Perspective on the current state of climate change. DRAFT 18.5.2025

This draft is intended for members of the CCG to skim before the meeting. It is intended as an overview of the main issues and will be presented and discussed and supplemented with a presentation on a recent alternative view of some of the fundamental assumptions.

Lately, the CCG meetings have focused on the local and regional levels, – land-use, regenerative farming, drought, flooding, heat pumps, solar farms, the grid, our carbon footprints, what CDC is up to, etc. Looking up to see what is happening at the global level, we see from new reports and papers that the challenge is substantially bigger and more urgent than the last time we looked and that global efforts to shrink it or slow it down have totally failed. We are poorly prepared for what is coming.
Human evolution has never encouraged us to be too concerned about the long-term or global, its just not in our genes. Fortunately, we have political leaders, responsible to their publics for ensuring that the future threats are adequately addressed at the local and national levels and globally in collaboration with other nations!? Unfortunately our leaders appear to have largely failed. We have very little experience with global governance and with nations pulling together to address global threats.
Climate models designed and refined over the past 30 years to give us a clearer picture of the problem, seem to have consistently under-estimated the scale and urgency of the challenge. Papers on this subject still emphasise the difficulty of improving global models.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed by the United Nations to lead in the science of climate change. It is an impressive network of scientists throughout the world. Their scientific reports are submitted for endorsement by member governments before publication. This endorsement process involves multiple rounds of drafting and review, with governments providing comments and ultimately approving the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) and accepting the rest of the report. These reports and the UN meetings have resulted in what we call the current consensus.
There are many papers on the Internet which challenge different aspects of the current consensus, some on historical data, some on the interpretation of data, some on fundamental assumptions such as the role of CO2 in the rising global temperatures. The vast majority of climate scientists still support the IPCC model which remains the general consensus. There is however a very recent alternative view of fundamental assumptions that really could challenge that consensus and which points the finger at global agriculture rather than fossil fuels. (Presentation later on the agenda.)

The fact remains that:

The average global temperature is accelerating upwards and has (briefly) broken through the limit of 1.5⁰C above pre-industrial times which countries agreed to try to achieve in Paris in 2015. This was exceeded in 2024 and the UK has just experienced the hottest and driest Spring in 100 years and our reservoirs are dangerously low already and the summer has not even started!
Atmospheric CO2e levels have reached 430 ppm, 54% higher than pre-industrial times, 7.5% more than at the time of the Paris Agreement in 2015.
Oceans: For decades, a large proportion of the increased heat in the atmosphere has been absorbed by the oceans. There is thought to be a strong probability that the oceans have reached the point at which they will start returning heat to the atmosphere. Cold water holds more CO2 than warm water so CO2 emission back to the atmosphere will be inevitable. (For a demonstration, put a can of fizzy beer in the fridge and take another one out in the sun for a while. Open them both and see the difference. The one in the fridge just fizzles a little, the one in the sun almost explodes and what is left in the can will be flat.)
The cycles of water and CO2 between ocean and atmosphere are complex but what we do know is that water vapour is the greenhouse gas with the highest heating potential and that the typhoons, hurricanes, storms are intensified as water vapour in the atmosphere increases. Monsoons, on which the Indian subcontinent of almost two billion people are dependent for their food and water, are also vulnerable to changes in the cycle.
Deforestation in many parts of the world continues so that global forests move from being carbon sinks to carbon emitters,
The Arctic tipping points have essentially been reached, with CO2 and methane bubbling out and the permafrost melting. This has been emphasised in previous CCG presentations and many believe that this is probably going to be our biggest problem.
The less developed world is in great need of assistance in setting up and expanding their green energy generation and distribution rather than exploiting their fossil fuels. The industrialised world however is generally cutting back on development assistance, some due to increased expenditure on their military capacities, others are in trade wars with Trump and some are cutting emissions and expanding their own adaptation programmes. This leaves the populations in the less developed world, who are generally innocent in causing climate change, to fend for themselves.
When we look at who put the CO2 into the atmosphere, the finger usually points at China but historically, the USA put most of the CO2 up there and China will never overtake them. China declared that they would reach net zero CO2e emissions by 2060 and they are currently on course to achieve that years ahead of time. China continues to lead the world in wind and solar, with twice as much capacity under construction as the rest of the world combined. One in ten cars on Chinese roads are EVs and China leads EV market with two thirds of global sales (2025). Whilst still dependent on coal for electricity generation, this will be phased out as the renewables grow and the energy demand levels off.
The USA is still the second biggest emitter & Trump is doing his best to deny climate change and forget about achieving net zero but spite of him, the acceleration in the growth of renewable/sustainable energy is fairly widespread through many States, at the expense of fossil fuels, simply because the renewables are cheaper, more convenient and a better investment. It is difficult to say what will happen with EVs, now the tariffs have made them so much more expensive.
In the UK, the Climate Change Committee has just published a 168 page report entitled Progress in adapting to climate change: 2025 report to Parliament. It’s key message is basically that progress is either too slow, has stalled or is heading in the wrong direction. The Government must act without further delay to improve the national approach to climate risks and resilience. We have many adaptation issues to address, as well as achieving net zero-emissions by 2050, Much of the incentive for addressing these issues should come from the fact that doing so is often financially attractive.
- Food security is and must continue to be of paramount importance, so that safeguarding prime agricultural land, moving to regenerative farming to sequester more carbon and improve the soil quality, forest and grassland management, biodiversity encouragement and finding solutions for drought and flooding through land use, will all be important. Carbon sequestration through better soil management could make a massive contribution to achieving net-zero. At the moment, it appears that we are failing badly.
- Heat pumps installed in the UK lag way behind other European nations in terms of the proportion of residences, due partly to our electricity prices are four times that of gas per kWh. Heat pump installation are designed to deliver the same amount of heat to a residence as a gas boiler (would) but using between a third & a quarter of the energy. Arbitrarily putting the price of electricity at four times that of gas makes absolutely no sense if government is really trying to encourage the move to renewable energy and reduce our emissions. The annual reduction in CO2e emissions through converting an average 3 bedroom residence from gas to heat pump from would be 2 tonnes. The UK target for conversion to heat pumps by 2030 was 600,000, delivering an annual reduction CO2e of 1.2 million tonnes. Our target should be nearer to 6 million conversions by 2030 and 20 million by 2050, i.e. 12 million tonnes CO2e per annum reduction by 2030 & 20 million by 2050, i.e. 5% of the current reduction target of around 400 million tonnes.
- Photo-voltaic solar is growing fast in the UK but it is important that it does not compete with agricultural production, so the focus should be land with poor quality soil. Indeed, properly managed, low quality soils can regenerate through the life of the solar farm. The ideal site is surely rooftops, especially large ones.
- Wind farms
In climate change, why do we believe what we believe – the general global scientific consensus, one or two paras with recent statistics.
- Believe means “taken to be true, thought to be true” based on strong (scientific) evidence and supported by the majority of experts.
- We believe that the current consensus is correct but that it may change when or if alternative convincing scientific evidence is produced.
- In this particular case, the consensus is that CO2e is at the heart of climate change, with H₂O also playing a major role.
How much time do we have? The impossible question!

MJC 19.5.25

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