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The Climate by Philip J.C. Evans One of the biggest issues of our epoch, the idea of human-caused climate change, has caused millions of people to fight for change in government policy all over the world; most of the supporters are ordinary citizens who realized that something was wrong. Until recently, most politicians considered it untrue (and some still do, including George W. Bush), but now most use it to persuade people to vote for them--the candidate who is considered the most green has a bigger chance of being voted in. The number of people who don’t believe in human caused climate change is becoming less and less each day. In my opinion, if it hadn’t been for probable cheating in the 2004 election, Al Gore might have been elected president of the United States: He is very pro-environmental protection. Scientists first stated that they had detected a clear sign of “global warming” during an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting. Thomas Karl led a team at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. to combine data of extremes of weather collected since 1910 to form a Climate Response Index. The frequency of natural disasters is rising, sea levels are rising, and according to some people things could get worse. All this is blamed on increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is in turn blamed on human’s carbon dioxide emissions--but is it all caused by our CO2 emissions? In scientific circles no one “attacks” anyone because of what they believe, but since the idea of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming came along, scientists who publicly oppose the whole idea have come under attack from other scientists, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for them to get funding. One newspaper editor said: "If a biologist submits a request for funds for the nut gathering habits of squirrels it would likely be denied but if it is presented as a study on the nut gathering habits of squirrels in correlation with global warming the funding magically appears." Quite a few of the opponents of anthropogenic global warming are scientists, writers, editors or just ordinary people who were activists and have decided that anthropogenic global warming isn’t true and have changed sides. Today, more and more companies say they are eco-friendly to increase product sales, but the whole anthropogenic (or man-made) global warming idea is causing the first-world countries to put pressure on the third-world countries so that they won’t develop, seeing as that would “produce more CO2”. So if nothing is done to prove or disprove the theory of anthropogenic global warming, than the third worlders will continue to live the impoverished lives that live today.
It will be also disastrous if the power of hurricanes increases as predicted by Al Gore and others. According to “The Great Global Warming Swindle," the reason that there are climatic extremes is because of the temperature difference between the poles and the equator, meaning that if there was a rise in temperatures (especially at the poles, where the increase in temperatures is supposed to be the highest) there would also be a drop in the amount and power of climatic extremes. This is explained in any textbook on the subject. The media has taken a surprisingly great interest in the whole issue, so much so that now people have expectations that cause the media to “make up” more and more extreme forecasts. The media seems to have arrived at a place it can’t back out of easily, not without losing a lot of popularity. Until about 6 months ago, I was very much pro-anthropogenic global warming: I was writing an essay on it and I had given a presentation to the mayor of my town on global warming. More recently, I found out that there was a good chance that the anthropogenic global warming theory was wrong. Whether anthropogenic global warming is true or false will eventually be decided, but as I said before about the developing countries, it’s now that we need to find out, not in few decades. I just encourage you to do what I am doing: find out for yourselves what is true and what is false before fighting for that cause.
Phillip J.C. Evans, 16, lives in Antwerp, Belgium. You may reach him at phillip_jc_evans@yahoo.fr August 2009 |