Many people are unaware that climate change is a problem. It is already happening and most people have no idea of how life was many years ago. However, there are several reasons why climate change is being ignored. First of all, there is no true crisis – despite what pop culture says. Climate change is a natural phenomenon. The earth surface has been warming on an ongoing basis since 1850. According to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the thirty-year period from 1983-2012 was likely the warmest thirty-year period in the past 1400 years. Rising sea levels and increased storm intensity will most likely cause huge ecological disruptions.
The answer may lie in psychological concepts. If a person does not understand the causes and consequences of climate change, they may become more firmly rooted in their beliefs and ignore the science of global warming. Even more alarming, there is a growing number of fake news sources, making it more important than ever to convey the truth about our planet. However, communicating the truth about climate change is not as easy as it once was.
In the early 1980s, a group of scientists called the National Academy of Sciences created a committee to assess the risks of carbon dioxide and the effects of climate change. One of the committee members was Dr. John MacDonald, who defended the Vietnam war and later went on to become head of the Met Office. He argued on US television that the recent droughts were not unprecedented, but that a warming earth could be caused by human activity.
