Climate Change
Global warming, as we all know, is a highly volatile debate in the modern political and scientific arena. Billion-dollar profits for corporations, political career paths, and the future of our planet and race are all at stake. Historical climate change is an undeniable fact; there have been ice ages and warmer, balmier times over the years. As manifest logic would imply, humans were not responsible for those changes. In the current times, however, humans have the population and technology necessary to affect the natural cycles. Since the industrial revolution, humans have undeniably released a steadily increasing amount of greenhouse gases. The effect of humans cannot be discounted without also dispensing with logic: CO2, CH4, and the other greenhouse gases produce the greenhouse effect. Humans have released increasing amounts of these gases in the last 250+ years. Hence, humans have enhanced the greenhouse effect. No person may correctly state that humans have had no effect on our climate. The question that I raise is how much have humans affected the climate? How much CO2 and CH4 are we truly releasing, and how much must there be in order to significantly change our climate? It is my opinion that the current climate change is a natural one that is being exacerbated but not caused by human activity. The question of the day is, again, how much are we exacerbating the change? As far as I know, we have no truly definitive answer yet. The arguments for human responsibility tend to lack lack unquestionable facts, and simply point to trends between human industrialization and the warming cycle. Arguments for the natural responsibility foolishly assert in essence that greenhouse gases from human society don't somehow compound the natural cycle of those gases. There is no acceptable answer at the moment. We need to find out how much the greenhouse gases must increase in order to affect a significant change , and then we can compare that amount to how much we produce. If our emissions are close to that critical amount, then we can justify limits on carbon and other greenhouse gases. If not, then we can focus that effort on other environmental initiatives.
Global warming, as we all know, is a highly volatile debate in the modern political and scientific arena. Billion-dollar profits for corporations, political career paths, and the future of our planet and race are all at stake. Historical climate change is an undeniable fact; there have been ice ages and warmer, balmier times over the years. As manifest logic would imply, humans were not responsible for those changes. In the current times, however, humans have the population and technology necessary to affect the natural cycles. Since the industrial revolution, humans have undeniably released a steadily increasing amount of greenhouse gases. The effect of humans cannot be discounted without also dispensing with logic: CO2, CH4, and the other greenhouse gases produce the greenhouse effect. Humans have released increasing amounts of these gases in the last 250+ years. Hence, humans have enhanced the greenhouse effect. No person may correctly state that humans have had no effect on our climate. The question that I raise is how much have humans affected the climate? How much CO2 and CH4 are we truly releasing, and how much must there be in order to significantly change our climate? It is my opinion that the current climate change is a natural one that is being exacerbated but not caused by human activity. The question of the day is, again, how much are we exacerbating the change? As far as I know, we have no truly definitive answer yet. The arguments for human responsibility tend to lack lack unquestionable facts, and simply point to trends between human industrialization and the warming cycle. Arguments for the natural responsibility foolishly assert in essence that greenhouse gases from human society don't somehow compound the natural cycle of those gases. There is no acceptable answer at the moment. We need to find out how much the greenhouse gases must increase in order to affect a significant change , and then we can compare that amount to how much we produce. If our emissions are close to that critical amount, then we can justify limits on carbon and other greenhouse gases. If not, then we can focus that effort on other environmental initiatives.
posted by Army88 at 8:57 AM
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