Skip to main content
Log in

The climate journey over three decades: from childhood to maturity, innocence to knowing, from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism...

  • Published:
Climatic Change Aims and scope Submit manuscript
  • Birth is a beginning,

  • And death a destination;

  • But life is a journey,

  • A going—growing

  • From stage to stage,

  • From childhood to maturity

  • And youth to age.

  • From innocence to awareness

  • And ignorance to knowing;

  • From foolishness to discretion

  • And then perhaps wisdom.[8pt]

  • We see that the victory lies

  • Not at some high place along the way,

  • But in having made the journey,

  • Stage to stage...

  •                   —Rabbi Alvin Fine

Abstract

From this very southern perspective climate science has made a journey from an academic pursuit in the 1970s to being now at a critical crossroad. Now the mainstream climate community needs to re-establish its credibility so as to communicate the urgency of relevant science based policy. Decade 1970s was involved with establishing that climate does change and reaffirming the theory that increases in greenhouse gases lead to a warming of climate. During the 1980s climate science became more relevant to decision makers in the community because of the advent of the 1982/1983 El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event, and the realisation that a major nuclear war could be followed by a nuclear winter with the demise of several millions of people. In 1991 the Mt. Pinatubo volcanic eruption had significant impacts on climate. Out of these and other climatic perturbations the science of seasonal climate forecasting developed. The 1990s and early 2000s was a time of full maturity of the science with the development that anthropogenic climate change because of the enhanced greenhouse effect was extremely likely to determine the course of climate and its impacts during the twenty-first century. Much policy relevant debate occurred with governments of the world signing up to the Kyoto protocol of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). However, with the advent of the late 2000s and 2010s the growth of climate denial and Climategate has turned the science in to being a very vexatious political issue. Climate deniers refuse to accept an empirically verifiable reality: that global warming is unequivocal and that most of the warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities. Civil society is under pressure to believe the science, and it is a matter of urgency that the science is communicated clearly, frankly and with integrity. Climatic Change will have a major role in enabling the interdisciplinary mainstream climate science community to achieve this goal.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Begley S (2007) The truth about denial. Newsweek, 13 Aug 2007. http://www.newsweek.com/id/32482

  • Bryson RA (1974) A perspective on climatic change. Science 184(4138):753–760

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • IPCC (1990) Climate change. In: Houghton JT, Jenkins GJ, Ephraums JJ (eds) The IPCC scientific assessment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

  • IPCC (1995) In: Houghton JJ, Fillho LGM, Callandar BA, Harris N, Kattenburg A, Maskell K (eds) Climate change 1995: the science of climate change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • IPCC (2001) In: Houghton JT, Ding Y, Griggs DJ, Noguer M, van der Linden PJ, Dai X, Maskell K, Johnson CA (eds) Climate change 2001: the scientific basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 881 pp

    Google Scholar 

  • IPCC (2007a) In: Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M, Averyt KB, Tignor M, Miller HL (eds) Climate change 2007: the physical science basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 996 pp

    Google Scholar 

  • IPCC (2007b) In: Parry ML, Canziani OF, Palutikof JP, van der Linden PJ, Hanson CE (eds) Climate change 2007: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 976 pp

    Google Scholar 

  • Lamb HH (1995) Climate, history and the modern world, 2nd edn. Routledge, London, 433 pp

    Google Scholar 

  • Manabe S, Wetherald RT (1975) The effects of doubling the CO2 concentration on the climate of a general circulation model. J Atmos Sci 32(1):3–15

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pew (2007a) Rising environmental concern in 47-nation survey. Pew Global Attitudes, 129 pp. http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/256.pdf

  • Pew (2007b) Public praises science; scientists fault public media. Pew Research Center. http://people-press.org/report/528/

  • Pew (2009) Outlook on climate policy: answering a US and global imperative. E. Claussen. http://www.perclimate.org/speech/Carbon-Finance/June2009

  • Robock A, Mao J (1995) The volcanic signal in surface temperature observations. J Climate 8:1086–1103

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salinger MJ, Gunn JM (1975) Recent climatic warming around New Zealand. Nature 256:296–298

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salinger MJ, Renwick JA (2009) Temperature trends from raw data. http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/news/all/nz-temperature-rise-clear/temperature-trends-from-raw-data

  • Schneider SH, Mesirow LE (1976) The genesis strategy: climate and global survival. Plenum, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Turco TP, Toon OP, Ackerman TP, Pollack JB, Sagan C (1983) Nuclear winter: global consequences of multiple nuclear explosions. Science 222:4630

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jim Salinger.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Salinger, J. The climate journey over three decades: from childhood to maturity, innocence to knowing, from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism.... Climatic Change 100, 49–57 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-010-9844-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-010-9844-3

Keywords

Navigation