Global Warming the Growing Consensus on Global

Global Warming

The Growing Consensus on Global Warming

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, many segments of the general public have begun to concede that global climate change and its various consequences are real. Moreover, as the New Jersey coast and the streets of New York experienced flooding and damage the likes of which had never been seen this far north, it has become difficult to deny that our weather patterns are changing. Global warming contends that these changes are as a result of manmade hazards. According to the Stanford Solar Center (SSC) (2008), a "panel convened by the U.S. National Research Council, the nation's premier science policy body, in June 2006 voiced a "high level of confidence" that Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, and possibly even the last 2,000 years." (p. 1) The discussion hereafter will demonstrate that the case for the reality of global warming has gained increased support by scientific finding and our own layman's meteorological observations.

Root Causes:

According to most available research on the subject, the primary cause of global warming is the trapping of greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere. These gases are the result of the burning of fossil fuels and the release of other chemicals into our soil, water and air. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) (2012), "each year American power plants pump more than two billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air." (p. 1)

America is the world's biggest producer of greenhouse gases, though industrialized nations such as China and Russia are also fast-rising contributors. National Geographic (NG) (2011) indicates that the impact of these greenhouse gases is only further magnified by the effects of pollution, waste, and deforestation. According to National Geographic, in addition to the burning of fossil fuels, "other contributors include methane released from landfills and agriculture (especially from the digestive systems of grazing animals), nitrous oxide from fertilizers, gases used for refrigeration and industrial processes, and the loss of forests that would otherwise store CO2." (p. 1)

A third root cause is the deterioration of the ozone layer as a consequence of airborne pollutants. National Geographic finds that such pollutants as the perfluorocarbons released by aerosol contributed to the erosion of the earth's atmosphere. This, consequently, reduce our protection from the ultraviolet rays of the sun, helping to raise the earth's daily temperature.

Pertinent Consequences:

Among the pertinent consequences of global warming, Riebeek (2010) argues that we are already beginning to experience some of them. Claims relating Hurricane Sandy's impact to the effects of global warming is not done in idle. To the contrary, Riebeek warns that global warming "modifies rainfall patterns [and] amplifies coastal erosion." (p. 1) These impacts lead to the creation of bigger, larger and more frequent tropical storms, and by extension, hurricanes. As this relates to such events as Hurricane Sandy, the unique course, scope and catastrophic impact of the storm all do stand in distinction geographically speaking. This is why, according to Ritter (2012), "though it's tricky to link a single weather event to climate change, Hurricane Sandy was "probably not a coincidence" but an example of the extreme weather events that are likely to strike the U.S. more often as the world gets warmer, the U.N. climate panel's No. 2 scientist said Tuesday." (p. 1)

Another consequence of global climate change is perhaps the most self-explanatory. It may seem to our sensibilities that the summer days are hotter and that our winters are not as cold as they used to be. In fact, this is accurate. It is routinely warmer on a day-to-day basis now, according to Wagner (2012) than it was 30 years ago and at all points prior. One of the great samples of evidence that the industrialization of the 20th century is chiefly responsible for the rise in daily temperatures is the fact that the earth's temperature is consistently higher over the last three decades than it has been in the earth's observable history. According to Wagner, "the last month with a below-average temperature on Earth was February, 1985." (p. 1)

This trend is reflected in the map here below:

This contributes to yet a third consequence which is a great threat to the sustainability of human life. Namely, the continued and rapid melting of the polar ice caps is simultaneously altering temperatures and ecologies in the world's oceans but also causing a gradual rise in sea level that threatens to significantly diminish the inhabitability of many coastal areas over time. Again, evidence in places such as New Orleans, devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, suggests that this may already be occurring.

Prospects:

Among the positive prospects regarding intervention with the effects of global warming, some scientists are cautiously optimistic that we have actually made some collective improvements over the last decade as a result of increased awareness of some of climate change's primary causes. Page (2012) tells that recent findings show the rise in annual temperatures has leveled out relative to the previous several decades. According to Page, "figures released by the UN's World Meteorological Organisation indicate that 2012 is set to be perhaps the ninth hottest globally since records began - but that planetary warming, which effectively stalled around 1998, has yet to resume at the levels seen in the 1980s and early 1990s." (Page, p. 1) One presumption is that the heightened emissions standards and most especially the elimination of aerosol containers using perfluorocarbons have helped to reduce the speed of climate change.