Secondary education: systems, outcomes, and policy

¶ … Global Warming

One of the most important concerns of the contemporary era is the issue of climate change, also referred to (inaccurately) as "global warming." The reason that it is an inaccurate characterization is simply that the effects it describes are much more complex than just a linear increase in temperature or a uniform change everywhere on earth. Instead, climate change is more a matter of increasing climatic variability and instability and it occurs in very different forms in different areas of the world. The reason that it is such an important issue is that there is a consensus among reputable scientists that the activities of mankind are substantially responsible for the new variations in weather patterns being recorded and experienced and that mankind is also currently at a precipice because if we wait much longer to implement meaningful ways of reversing the effects we have triggered, it will likely be impossible to protect ourselves from the devastating consequences.

The average temperature of earth's atmosphere has indeed risen more steeply in the last half century than at any time in recorded history, and the concentration of manmade gasses (especially carbon dioxide) has increased very dramatically. One of the more obvious consequences of the growing saturation of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide is a phenomenon referred to the "greenhouse effect" after the same phenomenon observed on a much smaller scale in greenhouses used to grow flowers and other vegetation indoors. Climate scientists believe that related atmospheric conditions are responsible for the tremendous increase in the frequency and the severity of storms and other dangerous weather events that have recently caused so much damage to human civilizations, both in the United States as well as across the globe. Hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, and increasingly severe winters are all thought to be caused by the combined effects of manmade changes to the global ecosphere.

The nature of the precipitation has also changed because of human activity, including the increase in acid rain that has threatened the availability of fresh drinking water in regions of the globe whose inhabitants are already facing shortages of that nature. Acid rain also destroys viable farmland and severely reduces the crop yield in some of the most impoverished areas of the world. Climate change threatens wealthier parts of the world as well and the visual evidence of the continuing and accelerating melting Antarctic continental ice shelves will eventually cause large portions of the North American eastern seaboard to become submerged in the same manner as the Italian city of Venice. Britain faces a similar fate and has already had to invest tremendous public funds to install mechanical barriers to protect the British coast from the Atlantic Ocean swells.