Is the climate even changing?

This may seem like a stupid question, but there are a lot of people out there who do not believe in climate change, or at least that humans are not the reason behind it. After all, the effects are not obvious from a individual point of view - many people are so busy that they barely even have time to notice the weather, let along consider if the climate is changing too.

It's true, the effects of the changing climate are really only obvious over a multi-decadal timescale - longer than most people remember, and for the growing global population of young people, longer than they've been alive. However, when you take a moment to pause and really think about how things might be changing, some themes start to appear. In Japan, the arrival of the peak cherry blossom has been arriving earlier and earlier over the past century (records there go back to 812(!))

In the UK, the arrival of hawthorn blossom has also moved earlier in the year, while trees have started staying in leaf for longer. Other impacts are also evident: 2014-2023 was the sunniest 10-year period on record in the UK (one of the lesser-known impacts of climate change is that (regionally in the UK at least), it's expected to become sunnier overall).

Credit: UK Met Office. From the State of the UK Climate 2023 report: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/about/state-of-climate

Few of these changes are notable to the average person, but that doesn't mean they aren't happening. And this brings me on to another point, something that really annoys me: if the big-budget scientific institutions we have created specifically to research into the weather and climate, tell us that the climate is changing, why, in the actual fuck, is there an army of armchair scientists who think they know better?

It doesn't make any sence. You wouldn't question your doctor on a diagnosis. You might ask a second opinion from another medical professional, but you wouldn't ignore the advice, especially if your life is at stake. And here's the thing - our lives are at stake - with climate change it may not be immediately obvious, but it is just as dangerous to underestimate the effects.

Along with impacts to the weather and biodiversity on a regional level, atmospheric research institutions like NASA and the UK Met Office have been showing for decades that the world is warming:

April 2025 global temp anomalies (°C) vs 1951-1980 mean. Credit: NASA at data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/.

Why would these institutions lie to us? What's in it for them, and for the governments behind them? Researchers have been telling us the same thing for decades, through successive governments and regime changes. I can understand why fossil fuel companies have spent billions of dollars on lobbying governments about climate change for decades. These companies discovered climate change half a centuary ago, with predictions about future warming that were more accurate than NASA, but buried the evidence and refused to make it public. Now there's a conspiracy for you.

One impact of climate change that might be noticeable to the Average Joe is how extreme weather is changing, especially temperature extremes. High temperatures, and especially extreme high temps, are made exponentially more likely in a climate which is only slightly warmer than before:

This helps to explain the rise of extreme heatwaves in recent years, like the July 2022 heatwave in the UK (when 40°C was recorded for the first time), or the June 2021 heatwave in the US Pacific Northwest and western Canada (when a crazy 49.6°C was recorded in British Columbia, crushing the previous Canadian record by 4.6°C).

So there we have it, the climate is definately changing, as has been shown consistently for decades, even if the impacts to most people aren't that obvious.

Regardless, even if you choose not to believe in climate change, living with intentionality is still better for your mental, physcial and financial health, with a side-effect of being healthier for the planet (less consumption = better for global biodiversity). Live intentionally, invest consistently and spend consciously.