As the world leaders try to take advantage of the global recession in Copenhagen to build a low-carbon future, the debate about climate change continues.

 

Mixed signals and new analyses on what is actually happening abound. July 2009 saw the hottest month for the world's oceans in almost 130 years even though observations over the last 11 years have not recorded any increase in global temperatures. New research focuses on different impacts of higher temperatures across the globe, in particular the impact of a 4 degree increase.

 

Some say that the quality of measurement models need to be improved. A group of Chinese scientists recently argued that there is no solid scientific evidence to strictly correlate global temperature rise and CO2 concentrations, whilst others remind us that cyclical changes are having a greater impact now than throughout history. And even more evidence - the IPCC's worst-case scenarios developed two years ago - have already been exceeded.

 

In the face of all this change, new and often quite heroic solutions to control the environment are winning attention. Innovations in biotechnology and carbon capture offer some of the most immediate solutions for battling climate change, and further off we could build space mirrors, creating artificial clouds, or altering the chemistry of the sea to prevent the worst effects of global warming.

 

Climate change is a multi-faceted driver of change may drive us towards global cooperation and test our social and technological ingenuity, and may even remind us what it means to be human.

 

 

 

21 Drivers for the 21st CenturyTM by Outsights is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.