Development Education and Climate Change

Abstract

The scientific debate around climate change has a substantial heritage. John Tyndall the nineteenth-century Irish physicist provided a step change in our understanding of the atmosphere by revealing that nitrogen and oxygen are transparent to both visible and infrared radiation, while other gases, including carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour, are transparent in the visible part of the spectrum, but partially opaque in the infrared part of the spectrum (Kolbert, 2007). This explained how increases in what became known as ‘greenhouse gases’ caused heat to be trapped by the Earth’s atmosphere. The end of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century have seen the scientific data from contemporary atmospheric measurements and historic ice core analysis combine with observed climatic changes around the world to support the notion that climate change is happening and that human activity is a primary cause (IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007a, 2007b).

Emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have ushered in a new epoch where human activities will largely determine the evolution of Earth’s climate (National Research Council, 2011:5).