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While climate change has always been a problem during Ishan Ahmed's lifetime, he said he's worried about it having the potential to become more extreme. "Climate change will get worse in future generations because I do think that humans have caused this by cutting down trees," the year 7 student at St Mary MacKillop College said. "Climate change it isn't affecting us hugely right now, but it's going to get bigger and get worse and we have to start thinking how we can do the little things to help." "It's kind of concerning for future generations," fellow student Kristelle McGowan said. The Wanniassa students aren't the only ones concerned about the temperatures rising. A recent study conducted by a team at the Australian National University found 12 and 13 year olds were more concerned about the threat of climate change than adults. The team surveyed more than 460 year 7 students in both and Australia and Austria, with students in Vienna, Sydney and Canberra taking part in the study. The results showed more than 86 per cent of students surveyed agreed that climate change was something they should be worried about. The survey also found that 80 per cent of students in both countries agreed climate change was caused by humans, with 83 per cent also agreeing that climate change was happening now. It found that 89 per cent of Australian year 7 students surveyed were worried about climate change compared to just 63 per cent of adults. More than 82 per cent of Australian teens said humans caused global warming compared to 64 per cent of adults, while 87 per cent of Australian teens said global warming was happening now compared to 78 per cent of adults. The ANU team behind the report said early adolescents were a critical but under-researched demographic when it came to opinions on climate change. "The early adolescent age group is important, they are the largest group of climate-vulnerable people on Earth and the group with the biggest portion of responsibility," the report said. "Overall, we have found the opinions in the 12 to 13 year age group show strong pro-climate sensitivities." Fellow St Mary MacKillop year 7 student Justine Rasheed said high school students as well as future generations would be better equipped to handle climate change as the science behind it was taught in class. "Children today are learning about sustainability and climate change, while our parents have only learned about it fairly recently," she said. "It's important that we're being educated about it, because if it gets worse we can know about it and know how to make it better." Australians adolescents were more concerned about climate change in all three categories compared to their Austrian peers. "These findings are significant as early adolescents may be pivotal in the climate science communication arena," the report said. "Future climate science-educated adults could no more deny the phenomena of climate change than they could deny the existence of their own large intestines." Students who said they preferred subjects such as music, art, science and sport were more likely to say climate change was caused by humans than those who preferred technology or history. Kristelle said more had to be done about combating climate change for future generations. "Humans are the cause of climate change and it is a real problem and it is doing harm to our earth," she said. "If you want to have kids growing up in a safe and clean environment and decent temperatures, then you have to do something about this."

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