Serenity Mcdonald
Elisabeth Borchers
English 102: Lesson 11
The Severity of Climate Change and is it Opinion or Fact
Many people, when discussing climate change, have opposing viewpoints. This topic of discussion has become more of a political debate rather than an immediate problem that needs an immediate solution. Climate change/global warming is what it sounds like, the heating of the world's atmosphere; however, society has deemed this topic part of a political agenda rather than a scientific discovery. This begs the question; how do we know that global warming is a threat and not political propaganda?
The world's atmosphere was always under observation and before the 1950's we already had enough data to give reason to believe that global warming was more than just a theory. (History) In the late 1900's a panel was created solely to study global temperatures, this group was called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or, the IPCC. (History) They decided to dig deeper and found more chilling data that shows the earth is heating up. Even through all of the action happening during this time to prove global warming exists, there were still understandably many skeptics who disagreed with these claims. Those diverse opinions on the truth surrounding climate change lead to a divide in communities and became a turning point politically.
From Barack Obama's first day in the presidential office all the way back to the creation of Earth Day in 1970, and even before then there have been political actions the United States have been taking against climate change. Some major scientific milestones in the study of our atmosphere deeply influence the politics surrounding climate change. For example one of these was in 1982 when Joseph Fourier came across the "greenhouse effect" which theorizes that gasses in the air trap heat in the atmosphere. During this time global warming was not a political discussion but more of a period in time where people were becoming aware of the global warming theory. When this theory first came out it did not immediately spark social outrage and governmental action but it did later influence political actions. As aforementioned the IPCC was established in the late 1900's but to be exact, it was in 1988 when an international agreement was made to create this group. (Hirst) Early in this group's beginning they started messing around with the science behind climate change and specifically, the "greenhouse effect" theory. This led to the IPCC later on influencing political policies and international agreements including president Obama's decision to join the Paris agreement in 2016. During this time climate change had been very political with left leaning parties supporting the global warming idea and with the right leaning parties mostly denying it. Which is why on June first of 2017 republican president, Donald J. Trump left the Paris agreement making the United States the first nation to leave the agreement.
There have been many theories on whether climate change is real or not, and even some theories that agree climate change is real but it is a natural process. An example of one of these theories is that the climate is still heating up from the previous ice age and has nothing to do with the human production of gases into the atmosphere. Many publications have produced reasoning and evidence on the debated cause of global warming pointing towards human intervention. David Herring and Rebecca Lindsey explained this perfectly in their publication, "What evidence exists that Earth is warming and that humans are the main cause?" One of the gases that aids in global warming is Co2 which is produced by forest fires, volcanic eruptions etc. however, the trend of global warming is far greater than it would be if the production of Co2 was just caused by natural events. This leads us to ask if the unaccounted for factor in causing climate change is human produced gases? Pew Research Center conducted a survey on how many "American's say human activity is the primary reason why the earth is warming". And the answer was 46% with 26% saying "warming is mostly caused by natural patterns in the environment". In this study, "14% do not believe there's evidence the Earth is warming at all". (Pasquini et al.)
The IPCC has already discovered that one of the major causes of global warming is greenhouse gases. The dominant gas is carbon, Co2, which is produced naturally by volcanic eruptions and fires. This has already been established but there are other major factors producing carbon such as machines using fossil fuels like cars or factory machines. Different views on this topic have different excuses on what specifically is destroying the atmosphere. Based on the data and research provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and other credited sources of information we can establish the idea that the sole cause of atmospheric and ozone depletion is Co2 and it should not be up for debate. To put it in perspective, There are approximately 336.8 million people in the United states in 2023. (census.gov) If there were estimated to be more than 243 million drivers in the United States in 2023, imagine how much carbon is being produced daily. (Rudy) This data is not counting planes, boats, and any other type of machine that can produce Co2 emissions.
While people have jobs, errands to run and families to feed, we cant ask the whole population to just give up their vehicles. There are other solutions though to minimize they damage humans are causing to the atmosphere in their everyday lives. For example, we can switch to electric cars, resort to car pooling, and walking or biking to places when we can instead of driving for only a mile or 2. The other options instead of automotive substitutions are using environmentally safe equipment like solar panels for clean energy or electric stoves instead of gas stoves
Works Cited
Elisabeth Borchers
English 102: Lesson 11
The Severity of Climate Change and is it Opinion or Fact
Many people, when discussing climate change, have opposing viewpoints. This topic of discussion has become more of a political debate rather than an immediate problem that needs an immediate solution. Climate change/global warming is what it sounds like, the heating of the world's atmosphere; however, society has deemed this topic part of a political agenda rather than a scientific discovery. This begs the question; how do we know that global warming is a threat and not political propaganda?
The world's atmosphere was always under observation and before the 1950's we already had enough data to give reason to believe that global warming was more than just a theory. (History) In the late 1900's a panel was created solely to study global temperatures, this group was called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or, the IPCC. (History) They decided to dig deeper and found more chilling data that shows the earth is heating up. Even through all of the action happening during this time to prove global warming exists, there were still understandably many skeptics who disagreed with these claims. Those diverse opinions on the truth surrounding climate change lead to a divide in communities and became a turning point politically.
From Barack Obama's first day in the presidential office all the way back to the creation of Earth Day in 1970, and even before then there have been political actions the United States have been taking against climate change. Some major scientific milestones in the study of our atmosphere deeply influence the politics surrounding climate change. For example one of these was in 1982 when Joseph Fourier came across the "greenhouse effect" which theorizes that gasses in the air trap heat in the atmosphere. During this time global warming was not a political discussion but more of a period in time where people were becoming aware of the global warming theory. When this theory first came out it did not immediately spark social outrage and governmental action but it did later influence political actions. As aforementioned the IPCC was established in the late 1900's but to be exact, it was in 1988 when an international agreement was made to create this group. (Hirst) Early in this group's beginning they started messing around with the science behind climate change and specifically, the "greenhouse effect" theory. This led to the IPCC later on influencing political policies and international agreements including president Obama's decision to join the Paris agreement in 2016. During this time climate change had been very political with left leaning parties supporting the global warming idea and with the right leaning parties mostly denying it. Which is why on June first of 2017 republican president, Donald J. Trump left the Paris agreement making the United States the first nation to leave the agreement.
There have been many theories on whether climate change is real or not, and even some theories that agree climate change is real but it is a natural process. An example of one of these theories is that the climate is still heating up from the previous ice age and has nothing to do with the human production of gases into the atmosphere. Many publications have produced reasoning and evidence on the debated cause of global warming pointing towards human intervention. David Herring and Rebecca Lindsey explained this perfectly in their publication, "What evidence exists that Earth is warming and that humans are the main cause?" One of the gases that aids in global warming is Co2 which is produced by forest fires, volcanic eruptions etc. however, the trend of global warming is far greater than it would be if the production of Co2 was just caused by natural events. This leads us to ask if the unaccounted for factor in causing climate change is human produced gases? Pew Research Center conducted a survey on how many "American's say human activity is the primary reason why the earth is warming". And the answer was 46% with 26% saying "warming is mostly caused by natural patterns in the environment". In this study, "14% do not believe there's evidence the Earth is warming at all". (Pasquini et al.)
The IPCC has already discovered that one of the major causes of global warming is greenhouse gases. The dominant gas is carbon, Co2, which is produced naturally by volcanic eruptions and fires. This has already been established but there are other major factors producing carbon such as machines using fossil fuels like cars or factory machines. Different views on this topic have different excuses on what specifically is destroying the atmosphere. Based on the data and research provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and other credited sources of information we can establish the idea that the sole cause of atmospheric and ozone depletion is Co2 and it should not be up for debate. To put it in perspective, There are approximately 336.8 million people in the United states in 2023. (census.gov) If there were estimated to be more than 243 million drivers in the United States in 2023, imagine how much carbon is being produced daily. (Rudy) This data is not counting planes, boats, and any other type of machine that can produce Co2 emissions.
While people have jobs, errands to run and families to feed, we cant ask the whole population to just give up their vehicles. There are other solutions though to minimize they damage humans are causing to the atmosphere in their everyday lives. For example, we can switch to electric cars, resort to car pooling, and walking or biking to places when we can instead of driving for only a mile or 2. The other options instead of automotive substitutions are using environmentally safe equipment like solar panels for clean energy or electric stoves instead of gas stoves
Works Cited
