Climate change is one of today’s most hotly debated topic. Scientists for many decades have made supposed claims that current energy creation and reliance on fossil fuels will lead to inevitable changes to the planet. Today, climate change denial is still a popular to most of the world despite the mounds of evidence to support that it exists. The climate change issue suffers from being mismanaged by various parties through focusing on the wrong issues and the lack of true commitment from the general public, according to Sandra Steingraber.
Climate change is the long term shift in global climate patterns attributed mainly to the use of fossil fuels. Many people are aware of this issue, however, there has been an increase in the amount of people who deny climate change. 23 percent of Americans (compared to last year’s 16 percent) believe that climate change is not a problem (Atkin). To conclude that people do not accept climate change because they do not understand it or need to be educated about it, is reasonable. However, I believe that it isn’t skepticism driving this denial. Rather, it is the phenomenon of reaffirming one’s identity. Instead of analyzing the evidence, it is intentionally interpreted in such a way as to maintain a pre-existing belief.
Climate change has been a subject of discussion in the media for many years, supported with the use of arguments against oil polluting the environment and extreme scare tactics of Polar ice caps flooding civilians backyards. The issue has been ignored by the majority of lay people as seeming too complicated, and with all the conflicting information in the media in the past, who can blame them? However, scientifically, climate change and what perpetrates it is fairly simple to understand and society as a whole is beginning to come to a clear consensus on climate change. Thanks in part to more readily available forms of media and information, people have become cognizant of the fact that climate change is a legitimate problem which requires immediate amelioration. While this may seem melodramatic, society is realizing that climate change is an issue which can no longer be denied if the human race wishes to continue.
These last two election cycles have demonstrated the importance of climate change in relation to politics and the american people. What is unfortunate is that what seems to be a very crucial and real problem in our human survival, according to scientists, is being debated by people who do not have the scientific credentials to even discuss the science behind the reality of climate change. Those behind the skeptics, have funded a successful campaign against the reality of the facts and have introduce doubt into the sciences.
Likewise, Chris Mooney, a journalist and author who evaluated the relationship between scientists and the public, discusses the similar issue about climate change in his article, “"If Scientists Want to Educate the Public, they Should Start by Listening.” He begins by gathering information generated from scientists and the public to determine why most people refuse to believe scientists on
Even though there is evidence proving that the increasing danger of climate change and global warming is a threat to all life, anti-believers argue that although 2014 was deemed the hottest year on record, the year saw record snow and cold in all four hemispheres. Additionally, oceans are rising much less than predicted. In 2005, Al Gore predicted that oceans would rise 20 feet by 2100. However, 80% of the tide gauges show less rise than the official “global average”. In fact, many tide gauges show no rise in sea level, and almost none show any acceleration over the past 20 years (Top Ten Reasons). These statistics accurately represent how torn many are on the subject of climate change. Although there are great points to be made on each side, it is always better to be safe than sorry, and the fight against climate change, believe or not, should be in the back of one’s mind at all
Organized Climate Change Denial by Dunlap and McCright (2011) introduces this rationale and gives a face to this denial. They present the idea of a “denial machine”. This machine is made of various different actors including conservative media, fossil fuel industries, and various front groups—these will be discussed in greater detail within the paper. Essentially, the motivations of the various cogs (actors) vary from economic to ideological to personal, yet overall they rally around shared opposition to “governmental regulatory efforts to ameliorate climate change, such as restrictions to carbon emissions.” (source) A large factor in governmental regulatory efforts is public opinion and, not coincidentally, there were significant declines in public belief of global warming in 2009 and 2010. This spread
To understand climate change, one must understand what a climate is. A climate can be defined as “the usual weather of a [particular] place…[to] include patterns of temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind, and seasons” (State of Washington, n.d.), just to name a few. Climate differs from weather as a climate is comprised of the usual conditions of a given place (i.e. is it consistently humid, dry, wet, cool, etc.), while weather is the conditions present at a given place at any one time (i.e. it is raining, snowing, sunny, etc.). Climates are unique to individual places and generally stay the same over time, while weather can change by the day.
The idea that climate change and global warming are hoaxes is quite possibly the most dangerous thing facing the world. Without acceptance and action, the problem and negative practices of several regions will only exasperate the already to real problem; the world’s climate is changing at an insurmountable rate, and it will take a global effort to reverse or even slow
The technological advances that are occurring just within the 21st century has given scientists resources to collect overwhelmingly accurate evidence showing global climate change is occurring. This has led to an ongoing and problematic controversial debate whether climate change is real or a hoax. The environmental issues that are taking place due to the effects of climate change are large, the solutions to these problems will vastly change human’s lifestyles and be costly. Climate change denial is supported due to politics, the fear of losing jobs in coal and agricultural occupations, and the control corporations have over
Climate Change links: https://www.epa.gov/climatechange/climate-change-basic-information http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/ http://climate.nasa.gov/causes/ http://climate.nasa.gov/ http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence Greenhouse effect: The greenhouse effect is the biggest cause of climate change The greenhouse effect has water vapor,nitrous oxide,methane,and carbon dioxide. Water vapor is the biggest greenhouse gas.
The warming trend the we are observing right now is particularly important because it’s proven to be mainly human-induced and proceeds at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years (IPCC, 2007) There is a strong, credible amount of evidence, based on numerous lines of research, which suggests that climate is changing and that these changes are in large part due to human activities. Certain scientific conclusions have been so scrupulously studied and tested, and supported by so many independent scientists that the likelihood of them to be proven wrong is incredibly small (The National Academies Press, 2010) However, even though we have a scientific consensus on climate change and its cause, the political response to a global warming problem has been strongly impacted by climate change denial, hindering efforts to prevent climate change and adapt to the warming climate (Dunlap, 2013) There are groups of people who reject this
To this day, climate change has been one of the major concerns of many researchers, scientists, and environmentalists. Many believe that there is a dramatic increase in the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere, a problem that is referred to as ‘global warming’. Even though global warming is a worldwide issue, the actual effort put into understanding its risk is very minimal. Haydn Washington and John Cook claim that often climate change denial arguments are used to hide the obvious truth about global warming causing misunderstanding among people about the issue (43). Global warming affects the environment in various ways causing untimely disasters, an unbalanced ecosystem, and costly health impacts which in turn
In our world today, one of our biggest issues is climate change. Climate change is caused by releasing greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane. The atmosphere traps the gases and too much of these gases can cause the atmosphere to heat up. About 97% of scientists agree that global warming is human-caused (“Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet: News”). These scientists also have found evidence to prove that climate change is human-caused. Yet, there are still some people who think that climate change is just all a big hoax or it was made up by scientists. Climate change is real and a reason why some people deny it is because it can benefit them.
Many businesses, industrial factories, and vehicles produce massive amounts of natural gases that affect the world in many ways. These gas particles that move rapidly and constantly collide with the atmosphere. This causes the air on Earth to contain higher kinetic energy due to the fact that more gas particles from the natural gases are colliding with the air particles. The higher kinetic energy results in higher temperature and heating of Earth’s surface. The heating of the Earth’s surface causes many of the world problems that we have today. As more and more factories and industries produce gases that pollute the world, they also increase the effects of global warming. Gas particles from these natural gases move rapidly throughout the atmosphere. Since these gases are still near the surface of the Earth, these gas particles collide much more and become more rapid creating more kinetic energy. If there is more kinetic energy in these gas particles, there is an increase in temperature. Around the world there are so many products and resources that require the release of gases. These gases, once released, increase the temperature in the atmosphere to be able to melt the ice at the north and south poles. The gas particles are able to spread out throughout the Earth’s atmosphere to trap the heat which increases the temperature of the Earth’s surface allowing the ice to melt.