Global Warming:Human Disaster or a Fact of Naure?

Global Warming:

Human Disaster or a Fact of Nature?

            A quote by former Vice President Al Gore says “Global warming will be the greatest environmental challenge in the 21^st century.” S Fred Singer an Atmospheric Physicist quotes, (PBS, 2000), “How can you distinguish a warming produced by an increase in carbon dioxide from a warming produced by other cause say the sun? These are important issues that need to be settled. This basically means that scientists have not ruled in the factor of other elements besides carbon dioxide that might factor into global warming.”  With the warming of the earth, the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere and other recent changes due to Global Warming we can say that Al Gore is absolutely right in his quote. One part of Global Warming is supposedly the substances we as humans put into the air, from car emissions to nonrenewable resources such as coal and oil. Another belief is that all the pollution we put into the air is causing the temperature to rise others see it as a fact of nature. Whatever the belief might be we are in a time of uncertainty and strive for answers about this new age of global warming. Global warming shows signs of changes to the environment that society can do nothing about and there are human elements that contribute to the effects of global warming. The controversy is are we creating the phenomenon we call global warming or is it just a fact of nature.

            The key players in this report that I believe have a good point in their respective sides is a UN Scientific Panel called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which mainly believes that Global Warming is an event created by carbon dioxide emissions and that global warming is solely the responsibility of humans. S. Fred Singer a climate physicist and Dennis Avery a former US agriculture official who recently published a book called Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years believes that Global Warming is a natural cycle that reoccurs therefore not a human factor.

Background Information on Global Warming

According to the Columbia Encyclopedia (Columbia Encyclopedia 2000), “The temperature of the atmosphere near the earth’s surface is warmed through a natural process called the greenhouse effect and started during the time of the Industrial Revolution” The rise in temperature is a natural effect that is triggered when there is shortwave of light that is from the sun to the earth and passes through a thermal blanket or a greenhouse. These Greenhouse gases are mainly made up of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. The earth’s temperature has been going up 0.6 degrees Celsius throughout the past century. An incline in industry, agriculture and transportation, increased the percentage of greenhouse gases and, the worlds’ ocean is also heating up getting warmer with each passing year (Live Science 2004). There are future epidemics that are predicted in upcoming years of our lifetime for instance the melting of the polar ice caps and the flooding of coastal lands.

Throughout the one-hundred years we as a society have been depositing many fossil fuels into the atmosphere. According to numerous scientists humans are to blame for the increased carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere. In the past 150 years the parts per million of carbon dioxide increased from 280ppm to 378ppm. There are many concentrations of gases that are contributing also to the increase of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere such as, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. These gases might change the chemical composition and physical dynamics of the earth, for example, how heat and energy is distributed from land, ocean, atmosphere, and space. In studies of ice cores and other climate data shows that the climate was consistent and stable for about 10,000 years, the study also showed that there was concentrated carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere remained stable until the Industrial Revolution from the 1850 to the present where the levels increased 24 billion tons per year. A statistic (Humanist 2007) shows that greenhouse gas emissions were suppose to decline in the 1990 for the US instead it has increased by 1.5 percent every year and China and India are growing even faster. Scientists also believe that other gases might relate to a high global warming potential and compounds that scientists are looking at from preindustrial to the mid 1990’s; methane 152% increase, nitrous oxide  17% increase, and the Chlorofluorocarbons decreased by parts per trillion from 268ppt to 84ppt (paragraph as cited in Justus, Fletcher 2004).

According to Risk Management 2007, our cities are sinking and sea levels are beginning to rise. The major coastal cities are gaining population to the already booming population it has, which creates a major risk for the citizens who inhabit it. An international panel of researchers (Risk Management 2007), “warned that sea levels are expected to rise by more than a foot over the next century.” The panel also concluded that there are 634 million people living in an area of 30 feet or less in elevation. The most endangered cities are New York, Tokyo, and Shanghi. Also two major coastal cities of the United States, Los Angeles and New York, are the most vulnerable to the rise of sea levels and violent storms. By the year 2090 a mega flood normally hits North America every 100 years, will hit North America every three or four years (Risk Management 2007). NASA (as cited in Space Daily 2007) even predicts more frequent and severe storms. This is a world crisis that needs to be stopped coastal cities are a main source of international trade. Also there are many people who live in major coastal cities society would suffer if this event were to happen.

Side 1 IPCC Global Warming is caused by humans

We the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believe humans are the cause of global warming the emissions of fossil fuels of 150 million years. In 1994 we decided that something needed to be done with the continual warming of the earth caused by the greenhouse effect.  Our panel on climate change forecasted a temperature rise of 0.8 to 3.5 Celsius by 2100 if no action is taken on the greenhouse effect situation, however if action is taken the temperature will still rise from 0.5 to 2 degrees Celsius because of the already released gases that are in the atmosphere (Columbia Encyclopedia 2000). One fact of global warming of temperature that is directly quoted from an article (Geographic News 2007) “The rate of warming is increasing. The 20^th century’s last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. We made a report that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850.” This shows a pattern developing in the climate of the earth, there are great signs that the earth is getting warmer and will keep on getting warmer. Our panel also came out with a report that by 2080 about 100 million people will be affected by flooding on coastal regions. The US Government is getting involved with carbon dioxide emissions and created a bill called the Zero-Emissions Building Act 2007 basically calling for a renovation of federal buildings and building new federal buildings, to reduce the emissions by fifty percent (Planning & Environmental Law 2007) Therefore we conclude that global warming was created by humans and we have to find ways to stop this endeavoring event.

Side 2: S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery

            We believe that global warming is an unstoppable event and reoccurs about every 1,500 years. We also believe the carbon dioxide emitted by humans is only a minor role in this cycle. Carbon dioxide did not account for the Little Ice Age which lasted from 1550 to 1850 with rapid glacier expansions on mountains in Europe, North America and Asia or the medieval warming’s of the planet from 900 to 1300 in both Europe and Asia. There is evidence of a 1,500 year cycle by the sediment cores from the Atlantic Ocean, Sargasso Sea, and Arabian Sea. Archeologists have also found evidence of prehistoric migration moving their homes and farms up the hillside when the climate was warming. There is a warming of .8 Celsius but, there have been warming time periods before, for instance from 1850 to 1870 and again from 1920 to 1940.

An example of temperature of Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age (An Example Of what Avery and Singer are talking about not actual graph they made)

                From Wikipedia http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

As for the rise in sea levels have been rising to 400 feet since the last ice age 18,000 years ago. The last 5,000 years data has shown that the rise in oceans have gone up about seven inches per century. Of course when climate warms there is going to be a rise the world’s sea levels. There should be no panic of an acceleration of the sea rising, researchers estimate the west half of the Antarctic will melt away in 7,000 years. Therefore we conclude that global warming is part of a cycle that we have to go through and we cannot stop. Throughout history there have been events similar to global warming which there was barely any human interaction with the atmosphere. (Unstoppable Global Warming 1)

What I believe

            I believe that Global Warming is a natural event and S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery’s 1,500 year cycle makes more sense than the IPCC saying that the carbon dioxide emission we are putting into the air is the cause of global warming. According to Avery and Singer there is inputs on cores that show evidence of a 1,500 year cycles. Also past events where the climate has cooled like Little Ice Age and a warming 1850-1870 and 1920 to 1940 or Medieval Warming. Also archeologists found evidence that prehistoric people have gone up mountain sides in warmer years and back down in colder years. IPCC I think is much focused on carbon dioxide emissions there not looking at other sources for it. In some aspects of their side all the IPCC is trying to do is trying to find causes only related to humans and only measuring data that is human related. There is also a possibility that we do not know enough about global warming to formulate a conclusion, there are only hypothesis which the answer will not be known until further research is done.

References

Dunn, S. (2007). Driving home: 4 steps toward minimizing global warming and achieving energy independence. The Humanist, 67(5), 25. Retrieved September 3, 2007, from Gale General OneFile database.

Grinberg, M. (2007). That sinking feeling.(analysis of global warming). Risk Managemnet, 54(8), 8. Retrieved September 3, 2007, from Gale General OneFile database.

Justus, J. R., and  Fletcher S. R. (2002). Global Climate Change. Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports and Issue Briefs, 3(17).  Retrieved September 3, 2007, from Gale General OneFile database.

Lucero, L. (2007, August). Cooling global warming. Planning & Environmental Law, 59, 32. Retrieved September 3, 2007, from Gale General OneFile database.

NASA Study Predicts More Severe Storms With Global Warming. (2007, September 4). Space Daily. Retrieved September 3, 2007, from Gale General OneFile database.

National Geograhic News. (2007, June 14). Retrieved September 7, 2007, from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html

 PBS. (2000). Retrieved September 7, 2007, from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/debate/singer.html

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"Unstoppable Global Warming, by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery." From Reason to Freedom. 5 Apr. 2007. 15 Nov. 2007 .

(2000). Global Warming (6th ed.). The Columbia Encyclopedia. Retrieved September 3, 2007, from http://find.galegroup.com/itx/infomark.do?contentSet=IAC-Documents&docType=IAC&type=retrieve&tabID=T001&prodId=ITOF&docId=A69028727&userGroupName=nauniv&version=1.0&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&source=gale