Forgotten Aspect of Global Warming. Global Warming

¶ … forgotten aspect of global warming. Global warming does not merely mean that the earth is getting warmer, temperature-wise. It does not simply mean that summers will be more unpleasant. The melting of the polar ice caps will also cause more severe storms, such as the hurricanes that were affecting the Gulf region when Gore wrote his essay. As well as Arizona being afflicted with more hundred degree days than ever before, for the first time Brazil is being afflicted by hurricanes, forcing scientists to rewrite textbooks which said that the South Atlantic never experienced this meteorological phenomenon. The climate is changing, the ecosystem is changing, and we are to blame writes Gore. Gore writes that what we have done, we can also undo -- and must undo. But although the claim that man-made climate change is real seems undeniable in the light of scientific evidence, the question of how to create solutions is far more vexing.

Gore makes an analogy between the coming of World War II and the coming of a global climate transformation. The relationship of human beings with the environment has been forever altered because of changes in technology and we must unite to stop the threat of global warming, just as the Western powers united to stop the assault on democracy. Now, we can affect the environment with our behaviors, just as much as the environment can impact us. The fact that our changes in lifestyle can cause changes in the ecosystem should not give us false confidence that the changes are manageable. We may be able to prevent certain diseases and build great things, but we are just as vulnerable to the forces of nature as our medieval ancestors.

Global warming naysayers, of course, point out that "the Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era -- and of human civilization" (Jenkins 2012). However, as early as the 19th century, in the wake of the first decades of the Industrial Revolution, the heat-inducing properties of carbon dioxide and other gases became known. While the earth has undergone cycles of warming and cooling before, the recent upturn in temperatures has been directly correlated to our increased release of these types of gases into the atmosphere. Not only do all of NASA's "three major global surface temperature reconstructions" show that Earth has warmed since 1880, but the majority of that warming has occurred since 1981, as more and more of the world adopted a Westernized, industrialized lifestyle (Jenkins 20120).

"Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase" (Jenkins 2012). Thus, even when the earth should have been expected to cool naturally, there was still an unexpected spike in temperatures. Other evidence of warming is that sea levels rose at a rate of double of the last century, 6.7 inches and that polar ice has shown a notable decline in recent years: "Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006, while Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles) of ice between 2002 and 2005" (Jenkins 20120).

The phrase 'global warming' used by Gore and others to describe this phenomenon, however, is somewhat unfortunate, I think. Every time there is an unusual burst of warmth, of course, I hear my friends complain about global warming, and they state that Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth is correct. However, during times of bitter cold, there are just as many jokes about Al Gore being wrong. But warming is only part of the equation -- more severe storms due to increased moisture from melting ice is another symptom of global warming. Fundamentally, human beings are unwilling to change their habits, and have short attention spans. They are looking for reasons not to change, rather than reasons to change.

On an individual level, there are small steps human beings can take to stop climate change. Eating less meat is one of them. "Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years... assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world's tropical rain forests" (Bittman 2008). "Livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world's greenhouse gases -- more than transportation" (Bittman 2008). This desire for meat is likely to increase in the developing world, as more people grow affluent enough to inject meat into their diet.