For many people, global warming is primarily relevant to them in regards to the weather. They assume that when it is excessively hot, this is reflective of a shift in the global climate and when it is cold, this is a sign that global warming is not really as bad as it might be. However, this is far from the truth. While changes in weather may still be present during our era of global warming, climate refers to sustained and prolonged shifts in temperature. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), although the earth has always experienced periods of cooling and warming, the current trend has a probability of a staggering 95% to have been generated by human intervention (“Climate Change”).The fact that the current change has been generated by human activity and intervention is what makes the shift so especially worrisome. Industrialization since the nineteenth century has generated an explosion in the number of “heat trapping” gasses, most notably carbon dioxide, and “ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly ten times faster than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming” (“Climate Change”). One of the most glaring examples of the manifestation of global warming has been the melting of the polar ice caps, which has been thought to have triggered a host...

In contrast to what critics allege, this shift is an unusual one. Although sunspot activity has created changes in the climate in the past, increasing the heat generated from the sun, today, “We are seeing a temperature increase in the troposphere, the lower level of our atmosphere, and a temperature decrease in the stratosphere, the upper level,” which is the reverse of what would occur if sunspot activity were to blame (Thompson). The fact that global temperatures increase more at night than by day, scientists note, is also inconsistent with what would traditionally be expected with global warming (Thompson).
The scientific method suggests that after gathering all available evidence and forming a hypothesis, the hypothesis must be tested in the…