years. We don’t. We keep working at putting stuff into the atmosphere 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Every day, every year.

The effects of one volcano are temporary. They dissipate because the volcano does its work one day and then that’s it, over, for a long time. But if the volcano is joined by a million more volcanoes, and never stops pumping out that stuff, the effects build and continue to build. The only way is up.

The human race can survive the eruption of any one volcano. We cannot survive runaway climate change of our own making.

So what do we do? Easy. Yes. I said it’s easy. If there’s the will, there’s a way. We set aside our differences, perceived as large or small, and we find ways to enable us to stop pumping out crap into the atmosphere, starting with the things we can do today as individuals and nations, bringing together our scientific communities so that they can make better use of current technologies, imagine and implement new ones, and all with the aim of easing our transition to a carbon-neutral future for all of us where the Earth is respected and its bounty appreciated.

Humans can’t cause climate change? Think again. We don’t have the luxury of time to entertain such foolish notions. Start thinking differently.