The Effects Of Climate Change On The United States

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 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 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change not only reported about the occurrence of global warming, but also stated that it is caused by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels. The Gallup poll has tracked the views of Americans on this issue since the year 2001 and it has been consistent. Fewer people who were surveyed in 2008 said that global warming is due to human activities than natural causes, than people who were surveyed back in 2001. Republicans’ belief in human-caused global warming has decreased from 2001 to 2008 while the Democrats’ belief has risen in the same period of time (Dunlap&McCright, 2008, pg 29).

With the rise of calamitous news regarding extremists groups taking over certain states, countries threatening to go to war, and viruses spreading throughout the world; the outlook of humanity does not look good. In addition to these dire headlines is the matter of climate change, which, unfortunately, is not as alarming to the public eye. Nonetheless, climate change is a pressing matter as it will impact every facet of society from economy to even human survival. Perhaps the general public find climate change as a vapid subject because of its nature to react belatedly to human activity, and how it is often represented with numbers, graphs, and projections; things that are not compelling to those that do not understand its importance. Even

In 2007, 85% of Americans were convinced that global warming was happening. Ever since then numbers have been steadily lowering (Stanford University). Each year, less Americans have become aware of climate change although climate change has become a bigger threat to animals and humans. About 50% of Americans believe that action to prevent global warming should be taken right now (Yale University). However, a great deal of people do not believe that climate change is ruining the environment. They are just letting the environment get destroyed until it is too late. Americans should be aware and believe in global warming. The history and supporting information relates to the

Likewise, Chris Mooney, a journalist and author who evaluated the relationship between scientists and the public, discusses the similar issue about climate change in his article, “"If Scientists Want to Educate the Public, they Should Start by Listening.” He begins by gathering information generated from scientists and the public to determine why most people refuse to believe scientists on

Seeing climate change as an emergency doesn't always make people make actions because of many psychological barriers that limit the mitigation of climate change. Frantz and Mayer in their article" The Emergency of Climate Change: Why are We Failing to Take action? "Published in Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy (2009) and Gifford in " The Dragons of Inaction. Psychological Barriers That Limit Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation" published in American Psychology (2011), discussed the reasons why the American public are failing to take action to Climate Change even though they know that it is a grave issue. They also offered some suggestions that help in getting over those barriers.

Because of the most recent election season, there has been a renewed interest in the topic of climate change. In the 2016 Presidential election, the green party received over 1.2 million popular votes nationwide, when they usually receive only 100 thousand or so. With an increased interest in the topic of climate change, I feel it is necessary to provide factual data and projections on the path climate change will take to decrease misinformation. I proclaim the correct course of action to solve the problem of climate change is to do nothing.

The release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHGs) due to human activity is increasing global average surface air temperatures, disrupting weather patterns, and acidifying the ocean (1). Left unchecked, the continued growth of GHG emissions could cause global average temperatures to increase by another 4°C or more by 2100 and by 1.5 to 2 times as much in many midcontinent and far northern locations (1). Although our understanding of the impacts of climate change is increasingly and disturbingly clear, there is still debate about the proper course for U.S. policy—a debate that is very much on display during the current presidential transition. But putting near-term politics aside, the mounting economic and scientific

Organized Climate Change Denial by Dunlap and McCright (2011) introduces this rationale and gives a face to this denial. They present the idea of a “denial machine”. This machine is made of various different actors including conservative media, fossil fuel industries, and various front groups—these will be discussed in greater detail within the paper. Essentially, the motivations of the various cogs (actors) vary from economic to ideological to personal, yet overall they rally around shared opposition to “governmental regulatory efforts to ameliorate climate change, such as restrictions to carbon emissions.” (source) A large factor in governmental regulatory efforts is public opinion and, not coincidentally, there were significant declines in public belief of global warming in 2009 and 2010. This spread

attitudes toward global warming are shaped by an individual’s personal experience. Which they validate by performing over 2100 surveys across four different states. Respondents were provided with comprehensive information about the effects of several factors on their views about global warming. Briefly put, the study found that views on climate change in the United States were being shaped by a mix of personal experiences, events, and physical changes on the planet in this study most respondents were as although the focus of their data concentrates on the Individual-Level Causes of Belief in Climate Change. They also discover that there are other factors at play that they have to take into consideration, which is what sets this study apart from the one that came before it. Borick and Rabe as oppose to Carlisle and Smith believe demographics – more specifically party affiliation – play a role in an individual’s views towards environmental

Scientist believe that human activity is causing the earth’s temperature to increase unusually fast. They believe there is a correlation between increase levels of CO2 from burning fossil fuel and spikes in the earth’s temperature. From climate scientist discoveries 97% of all scientist believe that humans are the direct cause of global warming. Yet, based on two distinctly different arguments portrayed by the media, only 25% of US citizens believe that humans are the direct cause of global warming. One half of the media use scientific research as evidence and the other half uses tactics to keep the audience skeptical of scientific evidence on

Throughout the US efforts are beginning to be made to inform the public about climate change and how it will affect them throughout the rest of their lives. Those efforts are being met with criticism though, and there is still a large portion of the population that is under the impression that it doesn’t affect them. There is also the belief that climate change is just a myth, and for every excuse there is that is just another obstacle to bypass. Kusmawan is a chemist from Indonesia that provided a study about just what can happen when local students were educated about the environment and the changes it is experiencing. He discovered that after informing the students about what is happening around them, many of them then used that information to make changes within their own lives. They thought about their usual every day choices,