Climate Change Andrew Hoffman Analysis

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.

With today’s broad spectrum of opposing political ideals, climate change is one of the most polarizing and argued points. In an article entitled “Why Some Conservatives Can’t Accept That Climate Change Is Real” by Carolyn Gregoire, we are presented the supposed thought process and biases held by modern conservatives. The author, Carolyn Gregoire, serves as a senior science and health writer at The Huffington Post. Though challenging competency is a common attack used on both sides of the political isle, this piece sidesteps petty mudslinging and instead takes root in the psychological differences between liberals and conservatives. Inherently, as a political piece, this article criticizes the conservative thought camp. In doing so, this article (like a majority of articles on the Huffington Post) is written towards a sympathetic, liberal audience. Pertaining mainly to psychology, there is no doubt logos is the appeal used by the author. Furthermore, with logos often comes strong, inductive reasoning. As we delve deeper into this article, we also will examine and explore several fallacies implemented by the author. Also

People have become unconvinced about climate change due to the fact that people believe it is over exaggerated when talked about, when really it is reality. Being a unconvinced society prevents people from wanting to become more educated and aware of the issue. Some people believe that climate change is not real due to the stupidity of uneducated and opinionated members of our society.

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.

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.

Media coverage of climate change has effects on public attitude on the issue, as it mediates scientific opinion on climate change. The media uses interactions between climate science, policy, statistical scientific texts, data, scientific language and the appearances of scientific personalities. Such as work and stories from scientists that are personally known. It is clear that science and policy shape media reporting and public understanding. Whether people believe in it or not is their

When thinking about the topic of climate change, my mind tends to go in twenty different places. I want to have a complete and honest understanding of climate change, but being such a dynamic topic with so many aspects, that may be hard to achieve. These aspects include scientific research, the economy, the government’s contribution, and society’s contribution to it. My prior knowledge of what exactly climate change and global warming is, comes from brief explanations in science classes and research that I have done on my own so I do not sound completely clueless while discussing this issue. From my understanding, the two sides of this debate are the politicians and the scientists. In my opinion, I will always stand on the environment’s side,

Climate change is one of the most controversial and ongoing topics in society today. Scientist and politicians alike all have opinions, but very often they are not in line with each other. 97% of climatologists agree that climate change is happening, as well as many of the large corporations in this field such as NASA, the Geological Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of science. Still, these debates take place on sites such as climatedebatedaily.com or the worldwide conference that was held on June 6, 2015 that took place 79 countries. Both sides claim to have solid evidence that supports their theories, but it is evident to most scientists and corporations alike that the human race is creating our own destruction

Teresa Feldhausen’s article about global warming focused on the various opinions or beliefs people form based on where they reside in the world. The excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and oceans, as well as other threats to the environment, has been studied by scientists for many years. Large numbers of people, however, are either unaware of the issue or simply do not agree with the scientific evidence. Everyone in the world does not have access to education and technology, which leaves many societies at a disadvantage and prevents them from staying up to date on global concerns.

The problem that the pro- global warming theorists have created is that of social standing and little else. While there may be scientific backing to support some of the theory, the media presents the problem with great sensationalism. Global warming and energy conservation has thus become a trend and losses some of its validity through this. The scare tactics used by the media to “promote awareness” are just that, a linguistic ploy to gain favor. “Awareness of this global threat reinforced public concern and environmental problems and thereby provided environmental activists, scientists, and policy makers with new momentum in their efforts to promote environmental protection.” (McCright, 2000) This statement draws line to the potential benefits that would be received if the pro-global warming theorists were to draw enough attention to the issue. Driven by social empowerment and conviction to environmental protection, these activists misrepresent the actual threat and paint it as being much more

The lecture I attended was called “Love and Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle to Stop Climate Change Failed and What it Means for our Future”. The lecture was given by Dale Jamieson. He teaches at New York University and has been funded by many big environmental agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency. In his lecture, Dr. Jamieson wanted to answer the question, “Why have we failed to take evidence-based action when it comes to climate change?”. It is especially astonishing the stance that some of our country’s major leaders have on the topic. For example, Donald Trump has tweeted that climate change is a “Chinese hoax”. Even though he claims that he was joking when he said this, climate change is not a joking matter. Scientists continuously warn the government and the public about how much carbon is being released into the atmosphere due to

Despite a mountain of evidence they think that this is just a natural cycle that global temperature rises and falls over time as part of a natural process. Deniers argue that scientists are constantly changing their minds about climate change. The media fuels this mindset by constantly looking for new headlines. The reporters proclaim loudly that “Scientists predict an ice age,” based on a cursory reading of some study before it has even been peer reviewed. In reality the debate has long been settled within the scientific community. Approximately 97 percent of scientists agree that the current trend of global warming is caused by man. The projected temperature rise from these greenhouse gasses has matched almost perfectly with actual observed global temperature. This is an irreversible process that we can slow but not stop, but in order to do so, we need to come together as a planet and agree to some strict rules on

The response to climate change has proved inadequate on many levels. Partially this is because the issue requires scientific literacy that many simply do not possess, allowing leaders to underplay or ignore the danger since the public is not able to analyze the issues, and giving opportunity for groups such as gas companies to wield their considerable clout in favor of what benefits business instead of the environment. Furthermore, because of the large scale of climate change, the consequences are hard to see and the blame can be pushed around. Accordingly, climate change is highly-politicized, and cannot be addressed factually without upsetting one group or another. Whether or not climate change exists may be a difficult question to answer to the satisfaction of some individuals, but it is still not a political question; treating it as such means leaving the potential danger unexamined.

This chapter discusses the denial of climate change. The author’s perspective focuses on the warming of the earth and how that is altering the biophysical world around which human social systems are organized. Despite the heat records and extreme weather events climate change has remained the “Elephant in the Room”. Climate scientists have identified global warming as the most important issue of our time.

Public opinion on the topic of climate change remains divided despite over two decades worth of research and a strong consensus in the scientific community (Deryugina and Shurchkov, 2016). In an experimental survey, the authors tested whether providing the public with information based on scientific agreement on the occurrence and causes of climate change would affect the respondent’s beliefs. They found that not only did the public significantly underestimate the extent of the scientific consensus, the survey also indicated that those who were given concrete information about scientist’s views were more likely to report believing that climate change was already happening and that it was caused by humans. Moreover, the results concluded