The Controversy: The Rise Of Global Warming

The globe is being rocked by extreme weather and the hottest temperatures on record. As the average global temperature soars, there are floods, droughts, unusually cold winters, forest fires, and huge storms. Are all of these horrors being caused by human-induced global warming?

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.

Global warming is hot topic nowadays. Alarmists and scientists fight to make their statements known, but while the alarmists avoid the scientist, non-governmental organizations pass themselves as scientist. They not only give out exaggerated data, they also have the nerve to accuse humans of being the cause of global warming. Also, we cannot be certain that we are being told the truth without knowing exactly what is really going on behind the scenes. We blindly trust those in authority because we think that they have our greater good in mind and that whatever they say must be the truth.

In Michael Pollan's article “Why Bother?” he discusses how climate change is a serious threat to humanity and needs to be addressed immediately. Pollan begins to discuss possible solutions but also realizes that these “solutions” may not be easily achieved. There is no way to eliminate people who make a conscious effort to help the advancement of climate change, but it is still important for others to attempt to make changes to help save the environment.

That is a really deep question. For this paper, I wanted to understand the climate change issue better. I wanted to understand how humans acknowledge (or even deny) climate change, still yet do nothing to remedy the problem. Most people are guilty of this. I, myself am guilty of this. As Nordhaus and Shellenberger state in their article, the problem seems to be a thing that will only be a priority once it is in our faces. Rust says that these films create an awareness that is somewhat being lost in this postmodern globalization. The Day After Tomorrow, Soylent Green, and The Mist all send a message that could get us thinking about cutting back to prevent climate change. But as my topic has illustrated, it seems a bit farfetched that change would actually

When I polled a few of my friends about “what is the single most critical problem facing us today?” I got a frequent response that’s not so shocking, climate change. So why climate change? Why not obesity, or population control, or education? While all of those are problems that deserve discussion, no single topic is so fundamental to us as humans as climate change. In 2007 Al Gore stated in his person of the year interview that “Today we 're dumping 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the environment, and tomorrow we will dump more, and there is no effective worldwide response. Until we start sharply reducing global-warming pollution, I will feel that I have failed.” (Walsh) Perhaps the paradigm has changed. Climate change is now talked about at every level of government, in large and small businesses, and communities across the globe. It’s a topic that functions to affect our economy and our environment. Moving forward, it’s important to understand why our way of life will be affected by the way we tackle these issues surrounding climate change. Climate change is the single most important issue affecting the human race today due to its widespread impact on our survival; impacting food sources, transportation, weather, geography and other life forms on the earth.

Our lack of unawareness and obligation results in a postponing action. Due to the procrastination, we are now not prepared to deal with the upcoming problems of the long term future. As Gardiner states, we have difficulties with many basic issuses such as: scientfic uncertainity, intergenerational equity, nonhumans, nature. All of these issues do play a part in our climate change. For this perfect storm, “an unusual convergence of independently harmful factors where this convergence is likely to result in negative outcomes” (548), we lack the intelluctual tools to actually understand climate change. So far, we have failed to create a distinct way to understand and address

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.

Michael Pollan author of “Why Bother?” (an article from The New York Times) was very clear on delivering his message on climate change. Throughout his article he uses many different sources and reasons to explain, not only what is happening, but things we should be doing to create solutions to the problems we created. Micheal directs us to think about his thoughts about how climate change is a real problem, and demonstrates with examples from other authors, consequences that we could very soon be facing, and what we can do to evade these problems that are coming our way. With the few solutions we are presented with it is unrealistic to try to solve the climate change problem we have arrived to.

Polar bears sweating, the Earth reforming into a volcano, and oxygen artificially supplied to the atmosphere is the future of tomorrow. It is unfortunately a consequence of our activities today. Global warming is an extremely adverse word and a great deal of controversy. It is all an interconnected process of globalization, hence having human activities cause global warming and destruction of the environment.

Throughout history climates have drastically changed. There have been shifts from warm climates to the Ice Ages (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2009, p.204). Evidence suggests there have been at least a dozen abrupt climate changes throughout the history of the earth. There are a few suspected reasons for these past climate changes. One reason may be that asteroids hitting the earth and volcanic eruptions caused some of them. A further assumption is that 22-year solar magnetic cycles and 11-year sunspot cycles played a part in the changes. A further possibility is that a regular shifting in the angle of the moon orbiting earth causing changing tides and atmospheric circulation affects the global climate (Cunningham & Cunningham, 2009,

Climate change has been a widely debated, controversial topic. Some think that it is not an issue that should be payed much attention to. With climate changing being caused naturally and by humans, the climate has been widely changing due to ample amounts of CO2 emissions. Where the burning of fossil fuels is the main source of the human impact. As well as volcanoes being a majority the of natural emissions. Although nature contributes to the climate change humans have more widely contributed to the change of climate abroad.

There is an issue on this planet that will define this generation. The issue is climate change. Global warming. A world on the collapse as our oceans are acidified, our air polluted, our forests disappearing, and human rights issues getting worse. It seems that people are not aware of how big climate change actually is. It’s not something that only takes place on the ice caps or in the forests on the far corners of the world. This is an issue that happens here, and now. It’s real. It’s happening.

The concept of global warming has become one of the most widely debated and controversial topics of our time. Scientists learned long ago that the earth’s climate has powerfully shaped the history of humanity. However, it is only in the past few decades that research has revealed that humans have a significant influence on the climate as well. A growing body of scientific evidence indicates that since 1950, the world’s climate has been warming, primarily as a result of emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of tropical forests. More importantly, an article titled "Global Warming" published in the New York Times shows that methane, a gas that is emitted from landfills, livestock and oil gas facilities,

The issue of global warming should be on the list of our top priorities. Studies show that the average of global temperatures have risen since the Industrial Revolution began. Since the Industrial Revolution, human emissions has quadrupled the frequency of certain heat extremes and many scientists have warned that a failure to bring greenhouse gases under control could eventually lead to a 62-fold increase in extreme heat blasts (Gillis Justin A17). Most of the increase is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. These activities contribute to a build-up in carbon dioxide and other gases in Earth’s atmosphere. The Earth’s atmosphere is made of gases like nitrogen, carbon dioxide and oxygen. These gases act as a blanket that covers and gives us warmth, but once these gases such as carbon dioxide absorbs heat, but does not release it back into space in which causes the increase in global temperature. This is called the greenhouse effect because it only traps heat but does not release it.