Buildings Office

CLIMATE CHANGE

Introduction

It is now widely accepted by the great majority of the worlds scientific community that human actions over the past 200 years have greatly altered the earths atmosphere in an adverse manner.

Although there are natural cycles at work, such as earth/solar orbits and orbital angle, Milankovitch cycles, Solar /cosmic radiation and cloud cover; the change seen in the past 50 years has been attributed to human intervention.

While the magnitude of the projected increase in temperature is yet unclear (ranging from 2C to 6.5C), it is clear that action needs to be taken to reduce the man made emissions causing the adverse change.

In the main this man made (anthropogenic) change has come about through the following factors;

• industrial revolution,
• exploitation and combustion of the earths fossil fuel reserves, resulting in emission of carbon dioxide, methane and oxides of sulphur and nitrogen
• increasing global population,
• deforestation,
• changing land use,
• greater consumption per head population and greater waste in water and energy use.

The predicted impacts of this climate change on the global population are expected to be severe and include;

• warming of the earths atmosphere resulting in more frequent and more destructive hurricanes and tornadoes
• melting of the huge ice sheets and caps in Antarctica and Greenland – resulting in rising sea levels and flooding which will make millions of vulnerable people homeless and destitute
• melting of ice sheets removes a great reflective surface (albedo) which reflects up to 1/3 of all incoming solar radiation suns - removal of these ice sheets will increase the speed of the warming of the earths atmosphere.
• increasing the acidity of the oceans – decreases the ability of the sea to soak up and store carbon dioxide naturally
• loss of wildlife, species, habitat and diversity
• deforestation and forest fires

Some new Irish focussed websites have been started such as http://www.change.ie/ and http://www.climatechange.ie/
SEI also have a combat climate change page at  http://www.combatclimatechange.ie/

Climate change resources and energy saving tips http://www.climatechange.ie/resources.html

Irish Government National Climate Change Strategy 2007-2-12 (DEHLG) http://www.environ.ie/en/PublicationsDocuments/FileDownLoad,1861,en.pdf

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