Global Warming Debates
Global warming is a subject that has been debated widely in the press and many books are being published. Some writers would have you believe there is no problem at all. Others present evidence of global warming, the potential dangers of climate change, and alternative energy solutions to try and reduce our carbon footprint.
In 2007, probably the most well-known and discussed book on global warming was published by Al Gore. An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, was published after the release of his successful documentary movie of the same name. As for the book, it does not pretend to grapple with climate change with the sort of minute detail and analysis displayed by three other books on the subject,(The Winds of Change by Eugene Linden, The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery and Field Notes From a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert), and yet as a user-friendly introduction to global warming and a succinct summary of many of the central arguments laid out in those other volumes, “An Inconvenient Truth” is a lucid, harrowing and compelling read.In the New York Times review, they noted that
“Gore methodically lays out the probable consequences of rising temperatures: powerful and more destructive hurricanes fueled by warmer ocean waters (2005, the year of Katrina, was not just a record year for hurricanes but also saw unusual flooding in places like Europe and China); increased soil moisture evaporation, which means drier land, less productive agriculture and more fires; and melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland, which would lead to rising ocean levels, which in turn would endanger low-lying regions of the world from southern Florida to large portions of the Netherlands.
Mr. Gore does a cogent job of explaining how global warming can disrupt delicate ecological balances,… stripped-down narrative emphasizes facts over emotion, common sense over portentous predictions – an approach that proves considerably more persuasive than the more alarmist one assumed, say, by Tim Flannery in “The Weather Makers.” Mr. Gore shows why environmental health and a healthy economy do not constitute mutually exclusive choices, and he enumerates practical steps that can be taken to reduce carbon emissions to a point below 1970’s levels.”
By contrast, an opposing viewpoint is presented in a book titled Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years. The book, written by Dennis T. Avery and S. Fred Singer, is an argument that global warming is a cyclical event that has happened gradually and systematically throughout history. Scientific data backs up the claims and demonstrates why no one should be concerned about global warming, in the authors’ opinions. Singer and Avery present in popular language supported by in-depth scientific evidence the concept that global temperatures have been rising mostly or entirely because of a natural cycle. Unstoppable Global Warming explains why we’re warming, why it’s not very dangerous, and why we can’t stop it anyway.
It is a necessary read for those who believe in global warming myths, and those who don’t. Regardless of where one stands on the issue, it is crucial to look at both sides before taking a stand. This book is definitely in the libraries of large oil tycoons and cynics, but it deserves a place next to the eco-lover’s favorite hemp bean bag chair as there are some interesting points in the book that should be addressed by the “green” community.
In a review of this book by Real Climate, Climate Scientist found argument with many points raised in the book for example
Point. The existence of the medieval warm and the Little Ice Age climate intervals, and the 1500 year D-O cycles in glacial climate, proves that the warming in the past decades is a natural phenomenon, not caused by human industry at all.
CounterPoint. The existence of climate changes in the past is not news to the climate change scientific community; there is a whole chapter about it in the upcoming IPCC Scientific Assessment. Nor do past, natural variations in climate negate the global warming forecast. Most past climate changes, like the glacial interglacial cycle, can be explained based on changes in solar heating and greenhouse gases, but the warming in the last few decades cannot be explained without the impact of human-released greenhouse gases. Avery was very careful to crop his temperature plots at 1985, rather than show the data to 2005.
“Avery’s implicit promise would seem to be that with rising CO2, the heavens will part and let the excess energy out, a Lindzenesque mechanism to nullify global warming. The measured change in heat fluxes in the equatorial Pacific is indeed comparable to the radiative effect of doubling CO2 but the CO2 number is a global average, while the equatorial Pacific is just one region. The measurements probably reflect a regional rearrangement of cloud cover or ocean temperature, a decadal variation with no clear implication at all for the global mean heat budget of the Earth. The global heat imbalance has been inferred (Hansen et al, Science, 2005), and it is consistent with rising greenhouse gas concentrations and transient heating of the ocean.”
In the publication Understanding and Responding to Climte Change: Highlights of the National Academies Report. it is reported that there is a growing body of evidence that indicates that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming. Records show that surface temperatures have risen about 1.4oF (0.7oC) since the early twentieth century, and that about 0.9oF (0.5oC) of this increase has occurred since 1978. Observed changes in oceans, ecosystems, and ice cover are consistent with this warming trend.
The fact is that Earth’s climate is always changing. A key question is how much of the observed warming is due to human activities and how much is due to natural variability in the climate. In the judgment of most climate scientists, Earth’s warming in recent decades has been caused primarily by human activities that have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases have increased significantly since the Industrial Revolution, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels for energy, industrial processes, and transportation.
Greenhouse gases are at their highest levels in at least 400,000 years and continue to rise. Global warming could bring good news for some parts of the world, such as longer growing seasons and milder winters. Unfortunately, it could bring bad news for a much higher percentage of the world’s people. Those in coastal communities, many in developing nations, will likely experience
increased flooding due to sea-level rise and more severe storms and surges. In the Arctic regions, where temperatures have increased almost twice as much as the global average, the landscape and ecosystems are rapidly changing.
Although the potential effects of climate change are widely acknowledged, there is still legitimate debate regarding how large, how fast, and where these effects will be. Climate science is just beginning to project how climate change might affect regional weather. Estimating climate change impacts also requires projecting society’s future actions, particularly in the areas of population growth, economic growth, and energy use.
