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Climate change. Global warming. The greenhouse effect. Small words that mean big things. But what exactly? There's so much talk around these words that it's hard to make sense of it all. There are those that say it's not happening. There are those that say that it's worse than what we're being told. There are those that want more action. There are those that don't want any. Think your head will spin off with all the talk? We know how you feel.

MYTHS

The myths around climate change and global warming are confused and many. They include the following: many leading scientists question climate change; Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter; it's all a conspiracy; global warming is down to the Sun, hot humans; we are simply recovering from the Little Ice Age; and the best one, we can't do anything about climate change and global warming.

FACTS

What is climate change and why is it happening? Well the short answers to these questions are:

• When we talk about ‘climate change’ we are talking about the changes to our climate over long periods of time. We’re not just talking about it being a wet and cold summer, or just having a couple of really blowy days every now and then; we’re talking about long-term changes to the climate that affect long-term rain pattern or temperatures.
• And why is it happening? Well although some people choose not to believe, most scientists accept that climate change is linked to the human-caused greenhouse effect. Basically, we’re making too much pollution for the earth to deal with naturally and we’re changing the very state of our planet.
• True, the climate has experienced changes in the past. It may have been a meteor, or a volcano, or some other dramatic event thrown up by our planet (or one from afar), but never before have human activities been responsible for these changes. If it weren't so disastrous it would almost be impressive.

'We are upsetting the atmosphere upon which all life depends. In the late '80s when I began to take climate change seriously, we referred to global warming as a "slow-motion catastrophe" – one we expected to kick in perhaps generations later. Instead, the signs of change have accelerated alarmingly.'

David Suzuki

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