Climate Change and Global Warming: Why Are Politicians Still Debating?

The public discussion on climate change has become so polarized that some scientists don't even acknowledge there is a debate. Climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Gavin Schmidt, is one of those people.

In recent years, global climate change due to global warming has been largely researched. The paper, “Global Climate Change Triggered by Global Warming,” offers compelling evidence from various scientific papers that the process of Earth’s climate undergoing significant change has already begun and requires our attention due to the probability that human-generated greenhouse gases are the primary cause. Major focal points are shifting towards determining the causes to mitigate the effects rather than establishing the existence as sufficient amount of evidence has proven that global warming is indisputable. During the final decade of the 20th century, climatologists have concluded that the past millennium to be the warmest, especially in the year of 2005. Solutions towards the cause would require assistance from the population as a whole.

Global warming is the environmental and social changes caused by emissions of greenhouse gases. Human activities have been the primary cause of this significant change, resulting with extreme weather conditions, increasing sea levels, and climate changes. In this paper I will compare and contrast natural versus anthropogenic climate changes of global warming, mitigation strategies, mitigation effectiveness, policy implications, costs, and address some policy changes to help stabilize global climate.

Climate change is defined as a change in weather patterns. I am going to write about climate change and controversies surrounding it. Climate change is one of the most important topic which would be discussed around the world and would be important for a longer time to come. Political parties have different point of views about climate change. The person I chose to interview for this essay is Professor Jonathan Taylor and he teaches geography classes at Cal State Fullerton. Climate change is not happening worldwide because of natural causes but it is happening because of human activities.

Global warming is the steady heating of Earth’s land, oceans, and atmosphere caused primarily by human activity. Climate change is one of the world’s biggest challenges right now, from people actively arguing that it doesn’t exist- to other’s who don’t care enough to do anything about it. There’s evidence showing that climate change is happening and affecting our world now and from what it seems, if action isn’t taken, major consequences will soon arise. Most of the world’s land mass has experienced a 0.2-1.0 degree Celsius average temperature increase since the 1970s, the temperatures of the Artic has increased at almost twice the mean global rate. Climate change is caused by human factors such as greenhouse gases and ozone depletion and because humans are so dependent on fossil fuels in their day to day lives, the issue at hand is only going to get worse.

The first argument examined on the man-made global warning side is that increasing greenhouse gases caused by human activities is causing directly observed climate changes. The first resulting climate change discussed is warming global surface temperature. There has been an increase in global surface temperature of 0.74 degrees C since the late 19th century. In the last 50 years alone the temperature has increased by 0.13 degrees C per decade. North America and Eurasia have seen the largest increase in warmth. However, some areas of the earth have actually cooled some this past century (Easterling & Karl, 2011, para6). After the mid 20th century 70% of the global land mass saw reduced diurnal temperatures. From 1979 to 2005 the maximum and minimum temperatures have shown no change; both indicate warming (Easterling & Karl, 2011, para10). Furthermore, borehole temperatures, snow cover, and glacier recession data all seem to agree with recent warming (Easterling & Karl, 2011, para11).

Mike Huckabee; the former governor of Arkansas, said: “The most important thing about global warming is this. Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists, but it’s all of our responsibility to leave this planet in better shape for the future generations than we found it.” This addresses the controversy over climate change; even though many people support and advocate for taking immediate action to reduce the large footprint humans have made on the Earth, there’s just as many or more that are unwilling to do anything because whatever happens won’t occur in the current day, but instead years later. There are many factors to take into consideration; people should feel responsible for reversing

We are not able to predict all the nuances of climate change, but a few are obvious. The planet’s winds are driven in large part by the temperature difference between the poles and the tropics. Since the Arctic is heating faster than the tropics, the temperature difference is decreasing and wind speeds are slowing. They have already slowed in the northern hemisphere by between 5 and 15% in the past 30 years. One consequence of reduced winds is erratic behavior of the northern jet stream, the oscillations of which sometimes bring cold air south and warm air north. More erratic oscillations could cause blizzards, tropical cyclones, droughts and heat waves in unexpected places at unexpected times. Our computer models are not robust enough to predict what and where.

The jet stream is, in the English Oxford Dictionaries “A narrow variable band of very strong predominantly westerly air currents encircling the globe several miles above the earth.”. By altering this jet, the Arctic warms up before the equator does, which causes extreme weather. This extreme weather is warming the planet for a lengthy period: this means that heat waves, droughts, etc. will last longer. This warming will especially affect the Northern Hemisphere in its parallel, consequently hundreds of millions of people will be touched. This phenomenon has already begun, touching Europe with a heat wave in 2003 and Russia in 2010, Pakistan with a flood in 2010, and many more.

The meaning and understanding of climate change has been a critical issue of concern to development, scientific and environmental researchers in the world. All over the world, there have been a lot of issues surrounding the causes and impacts of the phenomenon which led to the establishment of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to help assess and provide information about climate change to society (Agrawala, 1998). This essay presents arguments on who is qualified to be an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expert and who should be qualified. It begins by describing the role of IPCC and its structure including the roles of the authors of the IPCC reports such as lead authors, coordinating lead authors, contributing authors, expert reviewers, review editors and government focal points (IPCC, 2008). It then concludes by arguing in favour of the need for the inclusion of other experts as part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) uses scientist from across the globe to provide detailed information on the dangers that human activity has on the world’s climate. The planet is getting warmer due to the growth of emissions, such as methane and carbon dioxide (Adams, 2015). To support this the graph below illustrates how surface temperatures have risen dramatically in recent years (Kerr, 2006).

The IPCC Status Report on Climate Change Summary for Policymakers is an assessment of the current scientific understanding of the impacts of climate

For the last decade, climate change has been a controversial topic amongst governing nations. Determining and agreeing upon appropriate courses of action, as well as the decided effects on populations and ecosystems have also long been debated. With little knowledge on the effects climate change might have on the human population, as well as our ability (or inability) to adapt, governing bodies look towards the IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for information regarding possible risks and impacts from climate change.

Throughout history climates have drastically changed. There have been shifts from warm climates to the Ice Ages (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2009, p.204). Evidence suggests there have been at least a dozen abrupt climate changes throughout the history of the earth. There are a few suspected reasons for these past climate changes. One reason may be that asteroids hitting the earth and volcanic eruptions caused some of them. A further assumption is that 22-year solar magnetic cycles and 11-year sunspot cycles played a part in the changes. A further possibility is that a regular shifting in the angle of the moon orbiting earth, with the ensuing changing tides and atmospheric circulation, affects the global climate (Cunningham & Cunningham,

Climate change otherwise known as global warming has been an ongoing issue for decades. Beginning in the 19th century, climate change has increasingly affected Earth and its atmosphere. Rising levels of carbon dioxide are warming the Earth’s atmosphere, causing rising sea-levels, melting snow and ice, extreme fires and droughts, and intense rainfall and floods. Climate change has and will continue to affect food production, availability of water, and can add to many health risks in humans and animals. In fact, in an article by Justin Gillis titled, “Scientists Warn of Perilous Climate Shift Within Decades, Not Centuries” he focuses on a paper written by a former NASA climate scientist, James E. Hansen, explaining the effects of climate change on Earth today. Although many believe Hansen’s theories in the paper are quite far-fetched, the author mentions, “Despite any reservations they might have about the new paper, virtually all climate scientists agree with Dr. Hansen’s group that society is not moving fast enough to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, posing grave risks” (Gillis). Gillis validates the fact that climate change has been rapidly expanding throughout Earth and society has not been able to reduce it fast enough. Many negative risks are being posed and will continue to mount if the issue of climate change is not taken seriously. Although climate change negatively affects nearly all aspects of Earth, it poses a big