In A Rough Guide to Climate Change, Robert Henson gives a brief yet fairly complete summary of the history of climate change and the various opinions/reactions that people have about climate change. He mentions the great concern with climate change in the 1970s and 80s, which died out before entering the 90s. But it seems that the root of the problem has surface again and we are finding it harder than ever to ignore. Henson also describes several views of those who don’t believe in global warming, but it is reasonable to assume from his tone that he himself is a firm believer.
The Field Notes From a Catastrophe by Kolbert takes a much more hard stance on global warming and embraces that global warming is happening and will lead to a catastrophe should it stay unsolved. Kolbert shows her argument on why global warming comes from human activities. She states that she doesn’t want to make the issue too simplistic while much of the hardcore science is left out.
Chapters two and three were full of anecdotal evidence as well as some history of global warming. She mentions first hand experiences in Greenland, Iceland, and the Arctic to support her observations. Much of her views are verry personal and thus easy to relate to. Also included are some interviews with politicians who are aware and actively working on the problem in climate change. In terms of historical content, Kolbert cites Arrhenius and Keeling and enlighten us with the fact that we have been aware of global warming since the 1850s. While this wasn’t a complete shock, it is almost amuzing that people just decided to ignore this aspect of science for so long.
Chapters seven and eight were focused on how we can push to solve global warming through a variety of sources, mainly public or government policy. One such solution is by Rober Socolow, who invented a series of wedges that can prevent billions of tons of CO2 in the next 50 years for each wedge implemented correctly. A lot of attention is also focused on how society views the problem of global warming. Kolbert states that we go about our “business as usual” as if nothing is being threatened. She is obviously appalled by our ability to sit there and live life as normal while waiting for a solution to magically appear.
From other responses I’ve read so far, many people seem to have throughly enjoyed these articles while gaining quite a bit of new knowledge on climate change. I feel the same way. However, I feel much less personal connection to this topic than some. To me, global warming is a purely scientific field of study. Whether or not global warming is a huge problem or one that we can brush off should be made on scientific evidence alone. It does not matter whether we have hypothesized it for 10 years or 150 years. The fact remains that one must show strong scientific support to back up these claims. This is not to say that I don’t believe in global warming, but rather that I honestly didn’t get much out of these articles that would help me make more informed decisions in the topic of global warming. Perhaps it was not the author’s goal to provide this type of information, but since both of these authors were clearly believers in global warming, it’s only natural to assume that they wrote this stuff to convince others on certain issues. In this regard, they did not succeed with me.
Questions:
1. Is global warming REALLY a problem? No this is not rhetorical. If so, please provide a scientific argument.
2. Why do some people still not believe in the global warming phenomenon?
3. Is global warming caused by humanities actions?