Informed Decisions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Informed Decisions - Essay Example They use the philosophical base of Karl Marx, the tactics of Adolph Hitler and the rhetoric of the Sierra Club. The American people have been assaulted from all directions by rabid environmentalists. School children have been told that recycling is a matter of life and death. There is nothing happening that is not the result of natural occurrences and that is that. 2. The earth does go through natural cycles of cold and warm. These can just be repeating patterns, or they can be triggered by catastrophic events like a meteor strike or major volcanic eruptions. What we see now, which has never been seen before, is the fact that a species on earth now has enough power to trigger one of these catastrophic events. That means us...So, while some of what we see happening to the climate is part of natural cycles, we are now adding to the problem at a remarkable rate - the natural rate of change would be much slower and less dramatic. My viewpoint is that global warming does exist. It is a matter of urgency because we have the ability to slow down a natural process by modifying our own behavior. Maybe one would argue that it's not a problem. Try that on the inhabitants of Tuvalu - it's the first island in the Pacific which is actually beginning to go under water as the sea level rises. Others are going to go under too, but it's happening to the Tuvalans right now. Many of the younger people are leaving, but older people feel they have nowhere else to go and are just appealing to the world to pay attention and change their carbon emissions now. D. Justification Through Evidence. The atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, have increased since pre-industrial times from 280 part per million (ppm) to 377.5 ppm (2004 Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center), a 34% increase. Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are the highest in 650,000 years. Carbon dioxide is a by-product of the burning of fossil fuels, such as gasoline in an automobile or coal in a power plant generating electricity. Levels of atmospheric methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, have risen 145% in the last 100 years. Methane is derived from sources such as rice paddies, bovine flatulence, bacteria in bogs and fossil fuel production. The year 1999 was the fifth-warmest year on record since the mid-1800's; 1998 being the warmest year. According to Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center (NOAA), the current pace of temperature rise is "consistent with a rate of 5.4 to 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit per century." By comparison, the world has warmed by 5 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit since the depths of the last ice age, 18,000 to 20,000 years ago. F. Three Specific Examples. Disappearing Glaciers: Ice is melting all over the planet. Glaciers are melting on six continents. If present warming trends continue, all glaciers in Glacier National Park could be gone by 2030. The park's Grinnell Glacier is already 90% gone. Pictured here is the glacier prior to its meltdown. Because of global warming, the glaciers of the Ruwenzori range in Uganda are in massive retreat. The Bering Glacier, North America's largest glacier, has lost 7 miles of its length, while losing 20-25%