One of the arguments of those who claim that climate change is a hoax is that it is historically a normal cyclical or natural climate change undeserving of all the attention it is getting in our time. Is there normal or natural cyclical climate change? Yes, of course! However, the impact of normal or natural cyclical climate change pales in comparison to cultural or accelerated climate change. It is not the same as cultural or accelerated climate change that the climate change deniers like to bandy about, claiming that it is cyclical.
Climate change may be defined as the “long-term shift in the Earth’s average temperature and weather patterns.” It is true that the Earth’s climate can and does change naturally, but today that phrase is used exclusively to describe the rapid and significant global warming and changes in weather characteristics as a result of human activities. Any mention of natural climate change conjures up a virtually pristine pre-modern technology or pre-Industrial Revolution milieu, when the environment was more or less left intact or unaltered—when the green ecosystem of the world was much larger in comparison to the technology-assisted, man-made brown world. A major cause of natural climate change is the rotation of the Earth on its tilted axis, causing the collective changes in the Earth’s movements on the climate over thousands of years. Known as Milankovitch cycles, named after the Serbian geophysicist and astronomer Milutin Milankovic who provided a more definitive explanation of the cycles in the 1920s, Milankovitch cycles describe the “collective effects of changes in the earth’s movement,” the cycles of which along with volcanic eruptions also contribute to the natural or cyclical climate change.
As I pointed out earlier, the phrase climate change as used today primarily refers to the unprecedented cultural climate change engendered by human activities on planet earth. Modern technology augmented human capacity to gain access and deplete the earth’s resources, to degrade, and recklessly alter the planet’s environment. The harvest and burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and the decimation of carbon sinks, incineration of organic matter, and spontaneous fission of radioactive elements have raised the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to over 400 parts per million. The carbon in the phrase “carbon footprints” is used as a shorthand for all greenhouse gases from various sources. For example, carbon from deforestation and burning fossil fuels, methane from farm animals, fermentation, hydraulic fracturing of shale rock, chlorofluorocarbons from refrigerants, aerosol spray, fire extinguishers, cleaning agents, Styrofoam, nitrous oxide from wastewater treatment and that used as anesthetic, farm fertilizer, and water vapor.
While the electromagnetic waves from the sun with short wavelength can pass through greenhouse gases easily without being absorbed, the infrared radiation they are transformed into after being incident on the earth surface, have longer wavelength too weak to pass through greenhouse gases and be reflected back into space. Consequently, they linger, raising the atmospheric temperature and causing drastic weather patterns. Among the characteristics of accelerated climate change are unprecedented global warming, increase in intensity and catastrophe of hurricanes, the devastation from floods, extensive destruction from tornadoes, ocean warming and acidification, etc.
However, due to human ingenuity, remediation of the consequences of anthropogenic climate change have been vast and varied. For example, carbon capture and sequestration, carbonated drinks, producing sodium bicarbonate or baking soda from carbon dioxide, solar gardens, wind farms, rooftop photovoltaic arrays, street light from solar panels, tree planting, the 3Rs of reduce, reuse, and recycle, solar thermal energy conversion, geothermal energy, hydropower, biomass conversion, tidal energy, carbon border tax or carbon border adjustment mechanism, among others. Carbon border tax being tax on carbon emissions attributed to imported goods, which motivates a country’s local manufacturers to abide by green regulations.
As you can see, the world is not lacking in ideas to stem human caused global warming and accelerated climate change. What is lacking is a commensurate change in attitude and the problem associated with we-have-always-done-it-that-way mindset. Because the global economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, the environment being the proverbial hand that feeds the economy, these measures are imperative for remediation and sustainability. As Wilson Ozuem aptgly remarked before me, a bad system doesn’t appear wrong to those who benefit from it. They do everything to defend it to the detriment of larger society. Speaking truth to power is a national imperative!
Professor Akubue wrote in from Minnesota, USA, November 13, 2025
