The Great Debate: Global Warming
Global Warming: A Scientific Truth
Alex LaRosa
Every now and then, one must revive the debate on global warming, otherwise known by the nom du jour of “climate change.” Thankfully for The iGlobe, staff writer Kendall Haney and yours truly can revive this never-ending debate, and hopefully provide a few new thoughts for our readers to ponder.
Global warming, as I will refer to it here, is a very real and very dangerous trend in Earth’s climate. The overall trend is one of warming, even if some hired scientists like to show that the world is getting colder in some spots. Indeed, the capital of my home state set the record for the most snowfall in a winter since records were kept (Galimberti). However, all across the world, things are heating up, and show no signs of relenting. If we as a species do not act to stop the damage we are causing to the environment, then it will not be a matter of if, but when our actions will bring about serious consequences. Global warming is real, man-made, and should not be ignored, lest someday we face the consequences of pollution.
Before I begin to prophesize doom-by-way-of-factory-smoke, I will begin with a small geology lesson. Think back to when science classes of years past talked about the water cycle. Remember that water moves throughout the world, by way of precipitation, evaporation, and waterways? Water from the ocean is evaporated up into clouds, which carry the water and then eventually dump it back down to Earth in the form of precipitation. The water runs back to the oceans, and the process repeats.
Well, it turns out that there is such a cycle for every element on Earth, and carbon is no exception. The carbon cycle looks a little different, but the idea behind it is the same. In Earth’s natural carbon cycle, carbon in the air is absorbed by plants, to fuel photosynthesis, and dissolved organic carbon eventually makes its way downward, either burying itself into the earth as a dead plant, or reaching the ocean. Natural geologic reservoirs of carbon build up over time, and are embedded in fossils or rock carbonates. Through volcanism, a very small amount of carbon is released back out into the air, but most of the carbon in the air comes from what is called “air-sea gas exchange,” which, not surprisingly, is the exchange of gases between the air and oceans (Jordan and Grotzinger 487).
By the Second Industrial Revolution, things began to change for the carbon cycle. All the natural processes continue as normal, but now, deforestation releases 1.7 Gigatons of carbon in the atmosphere, and the burning of fossil fuels releases a monstrous 5.3 Gt, leading to a grand total of 7 Gt of carbon released into the atmosphere that doesn’t belong (Jordan and Grotzinger 488). For those of us who don’t know what exactly a Gigaton of carbon is, that’s okay; just know that it’s really big.
So now we know that the air we’re breathing is dirty, full of over a hundred year’s worth of carbon that should not be there. But that’s not the only nasty particle that humans have artificially pumped into the skies. See below, this chart shows the atmospheric concentration of methane since 1750.
(Image taken from: http://wwws1.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/atmospheric-concentration-of-ch4-ppb-1/image_xlarge).
Notice on the graph that there has been a sharp increase in levels of methane gas since approximately 1910, onwards. It does not take a genius, or even a mad scientist, to see that something happened around that time, and since then, there has been a massive increase in so-called “greenhouse gases” such as methane or carbon. That something was the Second Industrial Revolution, and if you asked the average mad scientist, they would probably cackle with glee at the thought of mankind slowly choking itself with noxious fumes in the air.
My humor, as seen just there, is dry. But it’s not as dry as the American Southwest. According to NASA, the Southwest has seen increased wildfire activity, caused by droughts. As the world gets warmer, “declining water supplies, reduced agricultural yields, [and] health impacts in cities due to heat” all become big concerns for people out West (NASA).
Just how hot is the world becoming? Well, it depends on where one looks. In certain places such as the Gulf Stream and Antarctica, things are temporarily getting cooler (Jordan and Grotzinger 492). However, according to predictions by the Hadley Center for Climate Change, by the year range of 2070-2100, there will not be a single place on Earth that is still cooling, if mankind continues to consume fossil fuels in a business-as-usual way (Jordan and Grotzinger 493).
I’ve spent plenty of time now, showing how humans are indeed affecting the ecosystems of the world in an unnatural way. We hear stories of smog in China, of nuclear disasters in Ukraine and Three-Mile Island, and of the rise of diseases like cancer. But there are still some who deny the facts and say that the world is just fine, as-is. According to research by Yale and George Mason University, 12% of Americans believe “global warming is not happening.” In an interesting correlation, about 90% of climate scientists, who ought to know such things, believe that global warming is real and man-made (Global Warming Statistics).
So with all this scientific evidence, the plan of action would seem simple. Humans should reduce fossil fuel consumption, and gradually eliminate it. Otherwise, we will see more dead polar bears, flooded cities, and 110-degree days. It may even be a case of Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster, in which a massive monster, comprised of toxic sludge, ravaged Tokyo until Godzilla—the byproduct of a nuclear catastrophe, of course—saves the day. Seeing as we don’t have Godzilla to save us in the real world, we could be in for a sticky situation, and it would be best to prevent the real-life toxic sludge from affecting our health and life as we know it.
So, having presented the overwhelming weight of science, an impressive-looking graph, and even a reference to Godzilla, it should be clear that global warming is indeed real and a threat to the present, as well as the future. No matter what one calls it, the world is, as a whole, getting warmer and this is the result of man-made factors. Humans have disturbed the natural carbon cycle, caused droughts, and polluted the air, possibly beyond repair. We cannot debate whether climate change is real, but rather, we must accept that it is real and move forward towards fixing our mistakes as a society.
Works Cited
Galimberti, Katy. Boston Sets Snowiest Winter on Record With 108.6 Inches. 17 March 2015. 17 March 2015 <http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/boston-snow-record-break-snowiest-winter-ever/43991418>.
Global Warming Statistics. 20 December 2013. 17 March 2015 <http://www.statisticbrain.com/global-warming-statistics/>.
Jordan, Thomas H. and John Grotzinger. The Essential Earth. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 2012.
NASA. The current and future consequences of global change . 16 March 2015. 17 March 2015 <http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/>.
Downside of Global Warming? It Doesn’t Exist Like ‘They’ Want You to Believe
Kendall Haney
An Argument Confirming that the Earth Itself (Not Man) Has Never Stopped Changing Its Climate
Spoiler alert. Global warming ideologues won’t be amused by this article, and apocalypse enthusiasts are about to be proven potentially right. Yes, the world is warming. It has also been cooling. No, there is nothing you can do about it. Therefore, in the opinion of this writer, how about we sink into our muddy eroding coastlines, and figure out what is really going on?
Upon first seeing the throngs of people clamoring for more government intervention to fight a new war on terror against Mother Nature, it’s easy to get caught up in the rhetoric and passion. After all, this is the figurative female who brings us hurricanes, tornadoes, and general pain and suffering for those of us who have to leave our attic in a rainstorm. But then for others of us, logic sets in, and it forces uncomfortable questions to the surface like bad acne that just won’t go away. These questions are as basic as “Hasn’t the climate always changed?” to the more complex. Either way, a quick fact check of the weather record as it relates to man’s contributions towards screwing up fragile weather patterns answers the debate. In my opinion, the weather record is the Rosetta Stone that deciphers the global warming question: Is it true?
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a federal government agency that seems to embrace the idea of global warming/climate change, “The Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago—that's a very long time ago! It's hard to say exactly what the Earth's daily weather was like in any particular place on any particular day thousands or millions of years ago. But we know a lot about what the Earth's climate was like way back then because of clues that remain in rocks, ice, trees, corals, and fossils. These clues tell us that the Earth's climate has changed many times before.”
After reading that, I thought to myself, “Wow, how horrible of us not to control ourselves. No wonder Mother Nature hates us. Her climate has always been badly affected because of man’s toxic contributions to her otherwise healthy planet.” But then, my next thought was, I thought man hadn’t been around all that long?
Turns out I was right. According to Universe Today, an online magazine, “While our ancestors have been around for about six million years, the modern form of humans only evolved about 200,000 years ago. Civilization as we know it is only about 6,000 years old, and industrialization started in earnest only in the 1800s.”
So, if curbing the effects of industrialization is the activists’ solution to avoiding further climate change as I understand their argument goes, how come the fossil record is filled with climate changes man couldn’t have had anything to do with because he didn’t exist? These climate changes presumably include the Ice Age, the mini-ice age, and evidence aplenty of the Earth’s warming and cooling in between. Oh, and if you throw in some droughts coupled with flooding patterns you get an idea of the recipe Mother Nature has been trying to cook up to kill us since before we were born.
Yikes. But, if we didn’t exist yet, then climate change has nothing really to do with us. Maybe we should be looking to negotiate a peace treaty with the Moody Nature Mama.
However, that treaty can’t be based on the numbers former Presidential candidate Al Gore was trying to sell when he famously predicted in the year 2007 that “(the polar ice caps) could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years” (Nobel Lecture).
Whoops. His prediction based on ‘scientific evidence’ was made back in 2007. It’s now 2015. It didn’t happen. And this guy got the Nobel Prize for badly predicting weather? To me, that’s kind of a sharp stick to the eye to the world’s greatest science prize.
In fact, as of 2015, “new information shows that polar ice caps are increasing in size anywhere each year from 43% to 63%” (Newsmax). Increasing polar ice caps are not indicative of global warming, and in fact it suggests the ice caps are quite healthy and happy.
Newsmax reported just this month that “According to NASA’s own data via Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), the world has warmed a mere .36 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 35 years (they started measuring the data in 1979). Hardly anything to panic about; however, that does mean the world is warmer, right? The problem with that argument is that we experienced the bulk of that warming between 1979 and 1998 . . . since then, we’ve actually had temperatures DROPPING! As can be seen in this chart, we haven’t seen any global warming for 17 years.”
Unfortunately for Gore and his disciples, no matter how hot the speculation or how squishy muddy celebrities wish math could be (hey, I can relate), the quantitative and qualitative scientific evidence to support their side melts like a snow cone in summer under focused sunlight with a magnifier. Hence why references to global warming are scratched out on the protest posters of late to be replaced with buzz words like ‘climate change.’ “Look out people,” supporters are selling now, “the climate is changing! That’s indisputable!”
Well, duh. The climate has always been changing, and successfully stopping that would be similar to stopping the ocean’s tides from washing ashore. Stopping the climate from changing is unnatural, and considering we don’t know the consequences of controlling our own climate, I wouldn’t recommend trying it. The Chinese have experimented with it to try to get it to rain something other than acid after they killed their environment with pollution (Service, Mail Foreign, and Chinese Environment Ministry Warns on Water Pollution).
Oh, wait a minute…
While evidence debunks the global warming theory that man is solely responsible for the warming of the Earth, global warming protesters could convince me of a more important matter if they’d just engage in an honest reporting of the facts: Pollution stinks and it adversely impacts people’s health.
Maybe that was the argument activists wanted to make all along, but their leaders felt fear mongering would always win politically. Without an epic catastrophe of global magnitude, maybe they felt that a convincing lie was the only thing they could use to defeat big business’ scare tactics about job losses if we tried to better protect our environment. Maybe they didn’t/don’t yet believe that the majority of us really do think clean air, clean water, and clean food for all should be mainstream values.
If you want to win that argument, global warming activists, might I suggest you start with the truth?
I could buy into the argument that pollution adversely impacts the health of every living organism on the planet. I’d pick up the banner, and I’d fight along with you if that message was adopted. The lack of clean water, food, and air effects not just me personally, but every living creature on the planet. Polluted rivers, potentially polluted farm land and forests, and unclean air put our lives in jeopardy at the genetic level, and worse, risks mass extinctions of plants and animals we could otherwise use for medicines.
That argument is personal. Who wants to debate it?
Sources:
"The Earth's Climate in the Past." EPA. Environmental Protection Agency, n.d. Web. 08 Mar. 2015.
"How Long Have Humans Been On Earth?" Universe Today. N.p., 19 Jan. 2015. Web. 09 Mar. 2015.
"New Reports: There Is No Global Warming." Newsmax. N.p., 17 Oct. 2014. Web. 07 Mar. 2015.
"Nobel Lecture." Al Gore -. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2015.
"Chinese Environment Ministry Warns on Water Pollution." Chinese Environment Ministry Warns on Water Pollution. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2015.
Service, Mail Foreign. "China Overdoes Cloud Seeding to End Drought... and Blankets Beijing in Snow." Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2015.