{"id":447,"date":"2017-01-25T18:40:59","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T18:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reading.ac.uk\/the-forum\/?p=447"},"modified":"2017-01-25T18:40:59","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T18:40:59","slug":"the-politics-of-climate-change-may-be-stalling-but-business-is-rising-to-the-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2017\/01\/25\/the-politics-of-climate-change-may-be-stalling-but-business-is-rising-to-the-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"The politics of climate change may be stalling – but business is rising to the challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Paul Williams, University of Reading Department of Meteorology<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

‘As important as political leadership is, individual people and companies will have to make key decisions to deal with the impacts of climate change’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Climate change is never far from the news headlines \u2013 but often it\u2019s not because of the science.<\/p>\n

As much as I think that complicated mathematical calculations about the circulation of air and water around the globe should make people stop in wonder, I fear my beliefs are not widely shared by most other people.<\/p>\n

And they would have a point. Most people don\u2019t talk maths over the water cooler or when down the pub, beyond adding up the cost of their drinks.<\/p>\n

So if it\u2019s not the science, what makes climate change so appealing to journalists? Often, it\u2019s the politics.<\/p>\n

News media love to observe a good old-fashioned fight, and politics is the arena where disagreements get aired every day. Not only that, but politics tends to have a bearing on how we live our lives, too.<\/p>\n

So while the basic facts of human-caused climate change are agreed by just about all scientists<\/a> working in the field, a handful of doubting politicians often hog the headlines.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The election of President Donald Trump, whose cabinet includes people who have questioned the link between human activity and climate change, has caused some concern among climate scientists on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, more than 100 British scientists have written to the UK Prime Minister<\/a>, asking her to influence the Trump administration\u2019s approach towards climate change.<\/p>\n

My day-to-day work looks at a turbulent cross-Atlantic relationship of a different sort: the link between climate change and the flow of air in the upper atmosphere.<\/p>\n