Global Warming

Global Warming is a complicated and often debated term. There was a quick clip of someone speaking in, “An Inconvenient Truth,” that said something like, “It could be the greatest hoax every played on the American public.” I thought it was interesting when Al Gore mentioned that a study was done by reading something like 900 different articles on global warming written by scientists and absolutely every article in the group agreed that global warming was an issue and it was an issue caused by human actions. However, a study done of information passed out by the media was full of mixed messages regarding whether or not global warming was real. Like Gore said, it’s no wonder people are confused.

Understanding all of the things that impact climate is rather overwhelming to me. Between atmospheric structure and ocean currents, there are a lot of factors that pull together to create our climate. Essentially, the earth works similar to a greenhouse. “On a global scale, water vapor, CO2, and other gases in the atmosphere play a role analogous to that of the glass in a greenhouse.” ( Wright 546-547) These gases are referred to as greenhouse gases. Light energy coming from the sun enters the atmosphere and is then absorbed by the earth where it becomes heat energy. The heat energy is then radiated back into the atmosphere and then into space. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop some of the heat energy from going into space and reflect it back to earth. (546-547) If the levels of these gases in the atmosphere change, there will be an impact on our climate. If the levels of GHGs increase, more heat energy is radiated back to earth, causing the climate to warm. If the levels decrease, less heat energy is radiated back, causing it to cool. There are also many other things that act as positive and negative forcing agents, working together to keep a balance between warming and cooling.

Currently our human impact on these natural cycles is being seen as the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide are increasing. The potential impacts of global warming are devastating and it is the already vulnerable members of our world who will suffer the consequences the most. Already struggling with issues of “water availability, food security, health and disease, life in low-lying regions” the poor will feel the first impacts of global warming. The movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” mentioned several negative impacts of global warming. For example, more evaporation due to higher temperatures, leads to more precipitation and thus flooding. And completely opposite to that, higher temperatures, sucking more water out of the soil will lead to droughts. The movie mentioned several specific examples of people around the world who’ve already been suffering from unusual droughts or flooding or even extremely high temperatures. One example was in Mumbai, India where it rained 37 inches in just 24 hours. Temperature and weather changes are things that we might all think about already in relation to global warming, but I was especially interested in problem mentioned by the changing of seasons. Gore mentioned that in nature’s perfect design, caterpillars and baby birds come out around the same time but due to changes in seasons, somehow the caterpillars came out to early and when the baby birds were born, there wasn’t enough food for them. It would be impossible to consider all of the ecological niches that would be affected by climate change.

Whether or not you are willing to fully buy in to the warnings of scientists regarding the issue of global warming, it seems to me that even the threat of such problems should lead us to make changes. I liked the example in the movie of insurance. It’s not inevitable that your house will burn down, but you still take out home insurance when you buy a house. If there is even a slight chance that future generations will face the devastating affects of our lifestyles, wouldn’t it be the most life-honoring thing to take positive steps towards change? I have friends who only vote on the lines of one issue, the issue they call: the sanctity of life. My question to them is relation to the environment is, “What about the lives of all those to come after us? Isn’t the environment a sanctity of life issue as well?”


Works Cited
Wright, Richard T. Environmental Science Toward a Sustainable Future. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2005.

An Inconvenient Truth