climate change

Climate Change

Climate change is a major issue that is currently facing the world. Many people argue that climate change is not real and humans are not responsible for it. However, scientific evidence suggest humans play a role in climate change. The essay will examine both the pro and con arguments for climate change, arguing that it is real and that people are to blame.

In this day and age, many people do not believe in climate change. One of the main arguments by climate change deniers is that they do not trust scientists and scientific data. They claim that scientists have a hidden agenda and want to create fear to pay more money toward science projects (Bolsen & Druckman, 2018). However, there is clear scientific evidence to suggest that climate change is happening and humans cause it. 97% of scientists believe in climate change (Bolsen & Druckman, 2018). There are many ways to prove that this statement is true. For example, according to NASA, all glacier ice on Earth is melting, on average, almost twice as fast as it was just 10 years ago (Bhattacharya et al., 2021). According to Bhattacharya et al. (2021), satellite data has shown that sea levels are rising at an accelerated rate, and the rate of rising has doubled every 7 years since 1980. Another strong argument against climate change deniers is that there have been several extreme weather events across the world recently. These include hurricanes, droughts, floods, and heatwaves. According to Bhattacharya et al. (2021), there has been a 9% increase in extreme heat since 1970.

However, while climate change deniers believe that climate change is not real, there is much evidence suggesting it is happening. Verma (2021) states that from 1880 to 2012, Earth’s average surface temperature has warmed by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (or .8 degrees Celsius). This might not seem like a lot of change, but the problem with climate change is not about what happens in one place or one year but what has happened over a long period. The Washington Post states that this change is about ten times faster than at any other moment in Earth’s history (Wallace-Wells, 2019). This means that every decade since 1880 has been warmer than the previous decade since 1880 (Wang et al., 2018).

In conclusion, there is much scientific evidence pointing toward climate change and human involvement in environmental changes. 97% of scientists agree on this fact (Hamilton 2015, para. 6). However, many people don’t want to believe that humans can cause negative environmental effects even though we know it’s true. 

References

Bhattacharya, A., Bolch, T., Mukherjee, K., King, O., Menounos, B., Kapitsa, V., ... & Yao, T. (2021). High Mountain Asian glacier response to climate revealed by multi-temporal satellite observations since the 1960s. Nature Communications, 12(1), 1-13. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24180-y

Bolsen, T., & Druckman, J. N. (2018). Do partisanship and politicization undermine the impact of a scientific consensus message about climate change?. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 21(3), 389-402. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1368430217737855

Verma, A. K. (2021). Influence of climate change on balanced ecosystem, biodiversity and sustainable development: An overview. International Journal of Biological Innovations, 3(2). https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3935095

Wallace-Wells, D. (2019). Time to panic. New York Times, 16. http://ilbanfracking.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Time-to-Panic.pdf

Wang, J., Xu, C., Hu, M., Li, Q., Yan, Z., & Jones, P. (2018). Global land surface air temperature dynamics since 1880. International Journal of Climatology, 38, e466-e474. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/joc.5384