3.a Climate change as a debate

When was the Greenhouse effect discovered?

1824

What happened in 1957?

Realised that the oceans do not hold CO2 for as long as we thought/did not hold all the carbon. So realised that CO2 lives in the atmosphere for much longer than we had anticipated

What is a keeling curve?

A graph that represents the concentration of CO2 in earth’s atmosphere since 1958

What is the hockey stick curve?

Describes a reconstruction of past temperatures over the past 1000 to 2000 years.

When is the massive spike in temp?

1950

Arguments against the hockey stick curve

Original had been manipulated to be more extreme than it was - leaked emails

People complained that the proxies used were a small selection

This gave fuel for climate deniers

When was the Hockey stick curve created?

1998 and then updated in 2006 (following the leaked emails)

Why did it take so long to reach the current understanding of climate change?

1. No instrumental record over last millenia

2. Causes of climate change were not understood

3. Climate modelling was not very accurate

4. Countries were prioritising other things