I noticed something was going on back in 1972 on my first bushwalk into the Australian Alps(? rounded protuberances actually). I was in Harrietville, Victoria, Australia at the general store looking at the photos from back around 1900~1920 when the snowline was a few hundred feet above the town. In 1972 it was well over 1200 feet above.
I thought "hmm, there's a trend here"
Resolution: don't by shares in a ski lodge.
I didn't give it much more thought till the 90s when the hole in the ozone layer started to give us more severe sunburns down here in Victoria. Tasmanians were developing skin cancers too and the girls were losing their beautiful complexions.
I thought "hmm, we can have an effect on our atmosphere"
Resolution: Use sunscreen and wear a hat. Don't buy any pressure packs using CFCs either.
I thought about it a bit and when returning from working in Italy in 2000 I got a window seat for the leg from Bangkok to Melbourne. Going over the Wentworth anabranch and further south (part of the Murry Darling river system) I noticed wildly coloured salt pans, dead trees and dry stretches of the rivers. This was quite different from 10 years ealier. Due to over allocation of water rights by various governments, we had gone beyond what could be safely extracted, and the increasing dryness each year had taken us over the tipping point.
I thought "hmm, it's about time we started cutting back on water allocations"
Resolution: Get a water tank and use my own collected water. It's gonna get expensive.
Then in 2002 the Larsen B ice shelf broke up.
I thought "Holy !@#$%!, there's something really going on here"
Resolution: Read up on the science of this, try to find out what is really going on.
I started to get a bit vocal about this, bitching about the denial of our government to accept what the CSIRO scientists were telling them. The government eventually put a gag on the scientists, threating their tenure if they spoke against the government position.
Then in early 2007 I had the chance to help a friend fly a Piper Warrior from Perth back to Melbourne. Part of the route went over the Southern part of Western Australia. We flew over dead trees and salt pans for hundreds of miles where 100 years ago there were ideal wheat growing areas that provided an enormous export income for Australia. The weather systems have moved South and the rain now falls over the ocean. Later on in South Australia we went across the Murray which had stopped flowing. We couldn't see it, but the river mouth was closed and the lakes of the Coorong were drying out.
Researching more, found that by isotopic analysis it had bean found what part of CO2 in the atmosphere was natural and what was anthropogenic. This scotched one argument of the climate change deniers.
Then I noticed that people were saying things like "I believe" or "I don't believe" in climate change. AARRGH! It's not a religion! It's not a matter of faith! It's not like that invisible man in the sky!
You read the science, you analyse it and you decide wether to agree or not!
I joined the Victorian Humanists. The first meeting I attended had 2 CSIRO scientist and 2 other scientists from a river system and and climate related organisation in Australia. They spelled it out in no uncertain terms, climate change, over-population and future mass movents of people will make the 21st century a very "interesting" time to live.
Now we are looking at an ice-free Summer at the North Pole, probably within the next decade.
You've probably heard about global dimming due to aeroplane contrails and other particulates. Well it's accepted within scientific circles.
We should be up to 0.5 degrees warmer. What's going to happen with reduced aviation due to increasing fuel costs?
Have you seen the melting permafrost in the Arctic and that a fair bit of it in Canada and Siberia is within one degree of melting? It hasn't been this close for a very long time. This is currently releasing and will in the future release an enormous amount of methane.
Now another ice shelf in Antactica is breaking up.
The rate of change is much greater than any time in the past except for the few great extinction events.
How many more serious events that are unprecedented within the period of human existance have to occur before it's so obvious that the climate-change deniers cannot keep a straight face any more?
stupid, Stupid, STUPID PEOPLE!