I have had a fair amount of contact with young people recently, what with four young adults at home and a string of work experience students here at the Trib.

In my discussions with them it seems they have their eye on the main game in a way that older people sometimes do not. They want the fight against climate change to start NOW.

They are the ones who will have to live with the consequences of inaction. They are not overly interested in the intricacies of any deal, they are focused on the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and what the world has to do to keep those levels down.

In a review of climate science over the past three years, released this week, 26 scientists from eight countries have issued a dire warning that our planet is approaching a point of no return.

They found the earth's temperature is continuing to rise, the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an increasing rate and the global warming could reach as high as 7ºC by the turn of the century if we do not check our greenhouse gas emissions. Every year this century has been among the top 10 warmest years since instrumental records began.

The report is confirmation of the scientific case for climate change. It is written by scientists with international reputations who have challenged the sceptics to put their research up for peer review.

I have a degree in Science, and while I try to read widely, I don’t always have time to unravel the complexities of the research. There are too many variables, there are so many arguments for and against, there is too much to take in. I, like most others in the country, rely at least in part on experts to look at the evidence and draw conclusions.

The gathering of world scientists brought together by the UN to ascertain the nature and extent of climate change (IPCC) concluded it is real, it is happening now and is caused by human activity. The recent review has concluded that not only is it happening, it is happening at a faster rate than predicted.