Perhaps
one of the most contested scientific debates of all time, the global climate
change proposal holds that man-made greenhouse gases are altering the climate
of earth. The Kyoto Protocol was
created in 1997 and was an agreement designed to reduce greenhouse gases by
2008 to well below what the worldwide admissions were in the 1990s. However,
the document never received authorization in the U.S., thus America has yet to
join the worldwide effort to seriously reduce its carbon footprint. While global climate change has
garnered a lot of support from renowned scientists across the world, it has
received almost as much criticism as well. There is no dispute that the earth
is gradually growing warmer, however the debate lies in whether humans are to
blame or not. The issue is
unlikely to reach a complete consensus any time soon.
Arguing
for the case of global climate change in the text Taking Sides, is
author Gregg Easterbrook. He
states that while there are some good to global warming – like longer growing
seasons, the bad outcomes will outweigh the good. For instance, equatorial disasters will increase – like
diseases in countries around the equator, the sea level will rise – completely
wiping out some small landmasses, and the melting ice glaciers will alter the
biology of the sea. There also
could be severe altering of global agriculture production. Global warming is unpredictable, thus
rainfall could potentially not fall where it is needed in major agricultural
areas, causing mass starvations.
True, most of the effects of global warming are only projections made by
credible sources – but taking the chance on allowing global warming to persist
isn’t worth the potential outcomes. As for a solution, the U.S. is not the
leader. By refusing to sign onto
the Kyoto agreement (because it would grant the U.N. some authority over
America’s emissions) the agreement, which was created in part by U.S. President
Bill Clinton, has lost its significance.
If one of the world’s biggest industry nations refuses to sign onto an
agreement it helped create, why should other countries sign the Kyoto? Thus, the U.S. must reconsider its
position on greenhouse gas emissions to forge the path for the rest of the
world.
Looking
from a different standpoint, many scientists still call global warming a hoax,
or don’t contribute humans as the main cause. Author Larry Bell states that global warming and temperature
fluctuation is just another cycle of earth’s atmosphere – cycles that have been
occurring for millions of years.
He goes so far as to explain that global warming is a hoax, made up by
people who stand to gain from policy changes, like alternative energy
companies, the U.N. and other regulation agencies. However, on May 30, 2008, The Telegraph published an article
citing a petition, which thousands of scientists had signed – claiming that
greenhouse gases such as methane are actually beneficial for the
atmosphere. On February 13, 2013,
Forbes stated that there is no general consensus on whether global warming is
really happening, and if it is, there’s not a consensus in the scientific world
on who is causing it. Why should
there be action taken regarding global warming if the experts can’t even agree
on the issue?
On
a personal level, I do believe in global warming – or at least the fact that
cleaner energy needs to start becoming the norm. Greenhouse emissions do produce some gases that are normal
to our atmosphere, however it creates an off-balance structure of these
gases. The Huffington Post on July
22, 2009 stated that the famous petition of scientists claiming global warming
is nothing to be concerned about was not credible. The reason being, only 0.1% of those signatures came from climatologists,
the rest were from credible sources- but who were claiming knowledge outside
their field of expertise. For
instance, while most of the signatures had PhD following the name, a lot of
those doctorate degrees are in medicine, not in climate expertise areas. Global warming is an issue my
generation and the next especially will have to face head on – because this
generation isn’t taking it seriously…. yet.