good climate change thesis statement

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Climate change is an urgent global issue, characterized by rising temperatures, melting glaciers, and extreme weather events. Writing a thesis on this topic requires a clear and concise statement that guides the reader through the significance, focus, and scope of your study. In this piece, we will explore various examples of good and bad thesis statements related to climate change to guide students in crafting compelling research proposals.

Good Examples

Focused Approach: “This thesis will analyze the impact of climate change on the intensity and frequency of hurricanes, using data from the last three decades.” Lack of Focus: “Climate change affects weather patterns.”

The good statement is specific, indicating a focus on hurricanes and providing a time frame. In contrast, the bad statement is too vague, covering a broad topic without any specific angle.

Clear Stance: “Implementing carbon taxes is an effective strategy for governments to incentivize companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Not So Clear: “Carbon taxes might be good for the environment.”

The good statement takes a clear position in favor of carbon taxes, while the bad statement is indecisive, not providing a clear standpoint.

Researchable and Measurable: “The thesis explores the correlation between the rise in global temperatures and the increase in the extinction rates of North American mammal species.” Dull: “Global warming is harmful to animals.”

The good statement is researchable and measurable, with clear variables and a focused geographic location, while the bad statement is generic and lacks specificity.

Bad Examples

Overly Broad: “Climate change is a global problem that needs to be addressed.”

This statement, while true, is overly broad and doesn’t propose a specific area of focus, making it inadequate for guiding a research study.

Lack of Clear Argument: “Climate change has some negative and positive effects.”

This statement doesn’t take a clear stance or highlight specific effects, making it weak and uninformative.

Unoriginal and Unengaging: “Climate change is real.”

While the statement is factual, it doesn’t present an original argument or engage the reader with a specific area of climate change research.

Crafting a compelling thesis statement on climate change is crucial for directing your research and presenting a clear, focused, and arguable position. A good thesis statement should be specific, take a clear stance, and be researchable and measurable. Avoid overly broad, unclear, unoriginal, or unengaging statements that do not provide clear direction or focus for your research. Utilizing the examples provided, students can navigate the intricate process of developing thesis statements that are not only academically rigorous but also intriguing and relevant to the pressing issue of climate change.

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Global Warming Thesis Statement Ideas

Rapidly declining Arctic sea ice offers one topic for a paper on global warming.

Economic Impact of Coastal Erosion

Global warming is a complex problem that often sparks policy debates. When writing about it, stick to the facts and make sure that your thesis statement -- the central assertion of your essay -- is supported by research. Some global warming topics have produced extensive research worldwide and can serve as topical guides in formulating your thesis statement.

Manmade Causes versus Natural Causes

The causes of global warming are complex, including natural and man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and methane. Use your thesis to highlight the difference between natural sources and man-made sources. For example, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere have risen from 280 parts per million in the 18th century to 390 parts per million in 2010. Human activities release more than 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, or 135 times as much as volcanoes. Focus your thesis on this discrepancy, how man-made carbon dioxide sources such as fossil fuel consumption, have eclipsed natural sources of the gas.

Rising Temperatures and Declining Sea Ice

Your thesis statement may focus on the relationship between rising surface temperatures and declining sea ice, specifically ice in the Arctic. For instance, since 1901, sea surface temperatures have risen at an average rate of 0.13 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, with the highest rates of change occurring in the past three decades alone, according to the EPA.

Your thesis may establish the inverse relationship between these rising surface temperatures and the shrinking ice coverage in the Arctic. Arctic sea ice extent in December 2014, for instance, was the ninth lowest in the satellite record. The rate of decline for December ice alone is 3.4 percent per decade, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Effects of Melting Glaciers on Water Supply

Along with sea ice, many of the world’s glaciers are melting due to climate change. Since the 1960s, the U.S. Geological Survey has tracked the mass of two glaciers in Alaska and one in Washington state, all three of which have shrunk considerably in the past 40 years.

Research other mountain ranges and compare the glaciological data. Use your thesis to answer the question of what melting glaciers will mean for populations dependent on the ice flows for their fresh water supply. For example, much of Peru’s population depends on Andean glaciers not only for drinking water but for hydroelectricity.

Effects of Drought on Food Production

While global warming is projected to raise sea levels and flooding in coastal regions, it’s also been credited for changes in weather patterns and extreme drought, according to the EPA. In the arid American Southwest, for example, average annual temperatures have increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century, leading to decreased snowpack, extreme drought, wildfires and fierce competition for remaining water supplies.

As drought still rages in this region, your thesis can explore the relationship between global warming and agriculture, specifically in California’s Central Valley, which provides produce for much of the country. It’s possible that hotter, longer growing seasons are beneficial to California crops, but that shrinking water supplies threaten the viability of commercial agriculture.

Ocean Acidification and Global Seafood Stocks

Increased carbon dioxide emissions don't just impact our air quality. These emissions also result in increased acidity of our planet's oceans. An immense range of shellfish and other molluscs, such as clams, oysters, crabs, lobsters and more, face immediate population decline due to ocean acidification weakening their calcium carbonate shells.

Your thesis can explore the mechanics of ocean acidification as well as the potential economic impact to the fisheries that rely upon these marine animals for survival. You can also explore the potential ecosystem impact for the predators that feed upon these animals.

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Causes of Climate Change
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Climate Change Indicators in the United States
National Snow and Ice Data Center: Artic Sea Ice News and Analysis
U.S. Geological Survey: 3-Glacier Mass Balance Summary
National Geographic: Signs from Earth: The Big Thaw
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Climate Impacts in the Southwest
Alaska Public Media: Ocean Acidification

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Argumentative Essay Writing

Argumentative Essay About Climate Change

Make Your Case: A Guide to Writing an Argumentative Essay on Climate Change

Published on: Mar 2, 2023

Last updated on: Jan 31, 2024

What is an Argumentative Essay about Climate Change?

The main focus will be on trying to prove that global warming is caused by human activities. Your goal should be to convince your readers that human activity is causing climate change.

To achieve this, you will need to use a variety of research methods to collect data on the topic. You need to make an argument as to why climate change needs to be taken more seriously.

Argumentative Essay Outline about Climate Change

An argumentative essay about climate change requires a student to take an opinionated stance on the subject.

The outline of your paper should include the following sections:

Argumentative Essay About Climate Change Introduction

The first step is to introduce the topic and provide an overview of the main points you will cover in the essay.

This should include a brief description of what climate change is. Furthermore, it should include current research on how humans are contributing to global warming.

An example is:

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Thesis Statement For Climate Change Argumentative Essay

The thesis statement should be a clear and concise description of your opinion on the topic. It should be established early in the essay and reiterated throughout.

For example, an argumentative essay about climate change could have a thesis statement such as:

âclimate change is caused by human activity and can be addressed through policy solutions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote cleaner energy sourcesâ.

Climate Change Argumentative Essay Conclusion

The conclusion should restate your thesis statement and summarize the main points of the essay.

It should also provide a call to action, encouraging readers to take steps toward addressing climate change.

For example,

Climate change is an urgent issue that must be addressed now if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences in the future. We must take action to reduce our emissions and transition to cleaner energy sources. It is up to us as citizens to demand policy solutions from our governments that will ensure a safe and sustainable future.

How To Write An Argumentative Essay On Climate Change

Writing an argumentative essay about climate change requires a student to take an opinionated stance on the subject.

Following are the steps to follow for writing an argumentative essay about climate change

Do Your Research

The first step is researching the topic and collecting evidence to back up your argument.

You should look at scientific research, articles, and data on climate change as well as current policy solutions.

Pick A Catchy Title

Once you have gathered your evidence, it is time to pick a title for your essay. It should be specific and concise.

Outline Your Essay

After selecting a title, create an outline of the main points you will include in the essay.

This should include an introduction, body paragraphs that provide evidence for your argument, and a conclusion.

Compose Your Essay

Finally, begin writing your essay. Start with an introduction that provides a brief overview of the main points you will cover and includes your thesis statement.

Then move on to the body paragraphs, providing evidence to back up your argument.

Finally, conclude the essay by restating your thesis statement and summarizing the main points.

Proofread and Revise

Once you have finished writing the essay, it is important to proofread and revise your work.

Check for any spelling or grammatical errors, and make sure the argument is clear and logical.

Finally, consider having someone else read over the essay for a fresh perspective.

By following these steps, you can create an effective argumentative essay on climate change. Good luck!

Examples Of Argumentative Essays About Climate Change

Climate Change is real and happening right now. It is one of the most urgent environmental issues that we face today.

Argumentative essays about this topic can help raise awareness that we need to protect our planet.

Below you will find some examples of argumentative essays on climate change written by CollegeEssay.orgâs expert essay writers.

Argumentative Essay About Climate Change And Global Warming

Persuasive Essay About Climate Change

Argumentative Essay About Climate Change In The Philippines

Argumentative Essay About Climate Change Caused By Humans

Geography Argumentative Essay About Climate Change

Check our extensive blog on argumentative essay examples to ace your next essay!

Good Argumentative Essay Topics About Climate Change

Choosing a great topic is essential to help your readers understand and engage with the issue.

Here are some suggestions:

Should governments fund projects that will reduce the effects of climate change?
Is it too late to stop global warming and climate change?
Are international treaties effective in reducing carbon dioxide emissions?
What are the economic implications of climate change?
Should renewable energy be mandated as a priority over traditional fossil fuels?
How can individuals help reduce their carbon footprint and fight climate change?
Are regulations on industry enough to reduce global warming and climate change?
Could geoengineering be used to mitigate climate change?
What are the social and political effects of global warming and climate change?
Should companies be held accountable for their contribution to climate change?

Check our comprehensive blog on argumentative essay topics to get more topic ideas!

We hope these topics and resources help you write a great argumentative essay about climate change.

Now that you know how to write an argumentative essay about climate change, itâs time to put your skills to the test.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good introduction to climate change.

An introduction to a climate change essay can include a short description of why the topic is important and/or relevant.

It can also provide an overview of what will be discussed in the body of the essay.

The introduction should conclude with a clear, focused thesis statement that outlines the main argument in your essay.

What is a good thesis statement for climate change?

A good thesis statement for a climate change essay should state the main point or argument you will make in your essay.

You could argue that “The science behind climate change is irrefutable and must be addressed by governments, businesses, and individuals.”

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Global Warming Topics with Thesis Statement Suggestions

It is hard to close your eyes to the fact that the current state of our ecosystem is in danger. This problem is not only a burden for scientists and scholars but all of us as well. When students try to get in-depth knowledge of global warming and overall ecological problems worldwide, it helps governments implement new precautions and climate-saving programs.

A conscious approach to topic selection helps students write an engaging piece of work that can impact our future. Therefore, in the guide prepared by our essay writing service , you can get powerful ideas for your eco projects that our specialists have prepared for you.

Causes of global warming

Understanding what is behind global warming is crucial for students’ research. Consider these problems as tips to choose a global warming topic.

Factory farming and its vast volume of greenhouse cases.
Biochemical pollution and a wide range of potentially lethal toxins from factories.
Natural resource consumption in business and its impact on climate change.
Forest destruction threatens to increase the global warming problem.
Refusing plastic sorting is dangerous for the planet.
Factors that contribute to temperature increase worldwide.
Vanishing water resources.
Ignoring the power of technology and communication solving the global warming catastrophe.
Lack of global awareness campaigns.
Landscape deformation and its effect on flora and fauna.

Actually, there are many fields that a student and an essay writer can consider while choosing the topic for their ecological research. In this article, you can find topics from many categories and select the most appealing for your task.

Essay topics on global warming and humanity’s influence

How does the NRDC manage global warming?
How does global warming affect American industry?
What is the connection of global warming and the implications for Minnesota?
What are global reports on climate change?
Human endeavor in global warming.
The influence of global warming on human behavior.
Is global warming an anthropogenic cause or is it the nature of the Earth’s system?
Can we sustain the discrepancy between those who deny it and the existence of solid evidence of global warming’s validity?
Is global warming a myth?
What are the effects of burning fossil fuel for transportation on global warming in Beijing, China, and possible solutions for the future?
Does global warming increase the severity and frequency of hurricanes and typhoons? Compare and contrast evidence for the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
How dangerous is the threat of floods caused by global warming?
What are consequences and remedies of global warming?
Does tracking contribute to global warming?
How does global warming impact the tourism and hospitality industry?
If human activity is contributing to global warming, how significant is the contribution?
What is the ethical standpoint of global warming?
Should carbon trading policies be used to combat global warming?
What has the insurance industry done, or what should they do with global warming?
How will humanity fair in the future with current global warming rates?
How big is your protein footprint? Does a meat-rich diet have a negative impact on our environment? Does it contribute to global warming?
What to choose: global warming or global cooling?

Topics of global warming related to politics

Do some governments have an interest in not preventing global warming?
How does politics influence global warming?
How do international treaties influence global warming?
How can politics stop global warming?
Can global warming be stabilized by politics?
Are political decisions the main reason for global warming?
What are politicians doing to prevent global warming, and is it enough?
What is the political issue of global warming?
What is the role of politics in global warming?
What do politicians fail to do to stop global warming?

Topics of global warming related to biology

What effect does global warming have on biodiversity?
How does global warming influence food?
Why do some people think that global warming is good for the animals?
What are the effects of global warming on plants?
What are solutions to protect animals from global warming?
What is the phenomenon of global warming denial and its impact on animals?
What is the relationship between global warming and extinction of species?
Is global warming harmful to human health?
What is the influence of global warming on population shift?
What is the connection of human health and climate change?
Global warming and climate control: is man the enemy of the planet?
The shrinking of the Greenland ice sheet due to global warming.
Death of coral reefs because of global warming.
Is global warming a natural cycle?
What is the effect of global warming on ecosystems?

Topics of global warming in history

What is the evidence for environmental change during historic times?
During their eight years in office, the Obama administration took concrete steps to limit climate change and foster adaptation and resilience in the USA and its territories. What are these steps?
Where did global warming come from?
When did the first evidence that polar bears are dying out because of the global warming appear?
When did indigenous people in Alaska get exposed to global warming?
How could we have stopped global warming ten years ago?
When did scientists notice the effects of global warming on animals for the first time?
How did chemical engineering influence global warming over time?
Within our lifetime, how will global warming affect us, specifically, within the United States?
How has agriculture been influenced by global warming over the past few years?
What are the recent and anticipated physical, social (including health), and economic impacts of ongoing global warming on Australia?
Problem and solution of global warming in the Pacific Ocean due to the rise of the sea and salinity levels in the past 20 years.

Global warming topics related to movies, articles, and books

Analyze Al Gore’s documentary on global warming. What is the main theme of it?
Analyze the Rolling Stone article on climate change and national security. Does this article address the issue of national security as implications of the phenomenon of climate change?
According to computer climate models, how does the soil type result in different tree species becoming prevalent? Use the article “Crossroads of Climate Change” to answer the question.
Analyze “Summary for Policymakers” from the 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) synthesis report and express your attitude.
Research the topic of the cartoon about global warming by Glenn McCoy, and write on the subject presented by the artist.
Analysis of the argument on Bill Mckibben’s Rolling Stone article “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.”
Analyze David Attenborough’s video on global impacts of climate change and present your attitude about it.

Global warming speech topics

Negative impacts of a warmer global climate on human health.
Negative impacts of a warmer global climate on northern Minnesota.
The evidence that scientists use to study and make predictions about global climate change.
Global warming effects on business in Florida.
The change in the atmosphere that influences the change in the global climate.
The difference between the war on global warming and the war on terror.
The difference between natural and anthropogenic climate changes.
The effect of global warming on rising sea levels.
The theory that best explains why some countries are ignoring global warming and others are not.
Connection between global warming and urbanization.

Global warming topics on the greenhouse effect

What is the greenhouse effect and its influence on the Earth’s environment?
What is the process by which greenhouse gasses absorb atmospheric heat and radiate it back onto the Earth’s surface?
What are three things individuals can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
What are strategies for reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere?
Why do Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase?
Pros and cons of the greenhouse effect.
Possible caused human global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions.
Ozone depletion and the green house effect.

Examples of thesis statements for global warming topics

Topic: Is global warming a catastrophe that warrants immediate action? Thesis statement: We do not see CO2. This is an invisible threat, but quite real. This means an increase in global temperatures, an increase in extreme weather events such as floods, melting ice, and rising sea levels, and an increase in ocean acidity.

Topic: Why is global warming influencing people? Thesis statement : Scientists, after analyzing the results of research in more than 60 fields of science, concluded that a change in temperature leads to a surge in aggression. Extensive research has revealed a strong relationship between outbreaks of aggression and global warming.

Topic: Is global warming a hoax or exaggerated? Thesis statement: Climate change leads to overflowing rivers all over the world, the water level in reservoirs will increase markedly, and heavy rains and storms in many regions will become even more devastating.

Topic: How does global warming affect the weather? Thesis statement: Environmentalists say that there are more and more frequent sharp changes in weather, storm winds, hurricanes, tornadoes, and abnormally high and abnormally low temperatures. According to experts, the cause of these phenomena is the global climate change.

Global Warming Thesis Statement Requirements

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Students who dive into global warming awareness become great activists that can save our planet. They awaken consciousness among various social groups and easily explain why saving the planet can be possible when each participates. Choosing the topic for an academic paper should be considered carefully because the work a student creates can be fundamental for a life-changing speech.

At our service, students can get educational assistance for a reasonable price. Find a custom writer by leaving an order with your specific instructions or read more articles in our blog. If you are engaged in ecological issues, you can read an extended list of ecology paper topics and discover more informative sources for your research. EssayShark is here so you can expand the horizons of your knowledge!

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7 thoughts on “ Global Warming Topics with Thesis Statement Suggestions ”

this post helped me not only with a topic but with a thesis on climate change too. Thanx!

Oh Lord, what a nice collection of topics!!!

Pretty helpful

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I was searching for climate change argumentative essay topics for 2 days! Thank god I found them!!!

It seems to me that here are the best climate change essay topics!!!

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Environment

How to write the perfect essay on climate change.

Writing an essay on green living or other environmental issues can be difficult. You need to make sure that you get your points right. One of the issues is that environmental research is changing at a breathtaking pace, so it is easy to use outdated data to make your point.

Creating the Perfect Essay on Climate Change or Any Environmental Topic

Essay writing is a task which poses an immense challenge to many students. This is because it not only has many requirements, but also requires one to have professional writing skills to produce a top-notch paper. This is especially complicated for climate change papers.

Additionally, many students find it hard to distinguish the type of paper they are writing. Hence, they end up producing the wrong article. Environmental science professors and instructors often give college and university students writing assignments.

You can always hire a professional paper writer to help you. However, you will learn more if you go through the process on your own. But how can you write a paper easily with limited time as a student?

You need to be familiar with the concepts behind climate change if you are planning on writing a paper on it. You should start by looking at previous papers and research on the topic. Global Change has a large list of all major climate change papers .

However, you are going to need to write your own paper and it needs to meet the school’s quality standards. It is up to you to ensure that you understand the distinction between various types of essay writing tasks. Cody Rhodes has been gracious enough to speak with us to clarify what a descriptive essay is and the goal or objective of writing one. Rhodes has said that there are a lot of great insights for people learning to create better papers on climate change.

What is a descriptive essay on Climate Change?

Before we go deeper into descriptive essay writing tips, you need to know what a descriptive essay is. A descriptive essay is a type of academic writing which involves describing a specific place, event, or person to the readers. You must do this in a way that creates a portrait in their minds by engaging their senses: touch, sound, smell, sight, and taste. Your ability to do this guarantees your success. Before you write your descriptive essay, you need to lay the foundation of the entire work.

Choose a topic related to climate change or green living

What topic is best for climate change? You can’t just focus on climate change in general , Rhodes tells us. He says that you need to get into the nuances of specific elements of the subject. You might want to talk about the fact that the minimum arctic ice levels have fallen over 12% a decade since the 1980s . Covering a very specific climate change topic makes things easier.

So, you need to select a topic which you can write a lot about. Your professor may give you one or they may leave it up to you to choose. So, ensure you pick a topic which allows you to convey your opinion about it through your description of it and how you want things laid out for the audience.

Also, you must ensure you structure your essay in a way that helps your topic to have meaning or make sense. A description of an event has paragraphs arranged chronologically, whereas a description of a person or a place has paragraphs arranged generally so that it allows you to go deeper into the specifics. The introduction paragraph of your essay should set out the key points you will discuss in your article as it sets the tone for the rest of the paper.

But what do you do once you’ve chosen your topic? If you need to learn how to write a descriptive essay about a place, event or person consider the following tips.

Do statement

Now that you have chosen a topic, develop a thesis statement for your climate change topic. An example could be “The hospitality sector’s global initiative has contributed to the climate crisis.”

A thesis statement is a statement which holds or supports the argument in the topic of your paper. Additionally, it lays out the purpose of the essay. It is prominent throughout the entire paper. Hence, when creating it, you need to make it precise, avoid clichés, and include it in the introductory paragraph.

Engage your readers’ senses

The audience will be able to comprehend what your paper is about if you create an image in their minds by engaging their senses. So, how do you get the senses right?

Take a sheet of paper and partition it into five columns. Note down all the senses. This will help you sort your thoughts and ideas as you elucidate your topic. Write any feelings or sensations which relate to the topic you are writing about. Back up your thesis statement by providing full sensory details. Utilize literary tools to perfect your paper such as personification, similes, and metaphors.

Write an outline

Once you get the senses right, you can proceed to the next step, which is creating a descriptive essay outline. A descriptive essay outline is essential in writing a descriptive essay as it not only acts as a road map to your essay but also simplifies the writing process. Additionally, it helps to show how the structure of your paper ought to appear. A descriptive essay outline constitutes three main components: the introduction body, and conclusion.

Develop a strong hook which will capture the attention of your audience. They need to be attracted to your paper by reading the introduction. Also, remember to include the thesis statement.
Writing a descriptive paragraph(s)is not easy if you do not have a thesis statement. This is because it is where you provide support or backup the thesis statement (shows the purpose of your essay). So, ensure you begin each paragraph with a topic sentence. Use transitional phrases to show the readers that your essay is continuous.
Conclude your paper with a summary of your main points. Restate your thesis statement.

Create a conclusion

The conclusion of your descriptive essay is fundamental as it shows the reader(s) that your article has come to an end. It needs to be strong, especially if you are trying to make a case in a subject as controversial as climate change.

So, when creating it, ensure you provide a summary of your key points. Restate your thesis statement. Also, remember not to include any new information which you have not mentioned in your paper.

If you do not know how to structure a descriptive essay, follow the format above or have a look at some of the descriptive essay examples written by other students or professionals.

Polish and finish

You can begin writing your essay now that you have a guiding map (outline) you can use. After writing your paper, ensure you take a break then resume to revise it. Go through it and eliminate all the mistakes you may have made during the writing process. Polish it in a way that ensures you have met all the writing instructions and requirements.

Writing a Great Essay on Climate Change Doesn’t Have to Be Overwhelming

Climate change is a complicated topic . Fortunately, writing an essay on climate change doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Writing a descriptive essay on any environmental topic is not hard as long as you know the purpose it seeks to serve. The tips listed above along with someone from WriteMyPaperHub will help you learn how to write a descriptive essay on global warming.

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Steps To Follow While Writing An Essay On Climate Change

Table of Contents

Climate change is the most essential issue of our generation; we are the first to witness its early signs and the last who have a chance of stopping them from happening.

Living in a bubble of denial can only get us this far; the planet which is our home is already a scene for melting glaciers, raising floods, extinction of species… the list goes on and on. Spreading awareness on matters of climate change through any means available, including as seemingly trivial form as writing a school essay, cannot be underestimated.

Follow the guidelines suggested in the paragraphs below to learn how to create a perfect essay that will get you an appraisal of your teacher.

Essay on climate changes: how to write?

If you really want to make your teacher gasp while they are reading your work, there are three vital things to pay attention to .

First of all, read the topic carefully and understand it’s specific, i.e., what is expected from you.

For instance, if it is the role of individuals in helping prevent climate change, you should not focus so much on the global problems, but speak about how small changes all of us can introduce in our routines will eventually have a positive environmental effect.

Secondly, determine your personal take on the problem . Search for materials on your subject using keywords, and pile up the evidence that supports your point of view.

Finally, write a conclusion. Make sure that the conclusion you make reflects the viewpoints you have been expressing all throughout your essay.

Below you will find a more detailed breakdown of tasks you will have to accomplish to complete writing an essay on climate changes that is worthy of a top mark.

Check if it is an argumentative essay on climate change or more of a speculative one? Arrange your writing accordingly.

Craft the outline and don’t go off-topic.
Search for keywords .
Make a plan .
Avoid the most common mistakes from the start.
Write an introduction thinking about what you will write later.
Develop your ideas according to the outline .
Make a conclusion which is consistent with what you’ve written in the main paragraphs.
Proofread the draft , correct mistakes and print out the hard copy. All set!

One of the most focal of your writing will be factual evidence. When writing on climate change, resort to providing data shared by international organizations like IPCC , WWF , or World Bank .

It is undeniable that among the main causes of climate change, unfortunately, there are oil and fossil fuels that are the basis of the whole economy and still invaluable sources of energy.

Although everyone knows that oil resources are polluting and that it would be much more useful and environmentally sustainable to rely on renewable energies such as wind and solar energies and electricity, the power of the world seem not to notice or pretend not to see for don’t go against your own interests.

The time has come to react and raise awareness of the use of renewable energy sources.

In addition to the causes already mentioned, we must consider the increase in the carbon dioxide air that traps heat in our atmosphere, thus increasing the temperatures with the consequent of the Arctic glaciers melting.

WWF reported that in 2016, the recorded data was quite worrying with a constant increase in temperatures and a 40% decrease in Arctic marine glaciers.

Topics for essay on global warming and climate change

If you do not have any specific topic to write on, consider yourself lucky. You can pick one that you are passionate about – and in fact, this is what you should do! If we think back to the very definition of essay, it is nothing more than a few paragraphs of expressing one’s personal attitude and viewpoints on a certain subject. Surely, you need to pick a subject that you are opinionated about to deliver a readable piece of writing!

Another point to consider is quaintness and topicality factors. You don’t want to end up writing on a subject that the rest of your class will, and in all honesty, that has zero novelty to it.

Even if it is something as trivial as the greenhouse effect, add an unexpected perspective to it: the greenhouse effect from the standpoint of the feline population of Montenegro. Sounds lunatic, but you get the drift.

Do not worry, below you will find the list of legitimately coverable topics to choose from:

The last generation able to fight the global crisis.
Climate change: top 10 unexpected causes.
Climate changes. Things anyone can do.
Climate changes concern everyone. Is it true?
The Mauna Loa volcano: climate change is here.
Water pollution and coastal cities: what needs to be done?
Is there global warming if it’s still cold?
The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
Celebrity activists and climate changes.
Individual responsibility for the environment.
How the loss of biodiversity is the biggest loss for humanity.
Ways to fight global warming at home.
Sustainable living as a way of fighting climate change.
Climate change fighting countries to look up to.
Industrial responsibility and climate change.
What future will be like if we fail to make an environmental stand?
Discovering water on Mars: a new planet to live on?
Climate change effects on poor countries.
Nuclear power laws and climate change.
Is it true that climate change is caused by man?

Mistakes to avoid when writing an essay on climate change

When composing your essay, you must avoid the following (quite common!) mistakes:

Clichés – no one wants to read universal truths presented as relevant discoveries.
Repeating an idea already expressed – don’t waste your readers’ time .
Making an accumulation of ideas that are not connected and that do not follow one another; structure your ideas logically .
Being contradictive (check consistency).
Using bad or tired collocations .
Using lackluster adjectives like “good”/”bad”. Instead, think of more eye-catching synonyms.

Structure your essay in a logical way : introduce your thesis, develop your ideas in at least 2 parts that contain several paragraphs, and draw a conclusion.

Bottom line

Writing an essay on global warming and climate change is essentially reflecting on the inevitable consequence of the irresponsible behavior of people inhabiting the planet. Outside of big-scale thinking, there is something each of us can do, and by shaping minds the right way, essential change can be done daily.

Each of us can act to protect the environment, reducing the use of plastic, recycling, buying food with as little packaging as possible, or turning off water and light when not in use. Every little help, even a short essay on climate change can help make a difference.

Can’t wait to save the planet? Do it, while we write your essay. Easy order, complete confidentiality, timely delivery. Click the button to learn more!

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Open Access

The physical science basis of climate change empowering transformations, insights from the IPCC AR6 for a climate research agenda grounded in ethics

Roles Writing – original draft

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Institut Pierre Simon Laplace / Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (UMR8212), CEA Saclay, Université Paris Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

Valérie Masson-Delmotte

Published: August 5, 2024

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000451
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Citation: Masson-Delmotte V (2024) The physical science basis of climate change empowering transformations, insights from the IPCC AR6 for a climate research agenda grounded in ethics. PLOS Clim 3(8): e0000451. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000451

Editor: Jamie Males, PLOS Climate, UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND

Copyright: © 2024 Valérie Masson-Delmotte. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

This manuscript builds upon a keynote presentation invited at the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Open Science Conference in October 2023 [ 1 ], at the start of the IPCC 7 th Assessment Cycle (AR7).

A fast changing climate and a fast shrinking remaining carbon budget calling for reactivity

As climate scientists, we operate in a changing context. At the start of the IPCC AR6, in 2015, there were major advances in international cooperation towards sustainability, leading to the implementation of several new frameworks, including the UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, Sustainable Development Goals, New Urban Agenda and the Paris Agreement [ 2 ].

Within the AR6 cycle, a strong emphasis was placed on the interplay between climate change, ecosystems and biodiversity with, for the first time, a joint workshop between IPCC and IPBES [ 3 ], and the implementation in 2022 of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework.

In 2023, the AR6 IPCC Synthesis Report [ 4 ] emphasized that the pace and scale of current climate action is not sufficient to limit the escalation of climate-related risks, with a rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to enable climate resilient development, and the key role of sharing knowledges to support transformative changes.

With a fast changing climate ( Fig 1 ), regular updates of the state of climate are critical to inform society–more frequently than IPCC reports, with AR7 outcomes expected by 2028. Such efforts have already been implemented for the global carbon budget [ 5 ] and the annual state of climate [ 6 ] and extreme events [ 7 , 8 ]. Grounded in updates in observational datasets and the same methodologies underpinning the AR6 WGI report [ 9 ], a new coordinated effort provides annual updates to key indicators of the state of global climate, showing changes in radiative forcing, Earth’s energy imbalance, and human-caused global warming occurring at an increasing pace [ 10 ]. Such annual updates to attributable global and regional warming now open the possibility of annual updates to observationally-constrained global and regional projections [ 11 , 12 ].

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000451.g001

The remaining carbon budget from 2023 onwards compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C has been reduced by a factor of two compared to its IPCC 2021 estimate [ 9 ], shrinking to around 250 GtCO2—expected to be exhausted within around 6 years at the current rate of emissions [ 13 ], thus inexorably leading to exceed this 1.5°C level of warming within a decade. Understanding the increased rate of the Earth’s energy imbalance [ 14 ] also calls for updates in estimates of aerosol forcings, climate feedbacks [ 15 ], and carbon cycle consequences of ecosystem degradation [ 5 ].

Efforts are also needed to provide regular updates to committed changes from delayed responses of glaciers [ 16 ], ice sheets and the deep ocean, and unavoidable sea-level rise [ 17 ], and, when onsets can be unequivocally detected, implications of dynamical instabilities in specific Antarctic sectors [ 18 ].

Every further increment of global warming brings us further outside of the range of the state of climate of the past recent thousands of years. Systematic approaches to update IPCC assessments of ongoing and projected changes grounded in multiple lines of evidence, including insights from past climates, are also needed [ 19 ]. New evidence suggests that the current atmospheric CO 2 concentration is unprecedented in not just the last 3 but the last 14 million years [ 20 ]. Recently, new methods have allowed to combine paleoclimate evidence with advanced understanding of climate pattern effects, further narrowing the upper bound of equilibrium climate sensitivity [ 21 ].

A major expectation for climate science is making sense of observations, compared to earlier projections [ 22 ]. So far, such comparisons with various projections are available based on volunteer individual updates on several science-related blogs [ 23 – 25 ]. Regular updates are needed to understand whether recent observed changes are consistent with the current understanding and modelling of forcings, internal variability and feedbacks, or whether exceptional events do challenge current understanding [ 26 , 27 ]. By 2023 –the warmest year on instrumental records, observational datasets show that global surface temperature anomalies have increasingly frequently reached or exceeded 1.5°C above 1850–1900 at the monthly scale, and for the first time close to this level for an annual average [ 28 ]. The likelihood of such occurrences will increase with the level of global warming, and is expected to occur every second year by the early 2030s, when such a level of global warming is expected to be reached and exceeded. With natural variability modulating human-driven trends, climate science communication can be challenging–navigating between perceptions of slowdowns and surges [ 23 ]. Shared tools are needed to place recent observations within the spread of earlier IPCC constrained projections, and to use attribution outcomes to constrain future global and regional projections [ 29 , 30 ].

A recent example highlighting the urgent need for such analyses is the sharp decrease in Antarctic sea-ice extent, plausibly a regime shift [ 31 ] related to the Southern Ocean heat uptake [ 32 ], and with major implications for confidence in future sea-ice projections [ 33 ] and risks of irreversible loss of related ecosystems and unique biodiversity [ 34 ].

Attribution studies and climate justice

With human-caused climate change exacerbating extreme events, leading to widespread impacts, in every region, we also need regular updates regarding observed regional changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme events, and event attribution outcomes. The “hexagon” figures in recent IPCC reports [ 4 , 9 ] highlighted knowledge gaps due to limited data availability and lack of studies in regions of high vulnerability—a matter of climate justice and support to the loss and damage mechanism [ 35 , 36 ]. Knowledge gaps also arise from the length of instrumental records, which could be complemented by paleoclimate evidence, and mismatches between simulations and observations, for instance with European hot extremes increasing twice faster than simulated during recent decades [ 37 ].

Since the IPCC 2021 assessment, rapid attribution studies performed within the World Weather Attribution project expand the knowledge basis for high-impact extreme heat, extreme droughts worsened by increased evaporation in a warmer climate, fire weather and extreme rainfall events across multiple regions. However, a framework to bring together studies using different lines of evidence and different attribution methodologies is missing to allow for regular robust updates and their expansion to ocean, cryosphere, compound and cascading extremes [ 38 ].

Facing the massive production of peer-review publications in climate science

With a growing production of climate knowledge worldwide, the number of peer-review papers with the keyword “climate change” published every year has doubled within the time span of the IPCC AR6, from around 30,000 per year in 2015 to more than 60,000 per year in 2022 [ 39 ], with around 2/3 arising from ocean and atmosphere sciences. While peer review is a key filter for scientific quality, any manuscript currently can currently be published in ever-increasing predatory journals or non-reviewed archive services, independently of its quality. Such challenges are strengthened by recent surges in AI-based tools and new challenges for science integrity [ 40 , 41 ]. This is overwhelming, and calls our community to sharpen ethics of publications, avoid predatory journals, strengthen open science, open data and open code practices—including transparency related to reviewers, reviews, and accessibility of publications, and explore new publishing models and state of knowledge assessment practices. In this context, regionally coordinated activities are needed to digest and distillate new evidence, including grey literature from climate services, so as to consolidate a robust regionally-relevant evidence basis. Topical review groups are needed to help make sense of new or conflicting evidence and support the maturation of climate science, placing new lines of evidence within a common picture of the current state of knowledge.

This is also a major communication challenge, exacerbated by press releases and sensationalist news headlines exaggerating the alarming or reassuring findings of any single study, which is confusing for the general public and policy makers. This confusing communication towards the general public has been spectacular in 2023 and 2024 on issues associated with deep uncertainty, such as new studies focused on potential instability of sectors of the Antarctic ice sheet [ 42 , 43 ], or conditions for abrupt changes of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation [ 44 – 46 ].

Building on the experience of early career scientists group reviews of AR6 IPCC reports [ 47 ], more initiatives are needed to train young scientists from around the world to update the assessment of the state of knowledge on topics that they themselves find exciting, so that a new generation of scientists will be better prepared to sharpen the next IPCC reports, and communicate the updated state of knowledge to the general public.

A changing context at the start of the IPCC AR7—A critical decade

The world in which we operate, as climate scientists, is changing fast ( Fig 2 ). With technological innovation, energy efficiency, and reduced rates of global deforestation, current policies have avoided 4 to 8 billion tons CO 2 -eq emissions globally, and made very high future warming pathways less plausible [ 4 ]. An optimistic estimate of COP28 outcomes, if all pledges were to be kept, implies global greenhouse gas emissions to decrease from around 10% by 2030, far less than in pathways allowing to limit global warming well below 2°C or close to 1.5°C [ 48 ].

Panel from the IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report [ 4 ]. Observed (1900–2020) and projected (2021–2100) changes in global surface temperature (relative to 1850–1900), which are linked to changes in climate conditions and impacts, illustrate how the climate has already changed and will change along the lifespan of three representative generations born in 1950, 1980 and 2020 (including generations of climate scientists). Future projections (2021–2100) of changes in global surface temperature are shown for very low (SSP1-1.9), low (SSP1-2.6), intermediate (SSP2-4.5), high (SSP3-7.0) and very high (SSP5-8.5) GHG emissions scenarios. Very high emission scenarios are considered less plausible due to current policies (closest to SSP2-4.5) and low carbon technological advances [ 4 ]. Changes in annual global surface temperatures are presented as ‘climate stripes’, with future projections showing the human-caused long-term trends and continuing modulation by natural variability (represented here using observed levels of past natural variability).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000451.g002

Inadequate progress towards sustainable development goals, growing food insecurity, and backlashes to climate and environmental policies are widespread. The slow pace of climate action, societal tensions, the escalation of climate change impacts and losses and damages fuel increasing climate anxiety–also affecting the mental health of climate scientists. COVID19 pandemic lockdowns added stress to observing systems which remain challenging to maintain. New obstacles to scientific collaborations, for instance in the Arctic, have emerged following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Inflation, growing inequalities, nationalism and populism, declining social coherency fuel political polarization, with populist parties embedding the defamation of scientific expertise, denial of both climate science and the urgency of transformative action within their core values. With social networks, the spread of disinformation and the weight given to opinions above evidence erodes the overall trust in science.

How to best operate, as a scientific community, in that fast changing context? This calls for careful attention to the equity and plausibility of scenarios underpinning future climate projections [ 49 ], with due attention to biogeophysical constraints from a warming world–for instance, hard limits for sustainable use of groundwater [ 50 ] and forest biomass [ 51 ] at regional scales. Reactivity is important in order to develop timely new robust knowledge exploring the climate change and climate action implications of e.g. lockdowns from a pandemic, stratospheric water vapor injection from a volcanic eruption, regulations for shipping fuel sulfur content, or armed conflicts. IPCC could learn from the more flexible IPBES processes allowing to convey timely interdisciplinary workshops and provide relevant peer-review workshop reports [ 3 , 52 ].

Effective climate action also requires actionable knowledge, including methods to assess the effects of mitigation and adaptation measures, guidance to avoid maladaptation and malmitigation, knowledge to support sustainable use of ocean, land, water, and sustainable cities–including how to maximize climate and air quality benefits. Climate information needs to be specifically coproduced with those most vulnerable, in climate change hotpots [ 53 ].

The framework of climatic impact-drivers developed in the IPCC AR6 WGI report was not sufficiently informed by ecosystem and biodiversity stewardship needs [ 54 ] calling for robust assessments of methodologies to develop relevant climate information (e.g. climate velocity) at required scales.

The multiple regional consequences of global sea-level rise are emerging, including chronic high-tide flooding [ 55 ], extreme sea level events, salinization and coastal erosion–with needs for attribution and confidence in projections of at the scale of settlements. New ethical questions arise from research needs from planned relocation.

Climate research for a 1.5°C warmer world

Human-driven trends resulting from future emissions are expected to lead to 20-year average global warming overshooting a level of 1.5°C within around a decade [ 4 ]. Informing risk management and adaptation strategies calls for advancing the knowledge basis on the full possible severity of direct consequences, including the low-likelihood, high-risk plausible extreme events and unprecedented combinations of events, accounting for the worse possible combinations of human-caused trends and internal climate variability [ 56 ] and long-term outcomes [ 57 ]. Better understanding what would be the possible irreversible consequences of various intensities and durations of overshoot are critical to inform global responses, including for committed glacier loss, potential tipping points, sea-level rise, ecosystem degradation and biodiversity losses [ 58 ].

Theoretically, returning from a temporary overshoot is conditional on sharp emission reductions, reaching net zero CO 2 emissions with limited cumulative CO 2 emissions, followed by the ability to sustain various magnitudes of net negative CO 2 emissions. Knowledge advances are needed to narrow uncertainties from the response of carbon cycle feedbacks, including biological processes resulting from ecosystem disturbances and degradations, which could also be triggered by natural variability within a 1.5°C warmer world. While theoretical studies using simplified emulators rely on large-scale carbon dioxide removal to return to 1.5°C after a temporary overshoot, the plausibility of such pathways lacks a robust evidence basis [ 59 ] on feasibility, costs, permanency and risks, accounting for their demands for low-carbon energy, water, biomass and land–in particular when massive amounts of low-carbon energy production are primarily needed to phase-out fossil fuels.

Following COP28, the new resources allocated to loss and damage remain small (around 0.7 billion $) compared to the needs estimated to reach 100 to 400 billion $ per year by 2023. This mismatch highlights the rejection of loss and damage liability by the largest historical and current emitters of greenhouse gases. The framing of solar radiation modification research cannot be restricted to the uncertainties regarding potential interventions and the modelled response of the climate system. Such approaches call for embedding the myriad of ethical questions grounded in its purpose, including the implications of altering the global environment rather than modifying our practices to preserve it, and risk of multi-century legacies of deployment [ 60 ]. Ethical questions also arise from the embedded power relations, the values and interests of billionaire philanthropies who chose to fund specifically these research activities [ 61 ], at the expense of other climate research directions, and the possible conflicts of interests which encompass space agencies and climate scientists themselves. Consideration of solar radiation modification also needs to explore governance challenges [ 62 , 63 ], including mechanisms of liability for attributable unintended outcomes.

Projecting climate sciences towards mid-century: Different possible worlds

Today’s PhD students will be my age by 2050, when the 10 th IPCC assessment cycle would be due. The expectations from climate research would be very different in different 2050 worlds [ 64 ]. At the pace of current policies, intermediate or high emissions pathways would lead to exceed a level of 2°C of global warming by 2050 –uncharted territory for the past millions of years. In a fragmented, uncoordinated world, climate scientists would be monitoring novel climate conditions, and learn from Earth system responses to increasing emissions, loss of ecosystems and nature’s contributions to people, cascading impacts, eroding food, water, habitat security, public health, leading to more poverty traps. What would be the science-society relationships with growing public unrest and political destabilization from climate disruptions? Facing complex crises, governments and funding agencies would search for rapidly conceived mitigation plans, without long-term planning, testing, and careful attention to the multiple dimensions of sustainability, with the risk of increased pressures on ecosystems, water and food security–and with fewer ecosystem-based and water-related adaptation response options available.

If different choices are made in the coming decades, the world by 2050 could be on track towards carbon neutrality, and climate science assessments could be monitoring the emergence of climate stabilization–learning from the success story of ozone assessment reports. Advances in climate sciences would support the management of intermittent renewable energy production and energy storage, inform transformative, proactive adaptation measures, support to poor and disadvantaged communities struggling with the growing burden of climate impacts. Transdisciplinary research practices would expand to understand the implications of species movements and novel ecosystems, and inform ecosystem stewardship and durable land and ocean carbon storage. Regular revisions of sea level projections following the detection of onset of ice sheet instability processes would be strongly embedded in deliberations and choices related to sea level rise and coastal management, including planned relocations. By 2050, in such a world successfully embedding climate action, climate research activities, encompassing monitoring networks, remote sensing, field studies, laboratory analyses and modelling activities would be carbon neutral. This also calls for leadership of climate scientists on reducing now our own carbon footprint at the pace and scale consistent with our own knowledge.

Multiple expectations for the climate research community

WCRP plays a key role to tackle knowledge gaps, including convection and clouds, ocean and atmospheric dynamics, climate variability, Earth system feedbacks and thresholds in a warming world.

The vulnerability of land carbon to climate change and its role for mitigation call for improvements in inventories and processes involving soil organic matter, plant hydraulics and mortality, competition dynamics and disturbance processes–with stronger integration of biological and ecological sciences within climate sciences. Similarly, advances in land surface processes, including plant physiological changes, as well as groundwater recharge and land use and water management changes, are needed to improve future projections of aridity and drought.

Advances in fundamental climate research are the backbone to strengthen the knowledge basis required to address the myriad of expectations from climate sciences: knowledge relevant for mitigation, including air quality, pressure on land and litigation, and knowledge relevant for loss and damage, risk management, humanitarian responses, ecosystem and biodiversity stewardship, sectoral and regional adaptation and climate services.

New pathways have to be designed to offer career paths to scientists who are funded first because of urgent societal needs so that they also have opportunities to contribute to curiosity-driven, frontier research. Developing actionable knowledge, with salience, legitimacy and credibility, calls for in an in-depth understanding of the diverse values, perspectives, power relations and inequalities. Ethics, equity, climate justice and intra-species justice provide strong frameworks to advance the fitness and usefulness of climate information in under-studied regions, and explore the unintended consequences and potential harms emerging from misuses of climate information.

Multiple expectations encompass advancing tools and methods to provide more accurate information on complex and cascading risk which will be the hardest to manage and undermine sustainability aspirations in the near-term, as well as long-term outcomes, over multiple centuries beyond 2100, with due attention to post-forcing recovery and irreversibility, including habitats, ecosystems and biodiversity, and tipping points. Efforts are required towards the maturation of the framework of analysis of e.g. ice sheet instabilities, irreversible retreat, and their implications for pace and magnitude of sea-level rise over decades to centuries. Such a collective framework allowing to make sense of scientific advances and sometimes conflicting evidence arising from different methods is needed to better communicate the evolving state of knowledge with society [ 57 ].

Which roles for climate scientists

In a fragmented world, where growing South-North tensions challenge multilateralism, science diplomacy requires strong science-policy institutions and scientific advisory bodies at all governance scales. Institutional approaches play a key role to advance climate knowledge for effective and well-informed decision-making processes.

This also calls for climate scientists to better understand the diverse values and motivations [ 65 ], learning from social sciences and humanities [ 66 ], understanding powerful economic, political interests, and power relations [ 61 ], and to implement structured dialogues with the private sector so that corporate responsible approaches are grounded in the best available science [ 67 ]. While corporate responsibility approaches are currently focused on greenhouse gas emissions and transition risks, new knowledge is also required to advance corporate adaptation and resilience strategies, including their supply chains. For instance, the AR6 assessment remained limited for the implications of shifting agroclimate zones for important fiber and tree crops.

Making science meaningful for all is a challenge for effective climate science communication and knowledge co-production processes. Conversational artificial intelligence tools provide new opportunities make the outcomes of scientific assessments more broadly accessible, in plain language and in multiple languages, with the potential for more interactive engagement approaches [ 68 ]. IPCC could run an expert meeting on artificial intelligence tools and IPCC assessments, with multiple possible applications to support authors of assessment reports, ranging from systematic literature surveys to translations across multiple languages. Empowerment arises from knowledge, calling for democratization of climate science, with growing experiences from eg. citizen assembly approaches, and the involvement of climate scientists within deliberation processes. Science institutions need to encompass ethics of engagement within academic freedom and responsibility [ 69 ], together with resources and support for engaged climate scientists, and valuing their public engagement within their career paths.

While climate literacy is not sufficient to trigger climate action—as illustrated by recurrent discourses of climate delay within the scientific community [ 70 ], it is necessary. Trustworthy updated pedagogic classroom resources which can be used by teachers are needed for initial and continued education at all education levels [ 71 ]. Climate scientists also have a role to play to overcome current gaps related to the strengthening, monitoring and evaluation of climate literacy.

Evolution of climate science practices within societal transformations

Our changing context also calls for transformation of climate research, strengthening its ethics of research and practice, open science approaches, inclusivity and openness to multiple perspectives and novel ideas. Early and mid-career scientists at the WCRP 2023 Open Science Conference were asking for their voices to be better heard, and be better supported, in terms of professional well-being and mental health.

In a world where climate scientists can still be censored in their public expression, curiosity-driven research, academic freedom, and freedom of communication and engagement needs to be strongly supported.

Finally, climate research needs leadership to reduce the carbon and environmental footprints of research activities, building on shared tools, methodologies [ 72 ], collective deliberation processes to make the smartest use of travel [ 73 ], field and lab work, and computing resources [ 74 , 75 ], changing collective academic norms, and strengthening recognition for environmental engagement from funding agencies and for scientific careers.

These are key ingredients for stimulating, meaningful, attractive, rewarding climate research—critical to motivate brilliant minds to advance knowledge.

Acknowledgments

I thank the World Climate Research Programme for inviting me to give this keynote presentation at the Kigali Open Science Conference in October 2023, in Rwanda. I thank members of the IPCC WGI AR6 Bureau and its Technical Support Unit, in particular Anna Pirani and Sarah Connors, for multiple stimulating exchanges regarding climate science and science-society interplays. Special thanks to Catherine Michaut from the International Support Unit of Institut Pierre Simon Laplace for writing the transcript of my keynote lecture, forming the basis of this article. I also thank Yangyang Xu and two other anonymous reviewers for their constructive review comments.

1. World Climate Research Programme, Open Science Conference, Kigali, Rwanda, 2023. Available: https://wcrp-osc2023.org/ .
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Climate change argumentation.

Carmen Vanderhoof, Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, Penn State

Carmen Vanderhoof is a doctoral candidate in Science Education at Penn State. Her research employs multimodal discourse analysis of elementary students engaged in a collaborative engineering design challenge in order to examine students’ decision-making practices. Prior to resuming graduate studies, she was a secondary science teacher and conducted molecular biology research.

Subject(s): Earth Science
Topic: Climate Change and Sustainability
Grade/Level: 9-12 (can be adapted to grades 6-8)
Objectives: Students will be able to write a scientific argument using evidence and reasoning to support claims. Students will also be able to reflect on the weaknesses in their own arguments in order to improve their argument and then respond to other arguments.
Suggested Time Allotment: 4-5 hours (extra time for extension)

This lesson is derived from Dr. Peter Buckland’s sustainability presentation for the Center for Global Studies . Dr. Peter Buckland, a Penn State alumnus, is a postdoctoral fellow for the Sustainability Institute. He has drawn together many resources for teaching about climate change, sustainability, and other environmental issues.

While there are many resources for teaching about climate change and sustainability, it may be tough to figure out where to start. There are massive amounts of data available to the general public and students need help searching for good sources of evidence. Prior to launching into a search, it would be worthwhile figuring out what the students already know about climate change, where they learned it, and how they feel about efforts to reduce our carbon footprint. There are many options for eliciting prior knowledge, including taking online quizzes, whole-class discussion, or drawing concept maps. For this initial step, it is important that students feel comfortable to share, without engaging in disagreements. The main idea is to increase students’ understanding about global warming, rather than focus on the potential controversial nature of this topic.

A major goal of this unit is to engage students in co-constructing evidence-based explanations through individual writing, sharing, re-writing, group discussion, and whole group reflection. The argumentation format presented here contains claims supported by evidence and reasoning (Claims Evidence Reasoning – CER). Argumentation in this sense is different from how the word “argument” is used in everyday language. Argumentation is a collaborative process towards an end goal, rather than a competition to win (Duschl & Osborne, 2002). Scientific argumentation is the process of negotiating and communicating findings through a series of claims supported by evidence from various sources along with a rationale or reasoning linking the claim with the evidence. For students, making the link between claim and evidence can be the most difficult part of the process.

Where does the evidence come from?

Evidence and data are often used synonymously, but there is a difference. Evidence is “the representation of data in a form that undergirds an argument that works to answer the original question” (Hand et al., 2009, p. 129). This explains why even though scientists may use the same data to draw explanations from, the final product may take different forms depending on which parts of the data were used and how. For example, in a court case experts from opposing sides may use the same data to persuade the jury to reach different conclusions. Another way to explain this distinction to students is “the story built from the data that leads to a claim is the evidence” (Hand et al., 2009, p. 129). Evidence can come from many sources – results from controlled experiments, measurements, books, articles, websites, personal observations, etc. It is important to discuss with students the issue of the source’s reliability and accuracy. When using data freely available online, ask yourself: Who conducted the study? Who funded the research? Where was it published or presented?

What is a claim and how do I find it?

A scientific claim is a statement that answers a question or an inference based on information, rather than just personal opinion.

How can I connect the claim(s) with the evidence?

That’s where the justification or reasoning comes in. This portion of the argument explains why the evidence is relevant to the claim or how the evidence supports the claim.

Implementation

Learning context and connecting to state standards.

This interdisciplinary unit can be used in an earth science class or adapted to environmental science, chemistry, or physics. The key to adapting the lesson is guiding students to sources of data that fit the discipline they are studying.

For earth science , students can explain the difference between climate and weather, describe the factors associated with global climate change, and explore a variety of data sources to draw their evidence from. Pennsylvania Academic Standards for earth and space science (secondary): 3.3.12.A1, 3.3.12.A6, 3.3.10.A7.

For environmental science , students can analyze the costs and benefits of pollution control measures. Pennsylvania Academic Standards for Environment and Ecology (secondary): 4.5.12.C.

For chemistry and physics , students can explain the function of greenhouse gases, construct a model of the greenhouse effect, and model energy flow through the atmosphere. Pennsylvania Academic Standards for Physical Sciences (secondary): 3.2.10.B6.

New Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Connections

Human impacts and global climate change are directly addressed in the NGSS. Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI): HS-ESS3-3, HS-ESS3-4, HS-ESS3-5, HS-ESS3-6.

Lesson 1: Introduction to climate change

What are greenhouse gases and the greenhouse effect? (sample answer: greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane contribute to overall heating of the atmosphere; these gases trap heat just like the glass in a greenhouse or in a car)
What is the difference between weather and climate? (sample answer: weather is the daily temperature and precipitation measurements, while climate is a much longer pattern over multiple years)

Drawing of the greenhouse effect – as individuals or in pairs, have students look up the greenhouse effect and draw a diagram to represent it; share out with the class

Optional: figure out students’ beliefs about global warming using the Yale Six Americas Survey (students answer a series of questions and at the end they are given one of the following categories: alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful, dismissive).

Lesson 2: Searching for and evaluating evidence

Compare different data sources and assess their credibility
Temperature
Precipitation
Storm surge
Ask the students to think about what types of claims they can make about climate change using the data they found (Sample claims: human activity is causing global warming or sea-level rise in the next fifty years will affect coastal cities like Amsterdam, Hong Kong, or New Orleans).

Lesson 3: Writing an argument using evidence

Claim – an inference or a statement that answers a question
Evidence – an outside source of information that supports the claim, often drawn from selected data
Reasoning – the justification/support for the claim; what connects the evidence with the claim
Extending arguments – have students exchange papers and notice the strengths of the other arguments they are reading (can do multiple cycles of reading); ask students to go back to their original argument and expand it with more evidence and/or more justification for why the evidence supports the claim
Anticipate Rebuttals – ask students to think and write about any weaknesses in their own argument

Lesson 4: Argumentation discussion

rebuttal – challenges a component of someone’s argument – for example, a challenge to the evidence used in the original argument
counterargument – a whole new argument that challenges the original argument
respect group members and their ideas
wait for group members to finish their turns before speaking
be mindful of your own contributions to the discussion (try not to take over the whole discussion so others can contribute too; conversely, if you didn’t already talk, find a way to bring in a new argument, expand on an existing argument, or challenge another argument)
Debate/discussion – In table groups have students share their arguments and practice rebuttals and counterarguments
Whole-group reflection – ask students to share key points from their discussion

Lesson 5: Argumentation in action case study

Mumbai, india case study.

Rishi is a thirteen year old boy who attends the Gayak Rafi Nagar Urdu Municipal school in Mumbai. There is a massive landfill called Deonar right across from his school. Every day 4,000 tons of waste are piled on top of the existing garbage spanning 132 hectares (roughly half a square mile). Rishi ventures out to the landfill after school to look for materials that he can later trade for a little bit of extra money to help his family. He feels lucky that he gets to go to school during the day; others are not so lucky. One of his friends, Aamir, had to stop going to school and work full time after his dad got injured. They often meet to chat while they dig through the garbage with sticks. Occasionally, they find books in okay shape, which aren’t worth anything in trade, but to them they are valuable.

One day Rishi was out to the market with his mom and saw the sky darken with a heavy smoke that blocked out the sun. They both hurried home and found out there was a state of emergency and the schools closed for two days. It took many days to put out the fire at Deonar. He heard his dad say that the fire was so bad that it could be seen from space. He wonders what it would be like to see Mumbai from up there. Some days he wishes the government would close down Deonar and clean it up. Other days he wonders what would happen to all the people that depend on it to live if the city shuts down Deonar.

Mumbai is one of the coastal cities that are considered vulnerable with increasing global temperature and sea level rise. The urban poor are most affected by climate change. Their shelter could be wiped out by a tropical storm and rebuilding would be very difficult.

Write a letter to a public official who may be able to influence policy in Mumbai.

What would you recommend they do? Should they close Deonar? What can they do to reduce air pollution in the city and prepare for possible storms? Remember to use evidence in your argument.

If students want to read the articles that inspired the case study direct them to: http://unhabitat.org/urban-themes/climate-change/

http://www.bloomberg.com/slideshow/2012-07-06/top-20-cities-with-billions-at-risk-from-climate-change.html#slide16

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-26/smelly-dumps-drive-away-affordable-homes-in-land-starved-mumbai

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/asia/mumbai-giant-garbage-dump-fire/

Resources:

Lines of Evidence video from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/videos-multimedia/climate-change-lines-of-evidence-videos/
Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN)
Climate maps from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Sources of data from NASA
Explore the original source of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS) study

Differentiated Instruction

For visual learners – use diagrams, encourage students to map out their arguments prior to writing them
For auditory learners – use the lines of evidence video
For ESL students – provide them with a variety of greenhouse gases diagrams, allow for a more flexible argument format and focus on general meaning-making – ex. using arrows to connect their sources of evidence to claims
For advanced learners – ask them to search through larger data sets and make comparisons between data from different sources; they can also research environmental policies and why they stalled out in congress
For learners that need more support – print out excerpts from articles; pinpoint the main ideas to help with the research; help students connect their evidence with their claims; consider allowing students to work in pairs to accomplish the writing task

Argument write-up – check that students’ arguments contain claims supported by evidence and reasoning and that they thought about possible weaknesses in their own arguments.

Case study letter – check that students included evidence in their letter.

References:

Duschl, R. A., & Osborne, J. (2002). Supporting and promoting argumentation discourse in science education.

Hand, B. et al. (2009) Negotiating Science: The Critical Role of Argumentation in Student Inquiry. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

McNeill, K. L., & Krajcik, J. (2012). Claim, evidence and reasoning: Supporting grade 5 – 8 students in constructing scientiﬁc explanations. New York, NY: Pearson Allyn & Bacon.

Sawyer, R. K. (Ed.). (2014). The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/kids/basics/today/greenhouse-gases.html

http://unhabitat.org/urban-themes/climate-change/

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Published: 07 August 2024

Climate change debates

Nature Climate Change volume 14 , page 769 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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From a scientific standpoint, the causes of current ongoing climate change are well established. But in the context of rapid change, and real-world consequences, there is still room — and need — for scientific discussion in climate change fields.

Science, while ultimately grounded on the concept of knowledge, has always been a rich and often controversial stage for debate. While many scientific debates have been effectively ‘solved’ by further acquisition of knowledge (for example, heliocentrism versus geocentrism), others remain ripe for discussion. Examples include big questions about the origins of life on Earth, the potential for life outside this planet, or the ultimate impacts of artificial intelligence.

In the climate change field, the big questions have historically been those related to the recognition and acceptance of anthropogenic climate change. While the intensity of climate change debates has been partly fuelled by personal and political desires, the field remains wide open for debate even within more purely scientific realms due to its strong focus on future events. Past debates have now evolved into discussions on the details of what will happen when (and where), as well as weighing up the potential and pitfalls of different modes of action or inaction.

For example, in this issue of Nature Climate Change , we feature several pieces related to the complicated debate of how to best prioritize the conservation of species and their ecosystem functions in the context of rapid change, including discussion on the role of active human intervention. Among these, three independently written pieces on the conservation of corals highlight different, and sometimes opposing, priorities for future action.

In a Comment , Timothy McClanahan stresses that a focus on broad narratives of global coral loss, rather than acknowledging heterogeneities, caveats and uncertainty, will hinder management and muddy public communication. In their Comment , Robert Streit and colleagues argue for a minimal intervention approach in managing corals, questioning whether a human desire to ‘act heroically’ might hinder decision-making and be counterproductive. By contrast, Michael Webster and Daniel Schindler suggest in another Comment that ecological replacement — whereby corals lost to global change are replaced with species providing similar ecosystem functions — should be considered, urging that the potential risks of such actions are weighed against the risks of not intervening.

In a separate research Article , Silvio Schueler and colleagues focus on just one part of this ‘risk of inaction’ in a forest context, to demonstrate that while assisted migration (moving species and populations in response to climate change) can maintain or improve carbon stocks, failing to do so could result in large future carbon sink losses. Discussions related to active manipulation and movement of species have been historically more open when plants rather than animals (even relatively sessile animals, such as coral) are involved, particularly in artificial contexts such as crop or forestry plantations. Nonetheless, the wider debate remains in its infancy. In highlighting the potential, Schueler and colleagues call for more research to quantify the trade-offs between the opportunities and risks of implementation.

The topics here represent just a fraction of the ongoing debates in climate change circles. Recent examples range from questions related to the feasibility of large-scale carbon dioxide removal deployment ( Nat. Clim. Change 14 , 549; 2024 ), different opinions on geoengineering research and implementation , or altering the chemistry of the atmosphere to degrade methane ( Q. Li et al. Nat. Commun. 14 , 4045; 2023 ). Beyond that, many climate change debates have a common theme at their core — that regardless of the findings, any future possibilities should not be considered as an alternative for active mitigation.

Many of these are likely to be debated for some time to come as both science and time progress. We look forward to these debates, and hope that active discussion can help push science forward.

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Thesis Topics

The dissertation projects of the DK (in the first phase from 2014 to 2018) contribute to finding answers to three questions:

How do we understand and deal with climate change uncertainties in the natural and social sciences as well as from the perspective of normative theories?
What are critical thresholds of environmental, social and economic systems considering their vulnerability and how are these thresholds related to the normative threshold of sufficiency, that is, the threshold of well-being below which persons’ basic rights are infringed or violated?
What are scientifically sound, technologically and institutionally feasible, economically efficient, and ethically defensible and sustainable strategies to cope with climate change, particularly taking into account the problems of implementation in an environment characterized by uncertainties and thresholds?

Phd projects dealing with research question 1

student	dissertation project	supervisor co-supervisor
Lukas Brunner	Uncertainties in atmospheric circulation processes at mid-latitudes during recent climate change	Steiner Birk
Kian Mintz-Woo	Moral Uncertainty about Climate Change: What is it, Does it Matter, and How?	Meyer Steininger
Sungmin O	Uncertainties in measured extreme precipitation events	Foelsche Sass
Katharina Schröer	Exploring the causes of rare extreme precipitation events in the south-eastern Alpine forelands	Kirchengast Sass
Josef Innerkofler	Radio occultation excess phase processing with integrated uncertainty estimation and use for tracing climate change signals	Kirchengast Birk
Hallgeir Wilhelmsen	Climate change diagnostics from atmospheric observations and climate model data	Steiner Winiwarter

Phd projects dealing with research question 2

student	dissertation project	supervisor, co-supervisor
Sajeev Erangu Purath Mohankumar	Scenarios of low carbon society—sector agriculture	Winiwarter, Steininger
Johannes Haas	Impact of climate change on groundwater resources: Feedback mechanisms and thresholds unter drought conditions	Birk, Posch
Clara Hohmann	Uncertainties and thresholds of hydrological changes in south-eastern Austria in a warming climate	Kirchengast, Birk
Michael Kriechbaum	Social and economic uncertainties and thresholds for the diffusion and adoption of renewable energy systems	Posch, Bednar-Friedl
Florian Ortner	Integrative Perspectives of Natural Hazards in Alpine Valleys	Sass, Steininger
Silke Carmen Lutzmann	Thresholds in torrential systems of alpine watersheds	Sass, Foelsche
Eike Düvel	The Normative Significance of the Imposition of Risks of Rights Violations in the Context of Climate Change	Meyer, Baumgartner

Phd projects dealing with research question 3

student	dissertation project	supervisor, co-supervisor
Matthias Damert	Individual mobility as climate challenge—Climate change risks and corporate vulnerability in the automotive sector	Baumgartner, Bednar-Friedl
Javier Lopez Pról	Transformation to a Low Carbon Economy	Steininger, Posch
Yadira Mori-Clement	Coping with climate change: fair burden sharing among industrialized and developing countries	Bednar-Friedl, Meyer
Arijit Paul	Sustainable strategies of companies in energy intensive sectors to cope with climate change	Baumgartner, Meyer
Christian Unterberger	Thresholds and fat tail risks in public decision making about climate change	Steininger, Kirchengast
Daniel Petz	Sufficientarian Weighing of the Imposition of Risks of Rights Violations and Other Set-backs of Interest in the Context of Climate Change	Meyer, Winiwarter
Vincent Hess	Economic and Ethical Consequences of Natural Hazards in Alpine Valleys	Steininger, Sass
Philipp Babcicky	Private Adaptation to Climate Change: Explaining Adaptive Behaviour of Flood-prone Households	Posch, Steiner
Hannah Hennighausen	Understanding the effects of risk, uncertainty and externalities on decision-making in the context of climate change adaptation	Bednar-Friedl, Foelsche
Stefan Nabernegg	Instruments for GHG emission reductions: A macroeconomic evaluation of technological, regulative and behavioral policies	Bednar-Friedl, Baumgartner

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Analysis of wheat-yield prediction using machine learning models under climate change scenarios.

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Identifying the key factors influencing wheat production
Modeling and testing wheat-yield responses to rainfall and temperature variables using various methods such as boosting tree, ANNs, random forest regression, multiple linear regression, and ensemble models, based on observed yield and climatic data
Anticipating and analyzing the potential influence of climate change on wheat crop trends up to the year 2052.

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. research workflow, 2.2. study area, 2.3. observed data, 2.4. gcm data, 2.5. data processing, data splitting, 2.6. experimental setup, 3. machine learning algorithms, 3.1. multiple linear regression, 3.2. xgboost, 3.3. random forest regression, 3.4. artificial neural networks (anns) model, 3.5. ensemble model, 3.6. evaluation metrics.

Conduct a correlation analysis between climate factors and wheat yields and identify the climate variables most significantly correlated with wheat production through statistical hypothesis testing of relationships.
Apply various machine learning models (RF, MLR, boosting tree, MLP, PNN, GFF) to the historical climate and wheat-yield data to generate predictions and compare against actual historical yields.
Evaluate the various machine learning models using training performance metrics such as R 2 , R, nRMSE, MAE, MBE, and RMSE to identify the best performers.
To downscale coarse resolution GCM climate projections to local scales under three emission scenarios (SRA1B, SRB1, SRA2) using the XGboost statistical downscaling model.
Applying the best-performing machine learning model to project wheat yields over periods for three locations and emission scenarios using the downscaled generated climate variables data.

4.1. Importance of the Climate Parameters on Wheat Yield

4.2. selection of predictors and predicted variables, 4.3. performance metrics of different mla, 4.4. downscaling climate projections using the xgboost algorithm, 4.5. wheat-yield prediction over 2052, 5. comparison of the proposed method with existing techniques, 6. discussion.

More weather stations are needed across Pakistan to thoroughly examine nationwide climate-agriculture relationships at the district and provincial levels.
Developing and promoting wheat varieties that exhibit heat tolerance, drought resistance, and disease resilience is crucial. These climate-smart cultivars can withstand extreme temperatures and water scarcity, ensuring stable yields.
Early sowing and climate-informed planting dates help avoid extreme heat stress during grain filling. Adjusting planting windows based on weather forecasts improves yield outcomes.
Efficient irrigation systems, rainwater harvesting, and proper water scheduling are essential. Consistent water supply during critical growth stages enhances yield.
Mapping suitable crop habitats can aid precautionary measures and innovations to boost agricultural output and food security amid climate shifts.

7. Conclusions

Author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Click here to enlarge figure

Locations	Variables	Statistics
Locations	Variables	Average	Minimum	Maximum	Standard Deviation	SE	Skewness	CL
Okara	Rainfall	500.65	301.78	836.2	139.57	25.07	0.540	27.87
		32.48	30.83	33.83	0.818	0.147	0.2794	2.520
		21.00	19.50	22.25	0.618	0.11	0.132	2.946
	Yield	3.428	2.5006	3.904	0.416	0.074	−0.878	12.15
Sargodha	Rainfall	725.62	477.30	1131.7	173.52	31.165	0.511	23.91
		31.59	29.83	33.16	0.860	0.154	0.123	2.723
		20.59	18.25	21.91	0.965	0.173	−1.13	4.689
	Yield	2.613	2.194	2.994	0.259	0.046	−0.270	9.926
Multan	Rainfall	337.68	169.30	553.8	114.94	20.64	0.089	34.04
		33.02	31.33	35.00	1.019	0.183	0.3685	3.086
		21.74	20.08	23.41	0.902	0.162	−0.389	4.14
	Yield	2.822	1.996	3.647	0.456	0.0820	0.020	16.18
All sites	Rainfall	521.31	169.3	1131.7	214.59	22.25	0.550	41.16
		32.36	29.83	35.0	1.07	0.11	0.263	3.313
		21.11	18.25	23.41	0.96	0.099	−0.434	4.555
	Yield	2.954	1.99	3.904	0.517	0.0536	0.2281	17.50

Location	Variables		Covariance	SE	R	t (Value)	p (Value)	95% Confidence Level
								Lower	Upper
Okara	Rainfall	−0.0001	0.000	0.006	0.1842	−0.104	0.9179	−0.001	0.001
		−0.0629	0.010	0.101		−0.620	0.540	−0.271	0.145
		0.114	0.017	0.131		0.869	0.3921	0.155	0.383
Sargodha	Rainfall	0.0001	0.000	0.0003	0.7106	0.2646	0.793	−0.0004	0.0005
		0.084	0.002	0.0517		1.627	0.115	−0.021	0.190
		0.154	0.001	0.040		3.869	0.0006	0.072	0.236
Multan	Rainfall	0.0003	0.0000	0.0006	0.6976	0.5365	0.5960	−0.0008	0.0014
		0.1185	0.007	0.086		1.3698	0.1820	−0.058	0.2958
		0.2482	0.009	0.0965		2.5722	0.0159	0.050	0.446
All sites	Rainfall	0.000	0.000	0.0002	0.149	0.310	0.757	−0.000	0.001
		0.116	0.004	0.066		1.766	0.081	−0.015	0.248
		0.114	0.004	0.066		1.734	0.086	−0.071	0.246

Rank	Model	MAE	RMSE	nRMSE %	MBE	R
1	ANN(LR)	0.305	0.361	24.3	0.013	0.746	0.446
2	ANN(GFF)	0.220	0.301	19.2	−0.180	0.888	0.663
3	ANN(PNN)	0.422	0.466	28.4	−0.190	0.659	0.321
4	MLR	0.307	0.361	24.3	0.012	0.746	0.440
5	Boosting Tree	0.198	0.253	20.0	0.010	0.902	0.741
6	ANN(MLP)	0.230	0.266	17.0	−0.049	0.902	0.739
7	RFR	0.182	0.227	18.0	0.030	0.909	0.791
8	Ensemble	0.099	0.107	8.0	0.022	0.988	0.953

Locations/ Scenarios	Training				Testing				Validation
Locations/ Scenarios	RMSE	nRMSE %	MAE	R	RMSE	nRMSE %	MAE	R	RMSE	nRMSE %	MAE	R
Okara/B1
	0.244	0.90	0.102	0.979	0.248	0.90	0.113	0.970	0.210	0.63	0.200	0.970
	0.222	0.79	0.095	0.991	0.221	0.795	0.099	0.99	0.105	0.485	0.099	0.99
Rain	0.387	0.134	0.04	0.924	0.350	0.134	0.061	0.924	0.095	0.244	0.017	0.924
Multan/B1
	0.107	0.382	0.045	0.994	0.105	0.385	0.049	0.994	0.210	0.619	0.200	0.994
	0.303	1.08	0.134	0.908	0.304	1.09	0.148	0.985	0.105	0.462	0.099	0.985
Rain	0.387	0.159	0.025	0.923	0.358	0.159	0.030	0.923	0.067	0.228	0.016	0.920
Sargodha/B1
	0.197	0.732	0.086	0.989	0.197	0.733	0.086	0.989	0.210	0.658	0.200	0.989
	0.240	0.827	0.098	0.987	0.238	0.827	0.119	0.942	0.105	0.496	0.099	0.997
Rain	0.416	0.126	0.039	0.909	0.437	0.126	0.044	0.900	0.090	0.172	0.017	0.900
Okara/A2
	0.220	0.816	0.088	0.984	0.224	0.826	0.097	0.984	0.210	0.638	0.200	0.985
	0.247	0.884	0.103	0.985	0.246	0.884	0.107	0.986	0.105	0.486	0.090	0.985
Rain	0.123	0.042	0.019	0.993	0.119	0.043	0.028	0.99	0.083	0.211	0.011	0.99
Multan/A2
	0.257	0.918	0.107	0.973	0.254	0.918	0.117	0.975	0.210	0.619	0.200	0.976
	0.226	0.810	0.095	0.944	0.227	0.810	0.105	0.983	0.105	0.462	0.099	0.983
Rain	0.073	0.030	0.009	0.99	0.067	0.032	0.011	0.99	0.291	0.983	0.113	0.998
Sargodha/A2
	0.214	0.794	0.09	0.985	0.214	0.794	0.096	0.986	0.210	0.658	0.200	0.986
	0.239	0.825	0.096	0.988	0.237	0.845	0.116	0.988	0.105	0.496	0.099	0.988
Rain	0.101	0.030	0.020	0.996	0.106	0.030	0.023	0.996	0.069	0.120	0.011	0.997
Okara/A1B
	0.294	1.08	0.121	0.966	0.300	1.09	0.135	0.966	0.210	0.638	0.200	0.966
	0.233	0.834	0.105	0.989	0.232	0.835	0.110	0.980	0.105	0.485	0.099	0.989
Rain	0.285	0.099	0.028	0.958	0.258	0.099	0.042	0.958	0.146	0.372	0.034	0.959
Multan/A1B
	0.272	0.972	0.117	0.970	0.269	0.972	0.127	0.970	0.210	0.619	0.200	0.970
	0.254	0.907	0.109	0.983	0.255	0.907	0.119	0.983	0.105	0.462	0.099	0.983
Rain	0.349	0.144	0.026	0.937	0.324	0.144	0.031	0.937	0.105	0.356	0.031	0.937
Sargodha/A1B
	0.221	0.819	0.094	0.984	0.221	0.819	0.098	0.985	0.210	0.658	0.200	0.985
	0.369	1.27	0.156	0.953	0.367	1.274	0.189	0.953	0.105	0.49	0.099	0.954
Rain	0.411	0.124	0.070	0.917	0.43	0.124	0.081	0.917	0.069	0.119	0.009	0.918

Ref/Year	Data Type	Methodology	Factors		RMSE
[ ], 2019	Remote sensing data	SVM	Multiple variables, Yield	0.93	11.7%
[ ], 2020	Meteorological and remote sensing data	LSTM, CNN	Phenology variables (11) Climate variable (9) Yield	0.77	721 kg/ha
[ ], 2020	Satellite images climate data, soil maps Historical yield	AdaBoost model	Vegetation indices , , mean soil, 6 other features	0.86	0.51
[ ], 2021	Climate and geographical data	SVM	, , mean humidity, min-max WS, Yield	0.33	760kg/ha
[ ], 2021	Climate, satellite data soil data	LSTM	, precipitation, Yield soil depth/texture, pH.	0.83	561kg/ha
[ ], 2022	Multi source data	RFR	SVI, Climate data, Soil properties, Yield	0.74	758 kg/ha
[ ], 2022	Climate, GCM(CMIP6) data	Ensemble Model	Temperature Precipitation SPEI, Yield	0.705–0.918	0.358–0.390
[ ], 2023	Multi-sensor data	Ensemble model	, Sunshine duration Precipitation, Irrigation volume	0.692	0.916 t/ha
[ ], 2023	Climate data and Remote sensing, SPEI	SVM	, humidity, RH, WS 2-scenarios wheat	0.78	2.07
[ ], 2023	in-situ, meteorological, and remote sensing	MLR	Multi-variables, Yield	0.64	733.53 kg/ha
[ ], 2023	Multi-source data	XGBoost	LST, NDVI pH, 6 other features, Yield	0.89	0.3
			, ,

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Iqbal, N.; Shahzad, M.U.; Sherif, E.-S.M.; Tariq, M.U.; Rashid, J.; Le, T.-V.; Ghani, A. Analysis of Wheat-Yield Prediction Using Machine Learning Models under Climate Change Scenarios. Sustainability 2024 , 16 , 6976. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16166976

Iqbal N, Shahzad MU, Sherif E-SM, Tariq MU, Rashid J, Le T-V, Ghani A. Analysis of Wheat-Yield Prediction Using Machine Learning Models under Climate Change Scenarios. Sustainability . 2024; 16(16):6976. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16166976

Iqbal, Nida, Muhammad Umair Shahzad, El-Sayed M. Sherif, Muhammad Usman Tariq, Javed Rashid, Tuan-Vinh Le, and Anwar Ghani. 2024. "Analysis of Wheat-Yield Prediction Using Machine Learning Models under Climate Change Scenarios" Sustainability 16, no. 16: 6976. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16166976

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Climate Change: Evidence and Causes: Update 2020 (2020)

Chapter: conclusion, c onclusion.

This document explains that there are well-understood physical mechanisms by which changes in the amounts of greenhouse gases cause climate changes. It discusses the evidence that the concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere have increased and are still increasing rapidly, that climate change is occurring, and that most of the recent change is almost certainly due to emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activities. Further climate change is inevitable; if emissions of greenhouse gases continue unabated, future changes will substantially exceed those that have occurred so far. There remains a range of estimates of the magnitude and regional expression of future change, but increases in the extremes of climate that can adversely affect natural ecosystems and human activities and infrastructure are expected.

Citizens and governments can choose among several options (or a mixture of those options) in response to this information: they can change their pattern of energy production and usage in order to limit emissions of greenhouse gases and hence the magnitude of climate changes; they can wait for changes to occur and accept the losses, damage, and suffering that arise; they can adapt to actual and expected changes as much as possible; or they can seek as yet unproven “geoengineering” solutions to counteract some of the climate changes that would otherwise occur. Each of these options has risks, attractions and costs, and what is actually done may be a mixture of these different options. Different nations and communities will vary in their vulnerability and their capacity to adapt. There is an important debate to be had about choices among these options, to decide what is best for each group or nation, and most importantly for the global population as a whole. The options have to be discussed at a global scale because in many cases those communities that are most vulnerable control few of the emissions, either past or future. Our description of the science of climate change, with both its facts and its uncertainties, is offered as a basis to inform that policy debate.

A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The following individuals served as the primary writing team for the 2014 and 2020 editions of this document:

Eric Wolff FRS, (UK lead), University of Cambridge
Inez Fung (NAS, US lead), University of California, Berkeley
Brian Hoskins FRS, Grantham Institute for Climate Change
John F.B. Mitchell FRS, UK Met Office
Tim Palmer FRS, University of Oxford
Benjamin Santer (NAS), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
John Shepherd FRS, University of Southampton
Keith Shine FRS, University of Reading.
Susan Solomon (NAS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Kevin Trenberth, National Center for Atmospheric Research
John Walsh, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Don Wuebbles, University of Illinois

Staff support for the 2020 revision was provided by Richard Walker, Amanda Purcell, Nancy Huddleston, and Michael Hudson. We offer special thanks to Rebecca Lindsey and NOAA Climate.gov for providing data and figure updates.

The following individuals served as reviewers of the 2014 document in accordance with procedures approved by the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences:

Richard Alley (NAS), Department of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University
Alec Broers FRS, Former President of the Royal Academy of Engineering
Harry Elderfield FRS, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
Joanna Haigh FRS, Professor of Atmospheric Physics, Imperial College London
Isaac Held (NAS), NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
John Kutzbach (NAS), Center for Climatic Research, University of Wisconsin
Jerry Meehl, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
John Pendry FRS, Imperial College London
John Pyle FRS, Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge
Gavin Schmidt, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Emily Shuckburgh, British Antarctic Survey
Gabrielle Walker, Journalist
Andrew Watson FRS, University of East Anglia

The Support for the 2014 Edition was provided by NAS Endowment Funds. We offer sincere thanks to the Ralph J. and Carol M. Cicerone Endowment for NAS Missions for supporting the production of this 2020 Edition.

F OR FURTHER READING

For more detailed discussion of the topics addressed in this document (including references to the underlying original research), see:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2019: Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate [ https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc ]
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), 2019: Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/25259 ]
Royal Society, 2018: Greenhouse gas removal [ https://raeng.org.uk/greenhousegasremoval ]
U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), 2018: Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States [ https://nca2018.globalchange.gov ]
IPCC, 2018: Global Warming of 1.5°C [ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15 ]
USGCRP, 2017: Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume I: Climate Science Special Reports [ https://science2017.globalchange.gov ]
NASEM, 2016: Attribution of Extreme Weather Events in the Context of Climate Change [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/21852 ]
IPCC, 2013: Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Working Group 1. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis [ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1 ]
NRC, 2013: Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18373 ]
NRC, 2011: Climate Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts Over Decades to Millennia [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12877 ]
Royal Society 2010: Climate Change: A Summary of the Science [ https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/publications/2010/climate-change-summary-science ]
NRC, 2010: America’s Climate Choices: Advancing the Science of Climate Change [ https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12782 ]

Much of the original data underlying the scientific findings discussed here are available at:

https://data.ucar.edu/
https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu
https://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu
https://ess-dive.lbl.gov/
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu
http://hahana.soest.hawaii.edu/hot/

was established to advise the United States on scientific and technical issues when President Lincoln signed a Congressional charter in 1863. The National Research Council, the operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, has issued numerous reports on the causes of and potential responses to climate change. Climate change resources from the National Research Council are available at .

is a self-governing Fellowship of many of the world’s most distinguished scientists. Its members are drawn from all areas of science, engineering, and medicine. It is the national academy of science in the UK. The Society’s fundamental purpose, reflected in its founding Charters of the 1660s, is to recognise, promote, and support excellence in science, and to encourage the development and use of science for the benefit of humanity. More information on the Society’s climate change work is available at

Climate change is one of the defining issues of our time. It is now more certain than ever, based on many lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth's climate. The Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, with their similar missions to promote the use of science to benefit society and to inform critical policy debates, produced the original Climate Change: Evidence and Causes in 2014. It was written and reviewed by a UK-US team of leading climate scientists. This new edition, prepared by the same author team, has been updated with the most recent climate data and scientific analyses, all of which reinforce our understanding of human-caused climate change.

Scientific information is a vital component for society to make informed decisions about how to reduce the magnitude of climate change and how to adapt to its impacts. This booklet serves as a key reference document for decision makers, policy makers, educators, and others seeking authoritative answers about the current state of climate-change science.

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Vulnerability in the Avalanche Capital: The Human Dimensions of Avalanche and Landslide Hazard in Juneau, Alaska Provant, Zachary ( University of Oregon , 2024-08-07 ) In the United States, climate disasters kill thousands of people and cost billions of dollars each year. In 2023, the United States experienced 28 environmental disasters that cost more than one billion dollars each—the ...
Ecological Intensification of Oregon Hazelnut Orchards: Restoring Native Plant Communities in Shared Ecosystems Lane-Massee, Marissa ( University of Oregon , 2024-08-07 ) The rapidly expanding Oregon hazelnut industry offers a unique opportunity for restoring ecosystem services to private lands that were historically oak-prairie dominated habitats. With typical orchard management consisting ...
Forward-looking approaches to rangeland restoration in a variable world Batas, Lina ( University of Oregon , 2024-08-07 ) Ecological restoration is a powerful tool for repairing degraded ecosystems and promoting biodiversity and ecosystem functions. As global change drivers shift baseline conditions, forward-looking restoration approaches aim ...
AN ACCUMULATION OF CATASTROPHE: A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF WILDFIRE IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES Dockstader, Sue ( University of Oregon , 2024-03-25 ) This dissertation is an environmental sociological study of wildland fire in what is now the western United States. It examines wildfire management from roughly the 1900s to the present time employing a Marxist historical ...
Managing Life's Future: Species Essentialism and Evolutionary Normativity in Conservation Policy, Practice, and Imaginaries Maggiulli, Katrina ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-10 ) Folk essentialist and normative understandings of species are not only prevalent in popular layperson communities, but also end up undergirding United States conservation policy and practice due to the simplistic clarity ...
Unsettled Ecologies: Alienated Species, Indigenous Restoration, and U.S. Empire in a Time of Climate Chaos Fink, Lisa ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-10 ) This dissertation traces environmental thinking about invasive species from Western-colonial, diasporic settlers of color, and Indigenous perspectives within U.S. settler colonialism. Considering environmental discourses ...
Futuremaking in a Disaster Zone: Everyday Climate Change Adaptation amongst Quechua Women in the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca Moulton, Holly ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-10 ) Indigenous women in Peru are often labeled “triply vulnerable” to climate change due to race, gender, and economic marginalization. Despite Peru’s focus on gender, Indigeneity, and intersectionality in national adaptation ...
Land Acts: Land's Agency in American Literature, Law, and History from the Colonial Period to Removal Keeler, Kyle ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-10 ) This dissertation examines land’s agency and relationships to land in the places now known as the United States as these relationships appear in literature and law from early colonization to the removal period. Land Acts ...
PALEOTEMPERATURE, VEGETATION CHANGE, FIRE HISTORY, AND LAKE PRODUCTIVITY FOR THE LAST 14,500 YEARS AT GOLD LAKE, PACIFIC NORTHWEST, USA Baig, Jamila ( University of Oregon , 2024-01-09 ) The postglacial history of vegetation, wildfire, and climate in the Cascade Range (Oregon) is only partly understood. This study uses high-resolution analysis from a 13-meter, 14,500-year sediment core from Gold Lake to ...
On Western Juniper Climate Relations Reis, Schyler ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-26 ) Western juniper woodlands are highly sensitive to climate in terms of tree-ring growth, seedling establishment and range distribution. Understanding the dynamics of western juniper woodlands to changes in precipitation, ...
Stories We Tell, Stories We Eat: Mexican Foodways, Cultural Identity, and Ideological Struggle in Netflix’s Taco Chronicles Sanchez, Bela ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-26 ) Food is a biological necessity imbued with numerous social, cultural, and economic implications for identity production and everyday meaning-making. Food television is a unique medium for the meanings of food and foodways ...
Soil Nutrient Additions Shift Orthopteran Herbivory and Invertebrate Community Composition Altmire, Gabriella ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-26 ) Anthropogenic alterations to global pools of nitrogen and phosphorus are driving declines in plant diversity across grasslands. As such, concern over biodiversity loss has precipitated a host of studies investigating how ...
Multispecies Memoir: Self, Genre, and Species Justice in Contemporary Culture Otjen, Nathaniel ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) Liberal humanism articulates an individual, rational, autonomous, universal, and singularly human subject that possesses various rights and freedoms. Although the imagined subject at the heart of liberal humanist philosophy ...
Understanding How Changes in Disturbance Regimes and Long-Term Climate Shape Ecosystem and Landscape Structure and Function Wright, Jamie ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) Long-term and anthropic climatic change intersecting with disturbances alters ecosystem structure and function across spatiotemporal scales. Quantifying ecosystem responses can be convoluted, therefore utilizing multiproxy ...
Ikpíkyav (To Fix Again): Drawing From Karuk World Renewal To Contest Settler Discourses Of Vulnerability Vinyeta, Kirsten ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) The Klamath River Basin of Northern California has historically been replete with fire-adapted ecosystems and Indigenous communities. For the Karuk Tribe, fire has been an indispensable tool for both spiritual practice and ...
Grassland Restoration in Heterogeneous, Changing, and Human Dominated Systems Brambila, Alejandro ( University of Oregon , 2022-10-04 ) Ecological restoration is a powerful tool to promote biodiversity and ecosystem function. Understanding underlying system variability and directional change can help predict outcomes of restoration interventions. Spatial ...
Restoring What? And for Whom? Listening to Karuk Ecocultural Revitalization Practitioners and Uncovering Settler Logics in Ecological Restoration. Worl, Sara ( University of Oregon , 2022-05-10 ) What does it mean to restore a landscape degraded by settler colonialism? How might a well intentionedprocess like ecological restoration end up causing harm from underlying settler colonial logics? This thesis explores ...
Instigating Communities of Solidarity: An Exploration of Participatory, Informal, Temporary Urbanisms Meier, Briana ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) This dissertationexamines the potential for participatory, informal urbanisms to buildcollaborative relations across ontological, cultural, and political difference. This research contributes to thefield of urban, environmental ...
The Holy Oak School of Art and Ecology: A Proposal for Arts-Based Environmental Education Programming Best, Krysta ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) The following is a proposal for arts-based environmental education programming in elementary schools, after-school programs, and day-camp programs, entitled the Holy School of Art and Ecology. Ecophenomenological, arts-based ...
Settler Colonial Listening and the Silence of Wilderness in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Hilgren, Bailey ( University of Oregon , 2021-11-23 ) The Boundary Waters Canoe Area soundscape in northern Minnesota has a long and contested history but is most often characterized today as a pristine and distinctly silent wilderness. This thesis traces the construction and ...

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South Africa has a huge gap between the rich and poor - 4 urgent reasons to tackle inequality

Pro Vice-Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality and Director: Southern Centre for Inequality Studies., University of the Witwatersrand

Disclosure statement

Imraan Valodia receives funding from a number of South African and international foundations that support academic and policy research.

University of the Witwatersrand provides support as a hosting partner of The Conversation AFRICA.

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South Africa has exceptionally high levels of inequality . As someone who studies issues of inequality and sustainability, I have argued before that South Africa’s income inequality is the highest of all countries that have data on this. This means that the gap between the rich and the poor is wider than in any other country.

While South Africa is somewhat exceptional, income inequality within countries has been growing across the world.

The most recent data suggests that income inequality between countries has been falling , but this is largely due to the rising incomes of people in China, who make up a large part of the global population.

If we consider inequality in wealth, which gives us a fuller picture than income, the situation in South Africa is even more extreme. The top 0.1% of the population owns 25% of the wealth . Globally, according to the World Inequality Report, the top 10% of the global population owns 76% of the global wealth .

Read more: South Africa can't crack the inequality curse. Why, and what can be done

There are a number of good reasons why the South African government should focus on reducing inequality. I wish to highlight four reasons.

Not good for the economy

First, high levels of inequality are not good for the economy. This is a complex issue, because the causal relationships between economic growth and inequality are multifaceted . But these obscene levels of concentration in wealth leave too much economic power in the hands of a small group of wealthy individuals.

Not good for democracy

Second, high levels of inequality are not good for democracy. Across much of the world, especially in the developed countries, ultra-rightwing politicians such as Donald Trump have been drawing support from the electorate. Among the reasons for this is that working class people feel left behind as wealth and income gaps widen. But in fact, the effect of the economic policies that these right-wing politicians promote is to increase inequality. These political shifts undermine democratic systems, leading to a rise in ultra-nationalism and discrimination against migrants and other minority groups.

We are, unfortunately, seeing the rise of these political views in South Africa too. The rise of this type of politics also undermines multilateral efforts to address global challenges, such as climate change. For example, politicians such as Trump have promoted climate denialism and removed the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change .

Read more: Inequality: troubling trends and why economic growth in Africa is key to reducing global disparities

Not good for social cohesion

Third, high levels of inequality are not good socially. Not only is inequality bad for social cohesion, it entrenches inter-generational inequalities.

Economist Branko Milanovic , one of the world’s academic authorities on inequality, has shown in his 2016 book that an American child, purely by the chance event of being born in America, is likely to earn 93 times the income of a child who, also by chance, is born in a poor country .

This is especially a problem in South Africa, where a child born in a low-income household is unlikely to go to a good school, and therefore less likely to attend university, and therefore less likely to find employment, and so on. This increases barriers to social mobility and gives rise to a divided society, with higher levels of tension, uncertainty and conflict.

Read more: How to ensure global debates about inequality are informed by views from developing countries

Undermines climate change efforts

Finally, with climate change, humans are now facing a challenge that threatens their very existence. The wealthy countries, and the elite in developing countries, are largely the cause of the problem , but the costs of climate change are likely to be borne disproportionately by low-income countries and communities. This inequality, which is of course linked to the historical trends of wealth accumulation, is likely to undermine efforts to deal with climate change, by creating resistance to change.

More equality, both within countries and across the world, is imperative if we are successfully to address the existential challenges of climate change.

Prof Sanjay G. Reddy will deliver the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies’ 2024 Inequality Lecture , The Political Economy of Global Inequality: A Drama in Three Parts, on 15 August. In partnership with the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies , The Conversation Africa has published several articles on inequality.

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Craft the outline and don't go off-topic. Search for keywords. Make a plan. Avoid the most common mistakes from the start. Write an introduction thinking about what you will write later. Develop your ideas according to the outline. Make a conclusion which is consistent with what you've written in the main paragraphs.
The physical science basis of climate change empowering transformations
With a growing production of climate knowledge worldwide, the number of peer-review papers with the keyword "climate change" published every year has doubled within the time span of the IPCC AR6, from around 30,000 per year in 2015 to more than 60,000 per year in 2022 , with around 2/3 arising from ocean and atmosphere sciences. While peer ...
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Climate Change Argumentation
Summary. Subject (s): Earth Science. Topic: Climate Change and Sustainability. Grade/Level: 9-12 (can be adapted to grades 6-8) Objectives: Students will be able to write a scientific argument using evidence and reasoning to support claims. Students will also be able to reflect on the weaknesses in their own arguments in order to improve their ...
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