Global warming mitigation strategies and climate action

¶ … experienced a series of extreme and devastating weather events including Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans, Louisiana and other parts of the south in 2005, flooding in Europe in 2005, heavy snowfall in Europe in 2010 and 2011, and flooding throughout Asia from 2005 to the present. Many of these weather patterns are related to El Nino or La Nina storms, which are two-to-eight-year weather patterns where changing wind streams pick up warm surface water from the oceans and increases humidity, according to Tim Flannery in his 2005 book The Weather Makers. When the clouds reach a saturation point, they release horrific storms and subsequent floods in some parts of the world and parching droughts in others.

Extreme weather caused by warming oceans is one of the many environmental disasters scientist link to global warming, which is the increasing warming of the planet. In the midst of a cold winter, the thought of temperatures going up a few degrees actually seems appealing, but the results are actually deadly for all life on the planet earth. In addition to increasingly severe storms brought on by warming ocean waters, global warming is melting icebergs and dissolving ice fields in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. This causes ocean waters to rise and increases the risk of flooding to coastal areas around the world. It is also diminishing, at a rapid rate, certain species of animals that depend on specific temperatures for which to live. Global warming is possibly the greatest danger that humans and all living creatures on earth face today. And we're barely doing anything about it.

Summary of Theories on Global Warming

Most scientists agree that the earth is getting warmer at a faster than usual rate. Over the 20th century, the earth's temperature rose approximately 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit and it is expected to go up another degree over this century. This may not seem like a very big increase, but given the fact that a temperature change of much less, one-tenth of one degree, can trigger an ice age, according to Tim Flannery in his 2005 book The Weather Makers, it is something about which to be concerned.

The controversy with global warming is not that it is happening. Most scientists agree that the earth is getting warmer. The controversy is what exactly is causing it to happen. Until recently, many scientists said the earth throughout history has cooled and warmed at fairly regular intervals and that this warming trend was part of a natural pattern. The last known warning trend, according to Al Gore in his book, An Inconvenient Truth (based on his Oscar-award winning documentary), occurred in the first part of the 1300s and was called "the Medieval Warming Trend." As temperatures have been somewhat cooler than usual since that last warming trend, some scientists believed the rising temperatures were an indication of another warming trend or, remarkably, another ice age.

However, many scientists say this warming trend is different. To start, it is much hotter than previous warming trends. Warming trends before this one brought temperatures up by a mere 0.1-degree Fahrenheit. This current warming trend has increased temperatures over the last century (since 1900) by just over one degree. At the same time that temperatures are increasing, the world's burning of fossil fuels has been going up dramatically. Fossil fuels emit tons of carbon dioxide and as more countries in North America, Europe, Asia and South America industrialize manufacturing processes and use more cars, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases. The direct correspondence to increased carbon dioxide levels and rising temperatures clearly point to humans as the primary cause of global warming, scientists say. In his book, Al Gore illustrates this belief on pages 66 and 67 by pairing the rates of carbon dioxide and temperature changes over the last 600,000 years. The two graphs match each other almost exactly in the timing of rises and falls and the rate at which temperatures went up or down.

Given the complexities of the components that cause global warming and the disparate theories on the causes of the earth's rising temperatures, it is important to research not only the definition of global warming and the results, but also understand the potential causes. The average temperature on earth is 57 degrees Fahrenheit. What keeps the earth at this temperature is a thin layer of atmosphere. What happens is the sun shines its rays down on earth and the earth's atmosphere, which is made up of greenhouse gases, traps some of the rays for energy and releases some back into space. This is why the earth's temperature is warm enough for humans but not too hot. If the earth had too much atmosphere, like the planet Venus, then temperatures would soar to the point where nothing could survive the heat. Conversely, if the earth did not have enough atmosphere or no atmosphere, temperatures would drop below 0 degrees Fahrenheit and all living creatures on earth would freeze, which are the conditions on the planet Mars. Until the last hundred years or so, the earth's atmosphere has been able to keep temperatures at a livable rate.

The problem is that the atmosphere is getting thicker because of the increase in carbon dioxide, according to Al Gore. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide, which are produced primarily by automobile emissions (33%), industrial waste (29%), residential uses such as electricity (21%) and business needs (17%), are the main sources of greenhouse gases according to Laurie David and Cambria Gordon in their book The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming. As the atmosphere thickens, fewer ultraviolet rays of the sun are sent back out into space. Instead, they are trapped back inside the earth's atmosphere and making the air warmer.

As the air gets warmer, the water in the oceans also gets warmer. This causes icebergs and glaciers to melt and the air to become even warmer because there are fewer icebergs and glaciers around to keep the air cool. It also raises water levels worldwide, which has caused a rash of floods around the world over the last decade. With so much evidence showing that the planet is getting warming and that the results could be catastrophic, one wonders why there isn't more effort made toward fixing the situation. Part of the problem is that not all scientists agree that the plant's warming trend is the result of human consumption of fossil fuels. This is because the earth over its 4.5 billion year history has gone through many climate changes including numerous ice ages, when temperatures dropped dramatically and much of the earth was covered in glaciers. Between these ice ages were period of moderate temperatures and also warmer than normal periods, when the glaciers melted and many parts of the Northern Hemisphere that had been dry were submerged under hundreds of yards of ocean.

Another aspect that made people wonder whether the earth was actually warming was the existence of colder than average conditions such as colder than average winters in Europe accompanied by record snow falls, damaging ice storms in the American southeast region and blizzards in the Midwest. However, as the facts about the corresponding rise in carbon dioxide and temperatures because more prevalent, more and more scientists who had previously denied the existence of global warming were now beginning to acknowledge that dramatic climate changes were due as much to human excess as to natural temperature fluctuations. Part of the reason for the change may be the increase in the effects of burning fossil fuels. The earth's temperature has been creeping up slowly over the last few decades. As a result, the ocean is warming, which has caused more extreme weather in all parts of the world, from typhoons in South East Asia to hurricanes in the American south and forest fires in Australia and the American Northwest. With the warmer oceans, the polar ice caps in the Artic and Antarctica are melting, raising ocean levels worldwide. Regions like the Pacific Northwest, which under normal conditions had a surfeit of rainfall, were experiencing drought conditions.

As the degree of climate change has risen, so has the research about global warming. As of 2011, hundreds of books and over 10,000 scholarly journal articles were written on the subject. Even before the release of Al Gore's 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which dramatically illuminated the dangers of global warming, awareness of the toll that humans and their habit of burning tons of fossil fuels had brought on the earth was increasing awareness of the need to explore other resources of energy.

Evaluation of the Audience for Global Warming Warnings

When scientists first began to talk about the existence of global warming and the potential dangers it presented, few people were concerned. After all, the earth is a big planet and it was unlikely at millions, even billions of people could have any great effect on the earth's atmosphere or its temperature. Additionally, the fact that scientists pointed to fossil fuels as the source of global warming made many people suspicious. After all, many companies rely on the existence of fossil fuel, from those responsible for mining or drilling for such energy sources to those who refine or convert such sources into petroleum to power vehicles or electricity. Then there are the people who use fossil fuels, which includes just about everyone on this planet. To suggest that using such kinds of fuel as actually damaging the planet was to suggest that our way of life as we knew it was wrong and that we should all stop using cars, televisions, and all other modern devices and go back to living in caves and hunting animals.

People who initially believed in global warming were limited to conservationalists and scientists. Much of the public thought of people who were concerned about the environment as "tree huggers." It was not until hurricane season in the southeast became longer and more devastating, tornados in the Midwest because more destructive and flooding, droughts and forest fires happened in parts of the world that had never seen such destruction previously. Given the confluence of such weather events happening concurrently, more and more people began to listen to scientists and began to see how the warming of the earth's atmosphere would cause such radical and immense destruction.

But even with more people believing in global warming, few changes have happened to combat the problem. The primary reason is that to truly combat global warming means to make significant changes to the way we live and use energy today, especially in the United States, where the vast majority of the country lives far away from public transportation and relies on cars to get around. While Al Gore's documentary was compelling, contained credible and convincing evidence and has been lauded for changing the minds of many skeptics, global warming remains a problem because people don't think it's threatening enough to make significant changes.

While change is not happening at a rate that will significantly mitigate the damage already done, Mr. Gore's and other author's views on the subject have been compelling enough to bring about small changes. Many schools are now celebrating Earth Day (held this year on April 22, 2011) and are studying renewable resources and pollution combating solutions in science. Many more communities offer free or inexpensive recycling programs so that we reuse more plastic, glass and paper and, therefore use less fuel.

Another significant cause of global warming has been the destruction of the element that can significantly decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and those are trees. This is why paper-recycling programs also contribute toward the fight against global warming. As more trees are allowed to stand, more carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and converted into oxygen. This helps maintain cleaner air and decrease the growth of the atmosphere. Indirectly, decreasing the harvesting of trees also helps fight global warming because less logging means less fossil fuel burned and less fuel used in manufacturing new paper.

As more people experience extreme weather and more people witness extreme weather, the message of conservationalism and making steps toward decreasing global warming will be heard and followed by more people. Once deemed the ranting of crazy "tree hugging" environmentalists, today more people are seeing our earth as something that is a lot more dedicated that perceived and something that needs our help to keep it healthy.

Analysis of the Persuasive Strategies.

Articles and stories about the existence and evils of global warming used a combination of ethos or emotion, logic, and rational thought to convince. As an example, Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth, talked about how his son's accident and his sister's death from lung cancer helped convince him to work for the greater good. He used science produced from a number of environmental studies to support his claims with facts and evidence. He combined the emotional stories of his family with the rational scientific facts to convince viewers and readers that global warming had reached a crisis level.

To combat the accusations by naysayers of being irrational environmentalists with a grudge against the rich oil and coal companies, scientists and journalists writing about global warming have been careful to back up all claims about global warming with facts. And with every set of facts, critics came up with contradicting evidence. When initial reports that the earth was getting warmer came out, critics denied that fact by pointing out heavier than usual snowstorms and colder than usual temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere. When scientists pointed out that the warming trend manifested itself into different forms, including colder than usual temperature and increased snowfall, critics blamed natural temperature fluctuations. But the evidence of the direct correspondence of temperature and carbon dioxide levels, with temperatures and carbon dioxide levels raising and lowering almost consecutively, many critics are now becoming convinced of the existence of global warming.

This is not to put all the credit on science for making people more convinced of the existence of global warming and the human causes behind it. People writing about global warming are well aware of the challenges they face in convincing the public, especially of convincing the public to make radical changes to their way of living. Many articles back up claims with charts, graphs, pictures and other graphics. While literature for children uses simpler language, scientists writing in scholarly journals also make an effort to use simpler language and layman's terms so as not to alienate readers unfamiliar with the complex science behind this subject. At the same time, the information shows extensive study and research.

Al Gore's documentary and corresponding book also include compelling pictures of glacial recession and models showing possible flooding of costal areas around the world. The articles, books and documentaries that have been most convincing as far as the reality and dangers of global warming have been the ones that have used scientific facts and materials to back up their argument as well as dramatic graphics and illustrations. Concerns about global warming have had to withstand the well-financed efforts by critics, many of which extract, process or produce fossil fuels. Additionally, the effort to combat global warming means making significant changes on everyone's part. It is, perhaps, the reluctance of most people to drive less, use less electricity, bring shopping bags to the store rather than use the plastic bags (made with petroleum) that makes people take the warnings about global warming less seriously.