A long average, and a system that does not sit still

Climate, as the script first draws it, is the long average of the air over a place: temperature, rainfall, snow, the direction and speed of the wind. Weather is what you walk through in a single day — a warmer afternoon, a burst of rain. Climate change is a statistically meaningful shift in that average, lasting decades or more, and it can come from people as well as from nature.

The climate system itself is wider than the air. Atmosphere, water, ice and snow, living things, and the land keep trading energy. The ocean feeds the air heat and vapor; the air gives the ocean motion. Ice and snow change how much sunlight the Earth sends back. Plants and soil release energy to the air, and the living world touches the carbon cycle. Dark aerosols take in sunlight and warm the air; bright ones bounce it away and cool. After industrialization, the darker kind increased, and warming, in this telling, sped up. Heavy land use and the clearing of forests change how the ground reflects light; large-scale loss of forest also disturbs the water cycle, and is joined here to drier land and to more frequent fire.

Without the greenhouse effect, the script says, the Earth’s average surface temperature — held at about 14 degrees — would be some 33 degrees lower. Carbon dioxide is given as 55 to 65 percent of that effect, and as able to remain in the air for 100 to 300 years. Methane, next, stays about twelve years, so cutting it can show sooner; it is treated as twenty-one times more effective, and as coming from livestock, wetlands, farming, and the extraction of fossil fuels, with a further worry as permafrost thaws. Nitrous oxide is given about 6 percent of the effect, and a stay of 114 years. Those shares and lifetimes are left as the script gives them.

Natural clocks, and a warming that does not follow them alone

Sunspots move on an eleven-year cycle. When they are many, the sun’s radiant energy rises. In the script, even after a recent five-year decline in their number, the Earth’s average temperature was still going up. That is why sunspots, on their own, are not allowed to carry the whole explanation.

Milankovitch’s theory is kept close beside that point. Changes in the Earth’s path around the sun alter the distance, and so the energy received; the idea is described as matching older climate estimates well, and as still widely held. We are now in an interglacial, a warmer stretch, and that natural warming, the script says, is being hurried along by human causes. Volcanoes can work the other way for a time: ash that reaches the stratosphere can bounce sunlight and cool the surface. After Mount Pinatubo in 1991, the global average is given as lower by 0.2 to 0.5 degrees. That range is left with 1991.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in the script, concludes that warming since 1950 is 95 percent likely to be due mainly to human activity such as the use of fossil fuels. That 95 percent is left as the script states it, not carried forward as a later official finding. After industrialization, carbon dioxide is first said to have risen by 40 percent, mainly from the burning of oil, coal, and gas. A later figure in the same script puts the global concentration at more than 410 ppm in 2020, up from about 280 ppm before the industrial era. Korea’s 2020 average is given as 420.6 ppm, the highest in that series. Over the past forty years, the concentrations of these gases are said to have risen by 30 percent worldwide. The 2020 readings are left with 2020; the forty-year rise is left as the script gives it.

What a warmer world already looks like, and the agreements built around it

Korea’s greenhouse-gas emissions, in the script, were about 300 million tons in 1990 and 727 million in 2018. Per person they rose from 6.8 tons to 14.1, a doubling set against the OECD average, and Korea is described as sitting among the world’s top ten emitters. Those tons are left with 1990 and 2018; the ranking is left as the script describes it.

Extreme weather is treated as more than a statistic. Drought, heavy rain, and heat are said to be defined differently by place, and a WMO-based extreme-climate index is introduced so the extremes can be counted. In a recent World Meteorological Organization report cited here, sea level is said to have risen by about 2.5 centimetres over the previous five years, with a possible rise of up to 1.1 metres by 2100. Between 1992 and 2018, Greenland’s ice is given as having lost about 3.8 trillion tons. A rise of one centimetre is said to be enough to unhouse about six million people. Forsythia and cherry bloom earlier; plants that cannot move are put at risk of disappearing. Growing seasons lengthen and crop belts move north, yet rice quality and yield are said to fall, tropical fruit to spread while temperate fruit struggles, pests and weeds to increase, and livestock to suffer heat. Verkhoyansk, at 38 degrees, is given as the highest Arctic temperature on record, in a year that was the warmest Arctic average since 1881. Western Europe is described as seeing rain and flood on a once-in-a-thousand-years scale, with about 200 deaths. In North America and Siberia the heat is called the strongest on record in the script: 50 degrees at Lytton, in Canada, and 56.7 degrees in Death Valley. Those figures are left as the script gives them, including the undated WMO sea-level numbers and the 1992–2018 ice loss.

The legal path is sketched from the 1992 Rio convention, through the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The United States left Kyoto in 2001, before it came into force; China and India, though already large emitters, were classed as developing countries and stood outside binding cuts. Canada left in 2011. The Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, with 195 countries, covering 90 percent of world emissions, each setting its own target under mutual review. The core aim is to limit the rise in global average temperature against the pre-industrial level. A special report presented in Incheon in 2018 is cited as saying greenhouse gases would need to fall 45 percent over the following ten years, and that a rise above 1.5 degrees would put ecosystems and people at serious risk. National aims in the script include Korea’s cut of 40 percent against 2018, and carbon neutrality by 2050; the United States, 50 to 52 percent against 2005; the United Kingdom, 78 percent against 1990 by 2035; Japan, 46 percent against 2013; and China, carbon neutrality by 2060. Those targets are left as the script lists them.

What the lesson is for

The teaching direction is plain. Natural and human causes should be held together, not set in a false fight. Milankovitch’s orbital changes and the burning of fossil fuels belong in the same explanation of a complicated system. Learners should have room to say what they care about. Local controversies, and the climate people can already see around them, should be brought into the room so a response can fit the place. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. Teaching script on understanding climate change and the direction of climate education (Korean source page).
2. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as cited in the script, on warming since 1950. Special report presented in Incheon, 2018, on a 45 percent cut over ten years and 1.5 degrees.
3. Carbon dioxide figures: a 40 percent rise after industrialization; global concentration above 410 ppm in 2020, from about 280 ppm before the industrial era; Korea’s 2020 average 420.6 ppm.
4. Korea’s greenhouse-gas emissions, about 300 million tons in 1990 and 727 million in 2018; 6.8 to 14.1 tons per person. National aims as listed: Korea 40 percent against 2018 and neutrality by 2050; the United States 50–52 percent against 2005; the United Kingdom 78 percent against 1990 by 2035; Japan 46 percent against 2013; China neutrality by 2060.
5. Mount Pinatubo, 1991, a 0.2 to 0.5 degree lowering. Greenland ice loss, 1992–2018, about 3.8 trillion tons. A World Meteorological Organization report cited in the script on recent sea-level rise. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Rio, 1992; Kyoto Protocol, 1997; Paris Agreement, 2015.

Last updated: 14 November 2026