Human Induced And Proceeds At A Rate

Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. This body of data, collected over many years, reveals the signals of a changing climate.

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 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%

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.

Regardless of how visible the changes are presently there are changes occurring constantly. The climate has been changing for decades and that is only what we have scientific data on so the changing could potentially be going on for much longer. The people that favor this denial strategy are simply uncritical thinkers who either don’t want to accept the state of the world and the destination that we are heading or that they have too much financially at stake. Those who are in the latter situation have an ethical dilemma because they should agree with the facts, therefore agreeing with global warming but this would then call for action which for businesses especially will be costly. In our day in age, with our technology, it is difficult to claim you don’t believe in climate change. The acceptance of global warming is scary because it’s the acceptance of the destruction and distortion humans have cause to Earth but even more difficult is the response to the enlightenment. However, that is only half of the

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 causing changing tides and atmospheric circulation affects the global climate (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2009,

The highly-impassioned issue of human-made climate change, or the idea that current climate-warming trends can be attributed to modern-day human activities, has become a very debated topic in our current century. In the last few decades, proponents and challengers of the anthropomorphic effects of this problem have volleyed arguments back and forth about whether climate change is a paramountly human-caused phenomenon or a predominantly natural process, with the latter arguing that there are few to no man-made sources like environmental experts seem to constantly urge. Jeffrey Mazo exhibits many reasons as to why individuals may be hasteful in denying the overwhelming impact of human activity on this ever-pressing issue in his article

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.

Even though many new evidence of climate change are being released, it is said that more than half of the United States is still in denial. Either they believe that climate change is a natural issue or that there’s still not sufficient evidence to call it a problem. However, it has been proven by scientist that global temperature has increased by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1900s. Adding on, it has been recorded that the 10 of the most warmest years all occurred within the last

Climate change. A buzz spreading around the world that has been known for decades but has recently bloomed into a rather controversial topic. With the topic being brought up in political debates, presidential speeches, as well as everyday conversations, there is one thing everyone can agree on: climate change is happening. Climatologists have proven with scientific evidence that the earth is rising in temperature and that this is a growing threat to our society. (AAAS) Although everyone agrees on this, there is still a disagreement on why climate change is happening and how can someone stop it? The two questions are really one in the same because once we get to the root of the issue we can prevent it from happening. Climate change remains a crucial problem in the U.S. and there are different approaches are being considered on how to solve this issue coming from our states, our president, and our congressman.

Our planet is experiencing a level of climate changes previously unreached. Through the analysis of ice cores, tree rings, glacier lengths, pollen remains and ocean sediments (EPA, 2016), scientists have been able to piece together the Earth’s climate for roughly the last million years (some claim several millions of years). Through this research and the study of historic environmental events, it has been determined that the Earth’s climate changes from warmer to cooler over thousands of years due to natural reasons such as changes in solar energy, volcanic eruptions, and natural changes in the emission of greenhouse gases (EPA, 2016). However, in the last ~150 years or so, this trend has deviated severely due to human causes.

The issue is simple and rather obvious; climate change is real and a problem. With a changing climate comes rising sea levels, hotter days, and stronger and wilder storms, and long painful droughts. What most people can’t seem to agree on is whether or not human activity is playing some role in it. From media outlets to internet forums, the debate is being fought on all fronts. Most of these arguments, however, are just personal opinions and poorly-made observations from the comfort of a gas-guzzling SUV. Honestly, it doesn’t take a genius to look up a legitimate scientific paper and see the data for yourself. Human activity is influencing the global climate in a negative way, with plenty of evidence to prove it and very little disagreement in the scientific community.

More than 17,000 scientists have signed a petition saying human activities do not threaten to disrupt the climate. This overwhelming amount of people has been told to be wrong by one body of people. This body is our government, for many years now they have spoke of the horrendous situations stemming from global warming. This makes no sense; with the facts and information that we have received over the years they still support this preposterous idea. Humans do nothing to contribute to global warming; the irregular climate events are just natural occurrences. These occurrences are no stranger to our history either. (“Global Warm Up”)(“An Inconvenient Truth”)