The purpose of Cool Planet is to “cool” down the rhetoric about global climate change.
In the climate change debate words like “climate catastrophe”, “climate apocalypse”, “tipping points”, “crisis”, ”code reds”, and “runaway climate change” are thrown out by well meaning people in the hope they can sway public opinion towards influencing their governments to act on climate change. The popular press loves a crisis or disaster and phrases such as these catch the readers eye. A by-product of this rhetoric is a condition of climate anxiety. This condition especially affect young people, who have the most to lose, but at the same time feel helpless living on what they perceive as an already doomed world.
What is climate anxiety?
Climate anxiety is a feeling of distress or worry about the effects of climate change.
What causes climate anxiety?
The intention herein is not to deny that climate change exists but to present climate data clearly, and simply, in the hope that the reader will obtain a better understanding of climate science, with the objective that a better informed person is less fearful. A second object is to provide a single location where reader can visualize the changes in our climate. The data is currently all open source and freely available on the internet.
Let’s first set the stage by looking at what changes have already occurred in the Earth’s climate. By looking at the Historic Climate Change we can use actual data to mitigate some of the more extreme rhetoric. Many readers may be surprised to find some aspects of climate change are not as bad as you have been led to believe.
While it is interesting to observe the historical climate data and put it in context the real concern is what is likely happen to Earth going forward. To do this we need mathematical models incorporating population dynamics as greenhouse gases are by-products or waste from human activity. We also need mathematical models to predict the effect of these waste gases on our climate. If interested in these aspects please download my report “Climate Change - In a Nutshell”.