Most will also believe it's a problem for a distant future. It's a worrying misconception. Climate scientists have raised their personal threat level from "terror struck panic" to "urgently needing clean underwear".
Climate Change is an existential threat that goes far beyond "environmentalism". It should be at the very top of the political agenda. Why is an issue that is as much as threat to national security today as Nazi Germany in 1939, so underplayed? Human inability to deal with the long term is a big factor, deliberate fraud and deception on the part of the energy industry is another - but we've also failed to communicate effectively - public understanding of the true nature of climate change is poor.
The very term "Global Warming" is misleading. It's a lazy explanation of the effects of greenhouse gasses. The idea that the planet will be two or three degrees warmer doesn't seem particualarly scary. More importantly, it gives the wrong idea of why rising levels of greenhouse gasses are so serious.
To understand the real problem, it's more helpful to visualise our climate system as a giant heat engine fueled by the sun. Greenhouse gasses are a thermal blanket, but their effects are more like the accelerator of a car. The higher their concentration, the more of the sun's energy is made available to power the world's weather - and over the last 100 odd years we've effectively "floored it".
To get an idea of why pouring more energy into the system is such a problem, imagine what would happen if all the cars on the M25 were suddenly forced to drive 15 mph faster - irrespective of traffic, driver's ability or the condition of vehicles . It would be hard to show increased speed caused a particular crash, all the usual risk factors would still apply, but we can be sure that crashes would happen more often, and when they happened, they would be more damaging.
In the world's weather systems these accidents are "weather events". Minor bumps are the warm sunny days with occasional showers. Writing off the car the car creates the "build an ark / phew what a scorcher / big freeze" headlines.
Then there are the "air ambulance has landed and there are 40 mile tail backs" events.
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| Extreme Weather - Flash floods in Cannes - 03/10/2015 - where 10% of annual rain fell in 2 days |
Climate change is already having direct economic impacts One of the reasons for the hike in food prices in 2010/11 was the widespread Russian crop failures caused by drought. We also saw crop failures in Norfolk a few years ago but compared to the "dust bowlification" of SW USA caused by prolonged drought and acute water shortages in California, predicted to have real impact on US food supplies, these were relatively low-key incidents. Extreme events mean more and more violent storms, longer droughts, hotter hear waves.
The problem with more frequent extremes is that eco systems can't cope. A systems stability doesn't really depend on averages - it's the extremes that limit a system's ability to survive. Ecosystems need time to adapt - the pace of climate change risks of entire eco-systems being wiped out.
In the Arctic, where the impacts of climate change are far more pronounced, sea ice has retreated rapidly, as the Arctic has warmed, two extreme droughts caused widespread dieback in the Amazon rainforest, and most bizarre of all - in Australia entire colonies of flying foxes have fallen dead from their roosts - killed by heat exhaustion.
The effects are not restricted to food security and ecological impacts - the Pentagon identifies climate change as a major threat to national security, impacting on water resources, driving migration, destabilising the fragile economies of marginal countries and affecting strategic considerations as seaways through the Arctic become ice free.
The floods in Cannes are just the latest example of an extreme weather event, and while there's nothing new about dramatic floods they are almost 20% more likely today because of global warming -and are set to be 40% more likely if temperatures rise by 2 degrees.
Food security, ecological stability, political instability and disruptive climatic instability are all climate change related issues that are happening right now. As if that isn't enough, some of the disruption drives "feedbacks" that make the situation worse.
Losing sea ice reduces the earth's reflectivity or albedo, meaning less energy is reflected back into space. As the Arctic warms thawing tundra will release methane into the atmosphere. Dying rain forest means a double whammy - those ecosystems no longer strip Carbon Dioxide from the earth's atmosphere - but the decaying trees also release more carbon. These feedbacks are effectively pressing even harder on the pedal.
If that's not enough, climate change's evil twin - ocean acidification, has sneaked up behind to bite us the bum. The seas are getting more acid - something that could have profound effects on marine eco-systems - systems that provide the world with it's biggest habitat, a significant part of it's food and - for good measure - a third of it's oxygen.
Climate change is a clear and present danger - and failing to address it has been one of the greatest acts of political irresponsibility of the last 40 years. It scarcely seems credible that politicians would ignore the issue - but there's clue why in the two faces of Margaret Thatcher.
As prime minister, she was the first G8 leader to acknowledge that climate change was real and a serious threat. She was also, arguably, the first climate change denier. In her 2003 book Statecraft, in a passage headed "Hot Air and Global Warming", she regretted her leadership on the issue because of the negative effects of climate change policy on business.
Her leadership on climate change flowed from her early training as a scientist and her ability to understand research and evidence. Her U turn came from her position of neo-liberal capitalist heroine - who recognised that extracting oil and coal was just too profitable to allow silly concerns like global environmental meltdown to get in the way.
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