Climate Change Has Proved Inadequate On Many Levels

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.

As a kid who has cared about nature his entire life, and an avid modern environmentalist for four years and counting, this issue has been at the center of my psyche for quite some time. I have seen public perspective on this issue change before my eyes. From the original rejection of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth movie on “global warming” to personally marching alongside 300,000 people in our nation's capital to raise awareness on climate change. However, despite all of these avenues the issue is still spoken about as this distant idea that eventually will be a disaster. Many politicians and news networks speak of the need for slow implementation of policies and programs to right our environmental wrongs. The best way to paraphrase the common narrative of this issue would be to say, climate change is going to happen down the road, it will probably be bad and trying to fix it in the near future would be a good idea. That weak call to action shoves climate change onto the long to-do list of the leaders of our world. Not only does it not create the urgency needed to actually curb the effects of our environmental ignorance, but it does not accurately describe the threat of a changing climate. Treating this like a political issue will not allow for the rigorous changes needed to address such a problem in the timely manner that is required.

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

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.

Throughout this article, most of it pertained to how the environmental community has shown that global warming is a social problem, while the public determined that global warming is a legitimate problem and supports policies that work against it. However, during the 1990s, the United State’s policies and beliefs on global warming were put into question. This is a result of the conservative movement challenging the notion whether or not climate change and global warming are social problems. The conservative movement pushes this further by using the media, creating policy forums, and sponsoring press conferences for policy makers in order to emphasize their point on how global warming is not a serious social issue.

provide the cure. However, some, much smarter than myself believe that climate change is not a

Climate change is a huge overarching issue that directly relates to almost every environmental issue we are facing today on the planet. In essence, climate change is the main incapacitating factor for the 4 factors of sustainability. The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication released a report based on the findings of a nationally represented survey. This report expands upon the connection between scientific findings behind climate change and how the public perceives this

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,

While mitigating global warming is not as easy to pin point what type of politics it should be considered. In Ryan Lizza’s article, “As the World Burns”, he explains why it was difficult for the Obama administration to pass a policy of mitigation of global warming. One of the issues was that the public did not particularly care as much about the policy as did smaller groups in the US. For the public, the issue was the least of their concerns making it difficult to motivate politics towards global

My Fellow Americans, I am sure that many, if not all, of you are aware of the debate surrounding climate change. The issue has been well-covered in the media, with positions being taken on all sides of the issue. There are those that have sounded the alarm, warning of impending doom should we fail to act. Some have argued that climate change is but a passing fad, a nonissue that poses no real threat to our way of life. Others still have carved out positions in between these two extremes.

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

This lecture was hosted by Dr. Andrew Hoffman from University of Michigan. As suggested by the title, this lecture was a “diluted” version of considerable research from his book, which focused on understanding the effects of culture and politics on the notion of climate change. Dr. Hoffman started the lecture by providing many scientific studies and facts proving the reality and seriousness of climate change. So the question is, why do some people choose to not believe and oppose the scientific consensus on issues of climate change, while all the proofs are present? And the simple answer he gave was that, the debate over climate change right now is not about science, is not about climate models, but about politics and the conflicting worldviews of these people and the values that are threatened by the notion of climate change. Dr. Hoffman then explained that one of the key arguments is that a scientific consensus does not necessarily reflect social consensus.

The problem is that there isn’t any public engagement on the issue of climate change because how I see it is that these days’ people are more worried about how many people have a job rather than how varying weather patterns and chemicals that they are burning in the air can ruin the climate. To me, I see that there is different perceptions on how people view the climate may change in the future. There are different issues that the administration has been framing such as improving the job situation in the United States because jobs from the Year 2008-2009 had a 21+ increase rather than reducing influence from fellow lobbyists which saw a decline of -3. As we see it now, people use frames as a way of putting a specific thought that they may have into motion. On a daily basis, people may resort to framing as a way to discuss varying topics

There are many topics of discussion that have polarized opinions, yet none are as hotly refuted as climate change. Although the discourse included is mostly about the causation behind our Earth’s recent rise in temperature, some people go as far as debating its very existence itself. The implications of climate change are severe and could potentially lead to a catastrophic event we can’t accommodate for. Scientists have confirmed the existence of climate change, yet they have not proven we are the sole cause, or that we are even the most contributing fact. There are many other facets of climate change effects, and our current path is being scrutinized to see if we have a lasting effect.

For many individuals global warming is not a serious problem and they do not believe that global warming is happening right now. However, “Each Passing day brings yet more evidence that we are now facing a planetary emergency, a climate crisis demands immediate attention.” (Gore, 2007).