CNN Senior Meteorologist and good friend of WeatherWatch.co.nz, Chad Myers, has written a piece for CNN.com discussing the changing opinions on climate change and why he is no longer a skeptic based on what he is seeing.

Last year Chad answered 10 questions as part of our ‘Friends of WeatherWatch’ series – and you can read his answers here.

But today it’s his opinions on Climate Change that is generating the news – below is his personal article, in full, written for CNN…

Changing opinions on climate change, from a CNN meteorologist

We also thought the ocean might be in more trouble, because it absorbs the CO2 and creates carbonic acid and changes the water’s pH.

 

In 2009 an American Meteorological Society survey showed that only 24% of on-air meteorologists agreed with the statement, “Most of the warming since 1950 is VERY LIKELY human induced.” I did not agree because I did not like the term VERY LIKELY. I did not yet have the entire picture. I had not excluded all other possibilities. I wasn’t denying human-caused climate change, but I remained skeptical.

 

2010 was a turning point for me. That year was the hottest year on record, even though there was a La Niña present, a process that should have cooled the planet.

 

Down went the other potential causes:

• There were no volcanoes producing huge amounts of CO2.
• The sun was not getting hotter.
• Satellite-derived temperature readings ruled out the heat-island effect.
• Even “The Pause” (the so-called period post-1998 that showed very little warming of the planet for about 15 years) had been shattered.

They are all now called “zombie theories,” long since debunked myths about climate change that skeptics will continually bring up to counter the facts of man-made climate change.

 

Then in 2013 the CO2 concentration crossed 400 parts per million and I knew the globe was in trouble. No longer was I only concerned with ocean acidification, it seemed the ocean was not capable of absorbing the massive quantities of CO2 that humans were emitting. The plants were not absorbing CO2 fast enough through photosynthesis and converting it to oxygen.

 

I was no longer a skeptic.

 

Humans were polluting the atmosphere to a point of no return. I had finally excluded all other possibilities. Had I flip-flopped? Well, that is what it would be called in politics. But in science, it is just an evolution of understanding. I concluded that my original theory of “it could be something else” wasn’t likely the case.