Dear person of the future,
Hello, My name is Alexa and I am a student in the year of 2016. In my history class we are currently studying climate. Climate is a huge topic in today's society for many reasons. One of which is because we do not know how the climate will effect the future. This causes much debate in our society today and has forced people to come up with their own predictions of the future. Most everyone in America has their own perspective when it comes to climate. This is why I decided to focus in the the topic of perspectives on climate because I wanted to learn about everyone else's opinion to hopefully develop my own personal perspective. Because there are so many different perspectives in today's society, it causes a lot of great debate amongst people all over the world because everyone wants to believe that their opinion is the right one. Thus, the great debate of climate change. People have many different views when it comes to climate change: Those who believe in it, those who don't and this is what I found out about the two opposing sides:
One of the top research data bases in 2016 is the Pew Research Center. On Pew Research Center's website, I found out a lot about what people thought of the general topic of climate change. According to an article on PRC (1), a poll was taken that asked about people's perspective on climate change. This poll says that in America, most people believe in climate change but do not prioritize it. Why is that? This is because people do not see any immediate effect from climate change and believe that no money should be spent to help prevent it if no damage is being done. However people who do believe that the climate is changing disagree with this. This is because although it may not be directly affecting you, it is affecting our world. According to NASA (2), the largest space exploration program in the world, evidence shows that sea level has risen 17 cm in the last century, the global temperature has risen, oceans have been warmed 0.302 degrees fahrenheit since 1969, ice sheets are shrinking, decline in arctic ice sheets, and the occurrence of extreme events.
Although all of this information was incredibly useful, it was too general for me. I wanted to dig deeper and find out what the greatest debate related to climate change was. After searching for many different topics, the one that I came across the most was the debate on Global Warming. Most everyone has heard of global warming but not a lot of people know much about it. According to wikipedia (3), a website used to present information on almost everything to the public, in our world today, the questions that most surround the topic of global warming are: Is it occurring? How much has occurred in modern times? What has caused it? What will it effects be? Should action be taken to curb it? If so, what action? For every single question there is a debate that surrounds it. Again, people believe what they want to believe with these topics because some people see and believe in the evidence that is presented and others refuse to believe in it. So, what were people of my time arguing about when it came to the topic of global warming? Here is what I found:
In the past, our media never covered Global Warming on the news or in newspapers until the drought of 1988. This is because it never seemed to be a problem until drastic changes in our weather began to occur with no explanation. Even British media began to report on climate change and global warming in 1988. But did people really take it seriously? People were staring to wonder wether or not global warming was actually occurring. According to an article on Pew Research Center (4), 63% of Americans believe in solid evidence of global warming. Things such as our global temperature rising along with sea level and others are considered evidence to these groups of people. However not everyone believes in this. On an interview that I found on Youtube (5) that was televised all across America between Bill Nye and Marc Morano, Marc Morano constantly disagreed with everything Nye was talking about. Morano says that it is natural for the earth to be warming as it gets older and says that sea level has been rising years before our time. He calls these claims "facts" and assures the public that none of which Bill Nye says is true. However, the interviewer interrupts by saying that nothing of which Morano was saying was actual facts, they were just personal opinions.
Another big question that is widely debated is who caused it. The general answer that seems to be debated the most is that climate is caused by humans.Al Gore released a documentary that suggested that human caused climate change was real. Bill Nye and other active climate debaters say this too. According to Procon.org (6), climate change is caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases that come from human activity such as boring fossil fuels. This is the case of the drastic weather changes and rise of temperature and sea level. Because of this people want to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emission. People who disagree with this argument say that it is not human made because the planet is capable of increasing things on its own through a natural process. Their argument states that the people whose argument believes in human caused global warming is questionable due to inaccurate measurements. However, according to grist.org (7), 97% of scientist say that man is changing climate.
The next big questions are what are the effects of global warming and what will we do to fix it, if it needs fixing. There are many predicted effects of global warming that serve as huge environmental risks. NASA says that the effect will be more drought, heat waves, a rise in sea level (1-4 feet) by 2100, and stronger weather changes.So what will we do to fix it? According to a study on Pew Research Center (8), although Americans believe in global warming, the do not see a need to fix it. This is because it is ranked at the bottom of the priorities lost in 2014. Even for Obama and Congress, in 2014 Global Warming was at the bottom of his list of priorities for America. Less than half American rated it as a serious threat to our country, the rest see it as something that can be looked over. Wikipedia makes this great comparison as to why we should take action on preventing global warming. It says to think about a child getting sick. You do not wait to see how bad it gets before you treat them, you treat them early to kill any possible threat of harm to the child. This is the same argument that people who believe in global warming and want to fix it has. This wikipedia article also suggest that the reason behind people not wanting to fix global warming issues is because the public lacks a understands of the science behind global warming and how seriously it could affect the way we live.
So you are probably wondering what my views on global warming are. I believe that wether or not it is happening, we should begin to take measures to prevent it in order to protect our world.
People discuss climate everyday. In 2016, we have the internet and most people use it as a form of communication. On websites like topix.com (9), people are able to leave their opinions about climate and global warming for the whole world to see. Here is an example of one:
People are very protective over their opinions. As you can see, they are no afraid to say what they think to prove to people that their perspective on things is the correct one.
So, my questions for you are how accurate were we? Did global warming really affect us? what caused it? Which side was right?
Sincerely,
Alexa
P.S.
I also used some other websites on the internet that had similar information to what I already typed. But, I thought they deserved some credit too. To learn more about the effects of climate change, I went on National Geographic (10). It gave me a lot of background information on the topic and helped me guide my research better!
Footnotes:
(1):
“The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan American think tank which is based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the world.” This article titled is dedicated to a poll that was taken by Americans to see how many American believed in Global Warming and how they priorities it.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/23/most-americans-believe-in-climate-change-but-give-it-low-priority/
(2): NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA is part of the United States government. NASA is in charge of U.S. science and technology that has to do with airplanes or space.
http://climate.nasa.gov/
(3):
"Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, written collaboratively by the people who use it. It is a special type of website designed to make collaboration easy, called a wiki. Many people are constantly improving Wikipedia, making thousands of changes per hour."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy
(4): Article on Pew Research Center that talked about the Partisan Divide on global warming
http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/the-partisan-divide-on-global-warming/
(5):YouTube is a global video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States. The service was created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005. In November 2006, it was bought by Google for US$1.65 billion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWT-EWKIR3M
(6): "Procon is a non-profit charitable organization headquartered in Santa Monica, California in the United States. It operates the ProCon.org website, an online resource for research on controversial issues."
http://climatechange.procon.org
(7):"Grist (originally Grist Magazine; also referred to as Grist.org) is an American non-profit online magazine that has been publishing environmental news and commentary since 1999. Grist's taglines are "Gloom and doom with a sense of humor" and "A beacon in the smog". Grist is headquartered in Seattle, Washington."
http://grist.org/climate-energy/reddits-science-forum-banned-climate-deniers-why-dont-all-newspapers-do-the-same/
(8): An article on Pew Research Center that talks about the global warming concern all around the world
http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/global-warming-a-global-concern/
(9): "Topix is an American internet news media company. Topix LLC, the controlling company, has its headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Topix began as a news aggregator which categorizes news stories by topic and geography. In the last few years, Topix changed its focus from aggregation and curation, to content creation."
http://www.topix.com/forum/news/global-warming/TI8DR7KA8NGKRBIBP
(10): National Geographic is a global nonprofit membership organization that focuses on science, exploration, and storytelling.
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-effects/
On our last day of class we watched 13 days. This movie was about the Cuban missile crisis and how JFK and his team tried to solve it. It was a perfect movie to end the year because it ended with a very positive idea to send us in our senior year. This idea is that there is a solution for everything if you work hard enough to find it and trust yourself.
