Developing states like Jamaica have the slogan 1.5 to stay alive. Well? The media have messed up the entire world the way they use false equivalence. READ & WATCH Dionne Jackson Miller Nov 18 vlog featuring Taylor summarizing the situation today- Climate Change? A Hoax? A Scam? Transcript below
DJM: So is climate change a hoax?
*More of the year will be extremely hot. It means consecutive hot days. So we are used to Yeah, it gets really hot, but then we get a cool day. So we're talking about heat waves.*
DJM: That's Professor Michael Taylor. He's a world famous climate scientist. Yes, he's a Jamaican. I'm going to let you hear more from him in just a little while. All right, but I want to know what you think about this as well. I'm Dionne Jackson Miller. Thank you so much for joining me. Time for tea.
So there's something I have to say first, right? Which is that the media have messed up the entire world in relation to this issue of climate change because of how they frame the conversations that have taken place.
What do I mean?
I don't know if you've ever heard of something called false equivalence. It's when two opposing viewpoints are presented as if they carry the same amount of credibility, same amount of weight, when that's not the case.
Give you an example. Suppose you have 99 scientists saying the earth is round. All right? And one degadega scientist saying the earth is flat. But every time you turn on the radio, the TV or YouTube, what you see is one scientist saying the earth is round, one scientist saying the earth is flat.
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You therefore as a listener or viewer come to the conclusion that okay I guess it must be 50/50 and that scientific opinion on this is split 50/50 when that clearly is not the case. So are there some scientists that deny climate change? Sure. But they are in a tiny minority and even in that tiny minority look and see who is paying them. Right? Look and see how many of them are paid by the fossil fuel companies.
Because the vast majority of brilliant scientists all around the world are very clear that climate change is real and that it has been caused and is being caused by man-made activities.
Look here, I like conspiracy theories just as much as anyone else, right? But I have a background in environmental science and my very first job, believe it or not, was in environmental management. So I am going with the scientists on this one.
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So what are the scientists saying? Well, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that draws on hundreds of scientists from nearly 200 countries to put together its comprehensive reports on climate change. And the intergovernmental panel says definitively that human activities principally through emissions of greenhouse gases have unequivocally caused global warming. There is nothing tentative about what they're saying. They are very definite.
And by the way, some of those brilliant scientists are based right here in Jamaica. Let me just take a moment and big them up because we need to celebrate our own, right? So big up to Professor Michael Taylor. He's a professor of climate science at the University of the West Indies Mona campus. He's also co-director of the climate studies group at the Mona campus and he was a coordinating lead author for chapter 3 of the special report on 1.5 degrees of the intergovernmental panel.
He's also the 2019 answer Caribbean laurate for excellence in science.
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Also big up Professor Tanisha Stevenson. She's an environmental physicist. She's a researcher and a key member of the climate studies group at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies. She's known around the world as a climate studies expert and she's a contributor and lead author for the intergovernmental panels sixth assessment report.
And of course, we have to big up the original climate scientist, Dr. Anthony Chen, groundbreaking Jamaican scientist and atmospheric physicist who was a member of the team that got the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for work done on climate change.
Now, I know those three names aren't household names in Jamaica, but they absolutely should be because we need to big up our own. I spoke to Professor Taylor about 2022 about what all of this talk about climate change and global warming means for us.
*Look, we're going into an area where if we don't do something now, we will not have enough water. If we don't do something now, the climate induced illnesses will overtake us. If we don't do something now, the infrastructure that we think we have, which was never built for an era of the unprecedented, will not, will not hold up. If we don't do something now, the lifestyle that we live and you know, for us, that's a distinction in the Caribbean. That's why climate is such an important thing to us.
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We live an outdoor lifestyle. We live a lifestyle that is dependent on climate sensitive things. You know, tourism, agriculture, you know, um sports, you know, the lifestyle will not be able to be maintained. So clearly one of the things is the heat and we have we have spoken about that. Um sometimes I don't think we understand what you know continuous warming means.
We say okay you know we're getting hot and we'll eventually adapt. But for us it let's break that down a little bit. It means more of the year will be extremely hot. It means consecutive hot days. So we are used to yeah it gets really hot but then we get a cool day. So we're talking about heat waves. We're not only talking about heat waves on land. We're talking about marine heat waves as well. We're talking about nights being extremely warm, you know, because the nighttime temperatures are warming faster than the daytime temperature.
Let's move off of temperature for a little bit. We're talking about rainfall. So, we're always going to be variable in rainfall. One year going to be wet, one year going to be dry, but we're not going to vary about a lower mean. So, overall, the amount of rain we're going to get in all is going to be less for a given year.
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So we're dealing with still variability, still droughts, still flooding, intense rainfall, but less rain. Let me give you two more and then I'll talk about lifestyle. We're talking about sea level rise. So we're talking about, you know, loss of coastlines, but we also talk about when we have intense storms, the storms flood in land, you know, we talk and and we only need to go around Jamaica's coastline to begin to see the impact on sea level rise.
And then of course you can't forget the big guys, the hurricanes. You know, in an area of intense warming, we're talking about more intense hurricanes, right? Um not necessarily more hurricanes, but when they pass through being more intense, and more intense meaning in terms of amount of rainfall and wind strength. All right? And you can go on, but just put that picture together in an unprecedented era.
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What does this mean for me and you? Well, if I could get across the message that we live climate every single day and the fact that we're moving into an unprecedented era worries me, frightens me and is something that we need to take control of or or at least do something about.
You can think of the traditional areas. So, agriculture for us, you know, food security becomes a significant issue. Our agriculture is rainfed and it depends on season, a season that we can predict. We're going to get rain here going be cool here you know that kind of thing.
The spells of drought and intense rain you know threatens food security. It threatens it for our production but it also threatens it therefore for things like imports which will have to replace what you can't produce for yourself. That now begins to affect prices. So that begins to affect you and me going to the market. Agriculture is one of the typical ones you pick up.
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Let's talk about water. All right. One of the biggest threats of climate change is availability of water. We depend on rainfall for our water. And you can even see it with I wouldn't say we're in the driest period we have been now, but what we're ending up with is is this intense variabilities, long stretches of drought and then of course intense rain doesn't suit availability of water. The Monadam as of the moment we are doing this interview is below 50%.
Well, you can begin to see how that now begins to affect completely, lifestyle. You know, we're talking about from the to the for the individual perspective. This is people having to get up early to catch water to bathe out of a pond. You're sending kids to school who are probably disgruntled already. You're putting them in schools that themselves don't have water. You know where you are flushing a toilet with these kinds of things.
You see, you can begin to see the cascading through life. But we haven't begun to talk about other areas. Health. What about health? You know, the the influx of new diseases.
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But you're also talking about things like asthma, you know, you're talking about conditions that are not conducive for people to be outdoors. you know, we're not talking about things like um this new occupational safety and health policy, which I think is something we really really have to pick up on when we get into an unprecedented climate regime and we are a society where everybody works and plays outdoors. You know, when are we going to reach the point where we have set in place a system that says no, we have reached that threshold today. Nobody should be outdoors.
When is education ministry going to say absolutely no PE during certain hours of the day or the sporting people who are going to have to say no man cup football cannot be held at this time and we're going to have to demand certain things be in our sporting pitches you know to deal with cooling to deal with health that kind but I'm just trying to show you how much- and I haven't talked about energy yet you know and the effect it's having on your energy bill.*
DJM: That's professor of climate science at the University of the West Indies Mona campus, Professor Michael Taylor. Now look, the 2023 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says things could get much worse. The report says continued greenhouse gas emissions will lead to increasing global warming with the best estimate of reaching 1.5° C in the near term. Now remember, small island developing states like Jamaica have been using the slogan 1.5 to stay alive. Meaning if things get warmer than another 1.5° across the globe, we may not survive.
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Now, what does that mean in terms of that kind of temperature increase? Well, the report says it means more heat waves, more droughts, intensification of tropical cyclones. In other words, for our stronger hurricanes, it means increases in aridity and fire weather, meaning places going to be drier. So, we're going to have more wildfires, more forest fires.
Look, this is something to take very, very seriously. I know sometimes some things feel like, boy, we can't bother with this, but this is something we all need to know about. It's a special interest of mine. Going to be doing a whole heap more videos on all kinds of different aspects and help to break it down for you in a way that everybody can understand. All right. going to have to leave it there. I’m Dionne. Thank you so much for watching. Back to my tea.
[END OF TRANSCRIPT]
[KE: In the top left column you'll see the slogan for Heating Planet blog is: After stories produced here next few years, no one will call Global Warming or climate change a hoax again. I will likely be posting more of Dionne's vlogs w transcripts soon.]
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