Is Fossil Fuel Based Energy The Threat From Climate Change?

Climate change is known as one of the greatest threats to the planet. It is not only a threat to the planet environmentally, but it is a threat socially and economically. As we all could feel, see, and know, the weather patterns globally and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been increasing over an extended period of time. Although it may seem like it’s not a dramatic change since it is data from over a large amount of time, it is considering the fact that the large amount of time is not that large as it should be. Climate change is nothing new to us. It’s happened many years ago in the past because a variety of reasons but as the years go on, the rate on charts are just getting higher. As much as I would like to blame this predicament on nature, humans has a fault as well. We release thousands of greenhouse gases into the air through many procedures, but there are things that we cannot entirely control. However, whoever’s fault it is to blame I believe that if we work together and think we will more likely be able to find effective solutions for this problem.

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.

Climate change has been happening over the last century, and the debate of its effects has become more intense over the last years. The issue of the climate change has become national, to the point that even the government has gotten involved. The fight between the government and the environmentalists has created a controversy in the United States, but not many changes have been done to protect humanity.

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.

Climate change is an issue that has plagued the minds of humans for centuries. The issue goes back as far as the ancient Greeks, who thought that cutting down forests could lead to more rain. We have always been preoccupied with the topic, and now finally we have evidence that it is in fact happening. We have to work towards lessening the effects that climate change has on our society and combat the reluctance of our government to change our nation’s methods of getting energy. In, “A Climate Repair Manual,” by Gary Stix, he urges Americans to change their ways and use more renewable sources of energy.

In part 4 of The Quest, Daniel Yergin does a nice job of laying out the chronological development of the climate change movement. This of course starts first with the science of being able to understand the climate and take the measurements necessary to observe changes happening in the natural world. It was interesting to learn the important role glaciers played in the early development of studying the climate and that for a time, aside from a few outliers even today, the concern about climate rested with the return of an ice age. Fortunately, the increased study of carbon dioxide and its effects in the atmosphere led the way for the new thinking about human’s effect on climate, as well as, provide direction for measurements and modeling

According to scientific research, the average temperature of the earth has risen by between ten and twenty degrees Celsius (M.L. Weitzman, 2008). These high temperatures could well be described as a ‘recipe for disaster’, and could produce results that would be catastrophic on a global scale. What is more alarming however, is that there is already a lot of evidence of predicted results of climate change, for instance, in Australia especially, severe draughts have been common in farming areas in the last few decades, there has been an increase of intense and extreme weather events, for example floods, flash floods, tsunamis, earthquakes and tornados, almost all of the natural disasters listed have occurred for ‘unknown’ reasons in the past few years. Rises in sea water level and temperature due to higher acid levels caused by global warming, threaten the existence of species and in some areas, entire eco-systems resulting in the loss of natural biodiversity. ‘Climate change is pushing the world to the verge of environmental and economic collapse, whether global deniers want to believe it or not’ (N. Klein, 2011).

The author, Denchak, would like us to know that global warming is undoubtedly dangerous to our survival. Denchak explained that the hotter the weather is, the worse it will be for our environment. The author claims if global warming continues, it will be detrimental to our ecosystem and livelihood. Aliya Haq from the NRDC’s Clean Power Plan stated that weather disasters will increase due to how rapidly the weather is changing and how unnatural it is. Global emissions will make the temperature increase 8 degrees by the year 2100 if it continues to grow the way it is now. Furthermore, “...humans are the number one cause of the epidemic”, claims

In the early 20th century people knew that they could cause changes to their local climates by, for example, leveling large portions of forests and over ploughing fields; but very few thought human action could affect the global climate. It wasn’t until 1958 that humans began to record measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which revealed an increasing amount. This new data scientists were recording supported the idea of global climate change as real and that increased green house gases in the atmosphere would in fact cause the world’s climate to become warmer. In the 1980’s the world’s global temperature started to climb at a faster pace than seen before which helped the issue gain attention among the public, the scientific community,

Climate change is not an idea that just popped into existence within the last few years, it has been a political issue since the 1990's but the issue began to raise its head in the 1970's. There are many different factors that play into the greenhouse effect that has wrapped the planet. The most important cause is the gases in the atmosphere blocking heat from escaping. While carbon dioxide plays a part in the greenhouse effect, the most abundant is water vapor while the methane in the atmosphere is far more active than the carbon dioxide will ever be. Nitrous oxide, used in soil cultivation practices, and Chlorofluorocarbons, which are synthetic compounds of industrial origin, also play a part, but on a smaller scale (Global Climate Change:

Climate change is a monumental problem in today’s American society, as it took center stage in the election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Both candidates had separate ways of going about the problem, introducing contrasting platforms. Hillary Clinton focused on continuing the regulations we have today through the Environmental Protection Agency, while Donald Trump wanted to roll back the regulatory funds considerably given to the agency.

A lack of progress in recent years indicates a low level of concern among world leaders. In recent years, many scientists have implored leaders who seem not to be interested in climate change to show leadership in offsetting the impact of human induced climate change to the planet. As some world leaders seem not to see the urgency to mitigate the impact of global warming, the problem is getting more grounded. It is clear that human activities have altered the composition of the atmosphere since the industrial age. More and more power plants have been built, and their greenhouse gas emissions are causing more discomfort to the

Within the past few decades, there has been no political or public discussion as heated and controversial as the debate over climate change. Climate disputes can be traced back all the way to 1837, when Louis Agassiz proposed a theory claiming that Switzerland had once been covered with large ice sheets, and have become a big part of the international scientific community since then (Archer and Rahmstorf 2010). Today, climate change is not only a scientific issue, but it has grown into an economic and political issue as well. The rising amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, most of which has been added through human activities, has caused a climb in the average temperatures around the planet. This can have huge effects on the future

Climate change has become one of the most important issues on the global political agenda. This is largely due to the fact that the developments that influence climate change also impact the way in which life is conducted at local, regional, national, and global level.

In this research paper, I will discuss what climate change is and what causes it. I will also describe how the political and scientific communities differ on the topic. Next, I will discuss the causal chain of climate change starting with the Industrial Revolution until today. After that I will cover the differing beliefs of Democrats and Republicans, and what each party is doing in regards to climate change. Lastly, I will cover what is being done by businesses, governments, and individuals in the world to combat climate change, and provide possible solutions, including the use of renewable energies to solve this problem.