Week #13 Global Warming

            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.