Too Fashionable to be Taken Seriously

I first learned about climate change when Mrs Thatcher raised the issue more years ago than I care to remember.  I had a woolly understanding of the concept but started reading voraciously about it and learning what I could.  I wished I had paid better attention to my physics lessons in school.  Then I decided to write these essays on climate change, now approaching three thousand in number, mostly on global warming, energy and their effects on the climate of our planet.

Rapidly fifteen or so years ago, climate change became a fashionable issue. Even the BBC had a “Environment” tag on its website which mainly dealt in climate change; much of its content was poorly explained and some of it was down right inaccurate.  In those days anthropological climate change was a highly controversial issue.  Many disbelieved it could or was happening, mostly because they confused weather with climate o because of an imperfect  understanding of the processes that create climate change. I did my best to explain things that my study of the subject led me to believe hoping that education was the key to solving rapid climate change

Then climate change disappeared of the agenda of the newsrooms, even though the same processes indicating the beginning of the changes in the climate were evident around the world. The change occurred shortly after the global financial crash and environmental matters were barely referred to until Greta Thurnberg started to spout her inaccurate doom mongering warnings and David Attenborough explained the plastic content of the sea.  

Climate change and global warming was back on the agenda.  In those years when climate change had been pushed into a cupboard and forgotten humanity had significantly increased its production of carbon dioxide awhile under the guise of reducing atmosphere carbon dioxide had started emissions trading schemes which simply benefited the emitters rather than the planet.

Now climate change is firmly back on the agenda, for now at least, with the same sense of muddle as ever and with political leaders studiously avoiding even thinking about any real solutions. 

Thirty years ago I thought there would be a solution based on energy use and slowing population growth. Today I am not so sure. Climate change seems to be too fashionable to be taken seriously.