Issued on:
As the COP26 climate summit gets under way in the UK city of Glasgow amid projections of an apocalyptic future if drastic changes are not made, climate change sceptics still make statements like “global warming is caused by the sun” and “there is no scientific consensus”. FRANCE 24 spoke to climatologist Hervé Le Treut, who deconstructed these falsehoods.
If we do not keep climate change below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the earth will be ravaged by heatwaves, hurricanes and storms, entire species will become extinct, and vast swathes of humanity will have to leave their homes when coastal settlements are inundated. Such is the consensus among experts as the COP26 opens in Glasgow on Monday.
Desperate to avert this grim future, people throughout the world have become active in taking action against climate change in their own lives, as well as urging politicians to act. Global warming has become the defining challenge of the twenty-first century.
Nevertheless, many people throughout the world are still doubtful or in denial about the terrifying, galvanising reality of man-made climate change. FRANCE 24 put some of their most frequently heard claims to Hervé Le Treut, a climatologist at Paris’s Sorbonne University, France’s elite Polytechnic School and the French Scientific Academy.
True or false? “The climate has changed before so it’s not a big deal”
We’ve had a stable climate for 10,000 years. So we’re specifically trying to protect the climatic conditions that have allowed humanity to develop during this period. The question is whether or not we want to continue with the climate that has allowed human civilisation to emerge.
True or false? “The sun causes global warming”
This idea has been repeatedly shown to be untrue. The sun’s radiation does indeed fluctuate,…
Source : france24
