Climate change remains one of the more controversial topics in the IGCSE Biology specification.  Just in the past few weeks, the USA (one of the finest nations on the planet) has elected as their President someone who has stated on record that he believes in some giant conspiracy theory about climate science centred around the Chinese….

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists do not support this interpretation of the facts.  They are able to provide evidence of rapid climate change over the past few decades and link this to human-induced changes in the composition of the atmosphere due to pollution.  When these facts are linked by a sensible scientific theory that proposes how and why certain gases might lead to an increased warming effect in the atmosphere (the so-called greenhouse effect) the evidence in support of human-induced climate change becomes compelling.  Keeping US manufacturing competitive is important of course, but not at the expense of the enormous environmental and financial costs of allowing our pollution of the atmosphere to continue unchecked.  I am not sure I will be able to convince President-Elect Trump (he probably doesn’t read my blog in any case) but perhaps I can show you the kind of understanding needed to generate A* answers in GCSE questions on this topic…?

I am going to organise this work into several sections and will post on each topic in the coming week….

1. What is the evidence for climate change?
2. What is the greenhouse effect?
3. How are human activities altering the make up of the atmosphere?
4. What are the predicted consequences of climate change in the coming years?