ICE President’s Visit to North Wales – Climate Change in Wales

Overview

A roundtable discussion on climate change in Wales and the need for carbon zero from different perspectives.

This is an event as part of ICE President Rachel Skinner’s virtual visit to North Wales.

Climate change is a broad term used to refer to changes in the earth’s climates at local, regional or global scales, and can also refer to the effects of these changes. In recent decades, the term ‘climate change’ is most often used to describe changes in the earth’s climate driven primarily by human activity since the pre-industrial period (c. 1850 onwards), particularly the burning of fossil fuels and removal of forests, resulting in a relatively rapid increase in carbon dioxide concentration in the earth’s atmosphere.

Global warming is a term often used interchangeably with climate change, as it is one of the most important measures of global changes. Global warming refers to the rise in average global temperatures, which is linked to significant impacts on humans, wildlife, and ecosystems around the world. Because there are more factors and impacts than only rising surface temperatures, the term climate change is used to include these additional impacts. There is strong consensus among scientists, representing 97% of actively publishing climate scientists, that human influence has been the dominant cause of observed warming trends since the 20th century.

The Welsh Government has recently created a ‘super’ Ministry of Climate Change and already in place is the Well Being of Future Generations Act. The debate will consider climate change in Wales from three perspective, flood risk management; net zero from a Contractor’s perspective to mitigate climate change and the HyNet initiative.