So let’s start at the beginning. What is global warming? Well you must have heard about the greenhouse effect. You may not know this but it’s a natural process. Did you hear that on the news? I very much doubt it. So let’s have a short science lesson.
The greenhouse effect is a process that keeps the plants animals and plants of this planet alive by warming the atmosphere and the Earth’s surface. This happens when light energy from the sun passes through the atmosphere. This light energy then hits the Earth’s surface and gets converted to heat energy. This is then emitted as infrared radiation back out to space. But this radiation is partially absorbed by natural “greenhouse gases”. The trapping of the radiation warms up the atmosphere and in turn the planet. Without the greenhouse gases, the Earth would be 33°C colder than it is today. Much of the planet would become inhospitable. So what’s the big deal? Why is this a problem?
It could be big problem because we, the human race, is pumping out mahusive amounts of Carbon dioxide, Methane and the worst of all –Aerosols. These create the enhanced greenhouse effect where more and more light from the sun enters the atmosphere and less and less escapes into space as infrared radiation. But we like the warmer weather don’t we?
Well it doesn’t work like that. When the warm weather melts the fresh water of ice in the arctic and around the world, it slowly rise the sea level. By the latter part of the 21st century the sea levels will rise by between 18 and 59 cm. Now this might not affect you at all if your living up a mountain in the Alps. But to a Maldivian, its catastrophic. The Maldives highest point is 2.3 meters. You can do the maths. Your lovely warm package holiday could turn upside down. And the lives of the Maldivian people will change and their culture and land lost forever.
But aren’t we due an ice age?
Yes we are. Every 26,000 years, the angle of tilt, twisting motion and the earth elliptical orbit around the sun changes ever so slightly resulting in a colder climate. This is called the Milankovitch cycle. We sit on the tip of an interglacial period (between ice ages) just before the drop in temperatures. But the warming of the planet could stop the impact on the severity of the ice age and even if it will start at all. But is this an ignored fact? If you walk down the street and ask people what the Milankovitch cycle is. How many will answer yes?
The south of England sinking naturally and Scotland rising because of tectonic plates. The Milankovitch Cycle and the ignored evidence. The government could do more to make the whole affair less bias towards combating a natural or human made change in climate.
Now. I think that the ignored evidence is something the public wants to hear. Yes it could be true but even if it isn’t, people would feel better reading this than an article written by Al Gore that would scare people. It makes the public too content with global warming. Making them stop recycling and to care for the environment because they fear nothing. Global warming as an idea could just be a way of making money. Car Company’s do know of hydrogen yet they push electric cars which are less economical then diesel, petrol and bio fuel cars. But they make more money this way.
If the Kyoto project is achieved then £76 trillion will be thrown at cutting carbon emissions. Some experts believe that even if we do contribute this amount of money to stopping climate change. We will have an extremely small amount of impact.
Have we been fed a nightmare that has led the world to spend trillions of pounds, dollars and roubles on tackling a threat that we have no control over. Are we spending copious amounts of money on cutting fossil fuel consumption where it should be spent tackling aids, famine, drought, natural disasters, crime, education, ethnic tension, racism and conservation? If global warming is out of our control, why should we try to combat it?
Fossil fuels are depleting around the world. And most of the money being spent on climate change is being spent on finding new renewable energy sources like hydrogen, bio fuels, wind, Hydropower, Geothermal and solar to name a few.
If there isn’t an incentive to change to renewable and sustainable ways of making energy then progress would be incredibly slow and there would probably be a variety of conflicts over the dwindling fossil fuels and no renewable sources of energy to change to.
I try not give my view but what do you think about this? Is fighting global warming or the term "global warming"more important than tackling aids and poverty?
