Climate change. Fact or Fiction?

Hey Everyone,
 For this weeks blog assignment we are discussing the on going topic of climate, and how it can our society and world. We have been given a few sources to answer a few questions. Some of the questions we have been asked are as follows:

According to evidence, is climate changing right now?
What does evidence role say about humans role in the changing climate?
How is climate change likely to affect our society and world?

One of the sources I used to research these questions is, http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/index.html.
This website, gave me so much more insight to global warming and changing climate than I though really existed. Most of the population believes global warming is just a myth and something that some environmentalist's have come up with to scare us into a "better way of living" but the truth is, the Earth is warming up year by year and science can prove it. I will now answer the questions provided above based off of the information from http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/index.html.

According to evidence, is climate changing right now?

The answer to this question is YES! The World's climate has been steadily rising since the dawn of the industrial revolution. In 1750, we were introduced to the industrial revolution, which was great for us, the economy, and the world, but who knew the negative affects that it could potentially have for us in the future. With the industrial revolution brought on heat trapping greenhouse gasses that would later prove to be disastrous to today's current and future economies. These greenhouse gases have affected, temperature, precipitation, sea level and storms.


 What does evidence role say about humans role in the changing climate?

According to http://climate.nasa.gov/causes/ , some of the gasses causing climate change, and global warming are: Water vapor, Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nitrous oxide and Chlorofluorocarbons. Carbon dioxide or CO2 is a leading greenhouse gas causing global warming, CO2 is released through human activities like, deforestation, and the burning of fossil fuels when we drive our cars. Since the 1750's the amount of CO2 has gone up about a third. Methane is another leading greenhouse gas causing climate change. Methane is release through human activities such as the decomposition of trash and waste in landfills, machine use for growing agriculture.



How is climate change likely to affect our society and world?

Climate change is a big part of our society and can affect our everyday lives if global warming becomes more of a problem than it already is. Climate plays a bigger role in our daily lives more than people think. Rising climates can affect food production, as the heat increases it makes it more difficult for certain crops to produce. Fresh water is becoming more scarce due to droughts and less snow packs because of the rising climate. As the climate increases fire becomes a bigger occurrence, and a fire that runs through places that have a higher drought rate will burn harder and longer. Here is a website I found useful or more information on the hazards the growing climate has on us. http://greenliving.nationalgeographic.com/global-warming-affect-daily-life-2680.html



Going back to the beginning of this post, I stated that there are many people that are skeptical about global warming. According to http://heartland.org/ideas/global-warming-not-crisis ( a website dedicated to proving global warming is not a crisis) states that ,": Probably two-thirds of the warming in the 1990s was due to natural causes; the warming trend already has stopped and forecasts of future warming are unreliable; and the benefits of a moderate warming are likely to outweigh the costs." These skeptics believe that global warming is due more in part to natural causes rather than human interaction. Their main argument is that there is not enough scientific proven data to show that global warming is being brought on by human interaction. I think this skepticism still exists because of conspiracy theorist that has been s. Again, as I stated earlier, I believe that most people think global warming is a myth that some environmentalists came up with to try and get us to "go green" and live a better life in their eyes.

From everything that I have read about, I personally believe that global warming is an issue and something that should be addressed more often. I recently saw a movie that really brought the issue of global warming to light for me, this movie was called, "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore. In this documentary Al Gore, shows a graph of the amount of CO2, Methane and Carbon dioxide that has been admitted into the atmosphere in the last thousand plus years. I personally feel that if we continue living the way that we have been living, producing the same toxic chemicals that are causing climate change, there could be a possibility of a full enviornmental collapse in the next 50 years. If we don't do something about the way we live, we could soon deplete the earth of it's natural resources which we so desperately need.