How Climate Change Is Inherently Flawed

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.

In his essay titled “Climate of Denial”, Al Gore, a well known environmental advocate and former vice president, verifies the reality of climate change and global warming. The piece is an attack on corrupt companies and news outlets that attempt to persuade the public that global warming is not a critical issue. Gore also earnestly conveys our environment’s current state and offers possible solutions that would increase awareness about global warming and begin to revert the planet back to a healthier, more sustainable state. The overarching purpose of Gore’s work is to call attention to the widespread climate change that is occurring. However, he also focuses on the corruption and bias within the media, and their attempts to conceal the truth about global warming. Writing to those who are conflicted about who to believe, he makes a valid argument that defends the beliefs of he and his fellow activists and encourages others to become more active in the climate change issue.

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.

An urgent issue, climate change is undoubtedly a sweeping global dilemma of paramount importance. Though most people are aware of this fact, many either choose to ignore it, or acknowledge it, but take no action against it. Those who do choose to take action usually attempt to combat climate change by using the methods that are most commonly discussed: becoming more energy efficient, recycling, and reducing emissions through using more sustainable transportation. Though these actions are helpful, they are not the most efficient way to counter climate change.

The North American Drought of 1988 marked the very first time global warming crossed over from scientists to mass media coverage. Following an American professor’s address to the Senate correlating abnormal weather to global warming, European nations addressed the issue, and many countries began to reduce greenhouse gas. The European Union ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 to make it legally binding. In Europe, global warming was acknowledged as a problem, with the only debate centered around how serious of a problem it was- 87% said it was a very serious problem, where around 10%

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

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.

The world now faces one of the most and complex issues it has ever had to deal with: climate change. Many people believe it 's not true and caused much uproar on the topic. But most of the world’s great nations or company leaders can no longer deny that it is a real issue. The huge impact that humans have had on the Earth has literally changed the climate and how it functions. Higher temperatures are reported yearly and even monthly, stronger storms are forming causing harsh tornados or hurricanes, and some of the planet’s critical nonrenewable resources are being depleted forever. For all of these major changes that in the very end affect everyone on Earth, The nations of the world have not all gone about climate change in the same

The election of 2000 took place during a time that was mostly peaceful, unemployment rates were historically low, but however, there were a record number of terrorist threats (Muhlhausen). Despite all of these headlining topics presidential candidate Al Gore and Vice President Joe Lieberman were far more concerned about global climate change (“Al”). Gore was, and still, is very passionate about this topic (“Al”, 9). He has challenged the two biggest polluters in the world, China and The United States to, “Make the boldest move in climate change.” Figure 5

Unlike other problems in America; abortion, gay marriage, etc. climate change has a strong scientific consensus about the need for action. One can make a good case that abortion is good or bad. But can’t argue that based on the evidence, climate change is not happening. And just because most climate scientists believe that climate change is happening, does not mean that that any certain policy is the “right”

In Dayton Duncan’s New York Times op-ed “Are We Loving Our National Parks to Death” he brings up the argument about how we are not preserving our national parks like we use to when they were first established. Duncan also tells us that climate change is affecting some of the national parks. Climate change is man made and we need to change our ways or the future generations won't be able to see some of the national parks. Scientists today are more certain, than what they have been in the past, that climate change is man made. Climate change causes natural disasters to happen more frequently and makes them hit harder. Even though there is data that proves that climate change is caused by humans, there are still people who deny it because they

It has never been difficult to see that Fox News has a conservative bias. And while they are not the only news network that has a political leaning, they have one of the strongest. In this paper, I will show how Fox News’s conservative identity prevents the network from appropriately reporting on climate change. To do this, I must start by asserting that, yes, climate change is very real, it is human caused and it is only going to get worse if nothing is done to slow its progress (Climate change: How do we know?). This is the conclusion that the majority of the scientific community has come to, and most of the world has accepted it as fact. In the United States, however, climate change is still

Over 35 years ago, climatologist Wally Broecker coined the term global warming in a paper outlining the trends that he was noticing with temperature and C02 levels (Stefan). Ever since then, the debate has heated up on the controversy of global warming. Politicians have even used the issue to boost their campaigns. Some question whether the earth’s temperature is rising at an unusual rate. Scientists perform experiments from glacial ice to observe the correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperature. Scientists have changed the debate over the years from debating whether global warming was actually happening to the current debate about what is causing global warming. Therefore, the term global warming in this paper refers to

Moving on from this, Miller helps discuss one of the side issues that leads to confusion; medias’ portrayal of events. Because the media (“New York Times,” “Los Angeles Times,” etc.) wants to “show both sides of the story,” they allow deniers of the issues, less reputable scientists, and advocates for non-environmental friendly companies to essentially blow off the issue of global warming, and publish their opinions, when in reality, the problem is only becoming ever more present. From the increasing amount of fossil fuels burned, deforestation taking place, and emission of pollution (from electricity generated, transportation, etc.) scientists and researchers have been able to collect data of the global climate’s rise, as well as

Climate change is an issue that needs to be addressed. According to nasa.gov, “most scientist agree the main cause of climate change is human expansion of the greenhouse effect.” The greenhouse effect warms the Earth because the atmosphere traps heat that is trying to get to space. I believe that it is very important to care for our environment. Decisions we make regarding the environment might not be noticeable in our lifetime but will greatly affect future generations. While making small, more environmentally friendly changes can be good, I think that the biggest change in how we approach the issue of climate change will be made within government.