Summary Of Think Again Climate Change By Bill Mckibben

Climate change is not a new concept. It has been mostly referred to as global warming in the past. As much as people would like to file this issue away as something to deal with at a later date, it simply cannot wait. This problem we face is costing us billions of dollars, forests and wildlife are being eliminated, and people are dying. Starting to sound like a big deal, right? Future generations will be affected the most. People who do not even exist will have to pay for what we, all people, have done to this earth. To begin to make changes, one must realize the severity of the issue. Bill Mckibben, author of “Recalculating the Climate Math,” conveys that “We’ve already raised the world’s temperature by one degree—enough to melt almost half the ice in the Arctic, kill off huge swaths of the world’s coral, and unleash lethal floods and drought. July and August tied for the hottest months ever recorded on our planet, and scientists think they were almost certainly the hottest in the history of human civilization” (Page 3 of 5). Global climate change is a serious problem because it increases natural disasters and is the cause of extreme weather.

“Scientists’ overwhelming conclusion is that climate change is happening and human activity is the primary culprit,” (“Climate Change”). The world we live in is falling apart more and more every day. Pollution; Global Warming; Climate Change; These are all problems that caused by people who have come forward in recent years, one of the biggest issues is climate change. The United States government needs to take aggressive steps to combat climate change because scientist have warned that if the climate changing progresses at its current rate, it could have disastrous consequences for life on Earth. Data shows that climate change is linked to rising sea levels, droughts, an increase in the risk of extinction of many species, and the increase in severe storms. With all the issues that are connected to climate change we are not doing enough to try to counteract the lasting effects it has on our environment.

Kerry Emanuel starts off by explaining that the Earth’s climate does not naturally stabilize (hence the chapter title, “The Myth of Natural Stability”) and that even the slightest human interaction could send our climate on a downward spiral that we may not be able to recover from. Emanuel also talks about what he calls the, “two strands of environmental philosophy”, which is simply the scientific vs. religious or mythological view of the stability of the natural state of the universe. The scientific viewpoint credits things like heliocentricity and continental drift, while the other claims that the floods and comets were the works of god or gods.

Global warming is the rising of temperatures on the surface of the earth due to the trapping of heat rising from the earth’s surface. It is caused by the destruction of the Ozone layer by the carbon dioxide emitted mostly from the burning of the fossil fuel and the deforestation. The ozone layer is a layer of oxygen in the atmosphere responsible for absorbing the heat from the earth’s surface.

Climate change in our natural ecosystems are at risk; since human economics and cultures depend on. Caused by human factors such as greenhouse gases, the evidence of climate change is becoming more clearer. These ecosystems, it threatens humans as well. According to Stephen M Gardiner, money and morals block our way to stop global warming. In his essay “A Perfect Moral Storm”, he lists these types of dilemmas, or “storms”that prevent meaningful action against climate change: the global storm, the intergenerational storm, the theoretical storm, and the moral storm. By “theoretical storm”, Gardiner refers to the fact that the ongoing climate change is a result of uncontemplation. On the other hand, Climatologist John R Christy believes that global warming isn’t something that we should worry about and our impact will be minuscule if we try to stop it. Of these dilemmas, the theoretical storm is most critical to Christy’s testimony because the time to fixate global warming is now before the future populations decide it’s too late.

In his essay, McKibben claims that global warming “has to become a political issue—and fast. The only way that may happen, short of a hideous drought or monster flood, is if it becomes a personal issue first.” He supports this claim by exploring the obviously damaging effects of global warming and the causes of these effects. For example, he points to research about coral reefs suggesting that “rising water temperatures are likely to bleach them [coral reefs] to extinction by mid-century.”

Global climate change is an issue being debated all over the world from the recent presidential debates late last year to documentaries being created on either side of the global warming debate. Currently, the world is experiencing many tremendous changes including warming or the earth and rising of our oceans. “The heat extremes were especially pervasive in the Arctic, with temperatures in the fall running 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit above normal across large stretches of the Arctic Ocean. Sea ice in that region has been in precipitous decline for years, and Arctic communities are already wrestling with enormous problems, such as rapid coastal erosion, caused by the changing climate” ”(Gillis, 2). Some believe that global warming exists while

Global warming has become such a prevalent topic in world politics and news. I chose the book Eaarth by Bill McKibben because global warming is becoming a large problem, and if left unheeded, global warming will destroy our environment and present brutal obstacles for our grandkids and future generations. In his book Eaarth, Bill McKibben urges us to seriously examine global warming to solve this perplexing difficulty. By increasing awareness on this threatening development, we may be able to solve this problem.

Climate change is a rising issue of importance in our day and age, and one that is threatening our global society on many levels. It has become a wicked problem throughout the years. A wicked problem does not have a definitive definition due to large uncertainties. Atmospheric and oceanic concentrations of climate change have been consistently rising over time, and threaten to have immense human wellbeing, scientific and economic impacts in the future if the globe neglects to achieve reasonable emission levels. There is no one solution for a wicked problem.

Usually when you read dystopian novels they take place far into the future or on a different planet, something Orwellian. We as a society, like to think this is what will happen if we continue to behave a certain way. Since the projections in these novels and pieces are so farfetched, nobody ever stops to compare it to the world today. However, Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth, states the harsh realities of the world’s current condition and the devious schemes of wealthy corporations. Global warming is perhaps the most frequent issue televised about the world today. It’s known that this ‘climate change’ is a product of greenhouse gases and the burning of fossil fuels; something of which is done by humans. Solutions and conservation strategies have been

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,

Decades ago, the theory of global warming was considered a conspiracy theory, with the lack of scientific evidence and the acceptance from society. However, in recent years, the controversy has become further familiarized by both scientific experts and the general society. The overall controversy, when arguing about global warming, is whether or not humans have any contribution to the issue. Substantially humans have different point of views to this issue because there is no real one solution to all agree on. In the article “Global Warming,” Veerabhadran Ramanathan states that “the most important environmental issue facing the world today” in understanding the impacts to earth is understanding carbon dioxide (2). For instance, there is a viewpoint

In 2006, former senator Al Gore created an academy award winning documentary on global warming entitled “An Inconvenient Truth” . The movie earned several awards including an academy award for best documentary and gore later received a noble peace prize. The movie discussed several different topics of great concern to global warming; such as permafrost, climbs in temperature, extinction of species, drought, and fatigue to name a few. Four writers in five different articles discussed the three topics of greenhouse gases, climate change, and causes of global warming. These writers are writer and scholar Bill McKibben in “Think Again: Climate Change” and “How Close to catastrophe”; William J. Broad, writer for the New York Times in “From a Rapt audience, a call to cool the hype”; writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Kevin O’Brien, in “Global Warming? I won’t be losing any sleep over it”; and Alan Zarembo, staff writer for the the Los Angeles Times, in “Game over on global warming?” All though the articles explain some different topics from one another, only one of them disagree with gore on the causes for global warming being humans, they all agree that there will be impacts to the environment, and all of them believe that greenhouse gases are one of the primary causes for global warming.

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, Global Warming is real and mostly man-made. During last two decades, saving the earth has become a global movement. Despite of all the recent strenuous efforts for global awareness, there are people who believe “Global Warming” is just another propaganda campaign; people who confuse money with the well-being of the earth and its inhabitants. As a result, our current solutions, legislations, and policies are far away from a practical and effective solution in the long run. In particular, we have been spending too much for very little good. To recapitulate, the problems with climate change along with other global problems like poverty, hunger, crime, war, and natural disasters, all over the world, need a

Former president Barak Obama said ‘Denying climate change is like arguing that the moon is made of cheese’ (“News”). He provides an exact opinion on Climate change that it is not a theory; it is a fact. Every year is becoming warmer than the previous one which ultimately changes our way of living. People living in coastal area are experiencing more floods than ever before and others are facing health related problems. Glaciers and snowcapped mountains are melting, which leads to increase in sea levels. Furthermore, it has destroyed the natural habitat of aquatic animals and polar bears. This has led to unwanted alteration in the ecosystem. And most importantly various islands are on the verge of sinking into the ocean.