In the twenty-first century, Global Warming has become one of the most talked about issues in the media. While most of the Western world has generally accepted the premise that man’s chemical emissions in the atmosphere can and are affected the world’s climate patterns, in the United States the issue has become so politicized, with many Republicans challenging the science behind the theory. Global Warming is also an archaic term for the issue despite is continued widespread usage. Since some places may get warmer, others cooler, the more accurate term to call the phenomenon is Climate Change. The problem is that humans continue to contribute to the problem of global warming. Scientists who study climate that if human-caused climate change continues, the problems could be catastrophic. While some people are still debating whether or not man’s emission are actually negatively affecting our atmosphere, others are proposing solutions and moving forward to avoid this manmade disaster. It is a relatively new phenomenon since it is only recently that scientists understand to the level that they do how climates work, and how humans might negatively affect them. Only since the early 90s has there been the understanding in many science communities that human emissions could lead to potentially tragic outcomes for the country. The problem, as will be soon, is two-fold, both the unnatural changes to the climatic cycles of the earth, and also the political impasses in solving it.
Climatologists are scientists that study the climate of the earth, which is different than the weather it that it tracks to long-term atmospheric conditions and temperature rather than the short term. Only recently have models emerged give scientists a much better understanding of the earth’s climate (Masters, 1). It was once thought that climate only changed over long periods, hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Recently though, scientists have found that shits in climates can occur in a relatively much shorter time frame, and they found there were dramatic shifts only 8,200 years ago (Masters, 1). With the development of civilization, and its reliance on weather agriculture, if such a shift were to occur today, it would have dire consequences on humankind (Masters, 1). According to Jeffery Masters, Ph. D. who is the Director of Meteorology at the Weather Underground, if such a changed happened today, “It would have severe consequences for humans and natural ecosystems” (Masters, 1).
It appears that these “severe consequences” could be looming for humanity. The National Academy of Sciences in 2002 compiled a 244-page report with over 500 references that was drafted by a group of over 50 of the top experts on climate. The report, Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises, lays out the scope of the problem. Past climate can be inferred through ice shoots on the polar caps. In 1989 the National Science foundation funded a $25 million project to drill two miles into the caps on Greenland and from that were able to compile a rough climatic history from the last 110,000 years (Masters, 10). This data led to the conclusion that in the last 100,000 the Earth’s climate had fluctuated much more drastically than scientists had originally suspected. They conclude that in the last 110,000 years there had been 20 major shifts in the Earth’s climate.
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Climate change is changing our economy, health and communities in diverse ways.” Carbon Dioxide, an emission from cars and industry, is being introduced into the atmosphere in large amounts. According to the US Geological Survey, human produce in between 3 and 5 days the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that all of the volcanoes in the world emit in an entire year.
The Natural Resources Defense Councils lists what is at stake of human activities change the earth’s climate. While it is that such a complex phenomenon that it is almost impossible to know anything for certain, there are some basic things that can be expected. These, according to NRDC, include, increase in illness and death due to heat waves, more diseases in food and water, and certain groups and areas of people that could go under water do to the melting of the polar ice caps.
Solutions are possible to this problem. And there are a series of proposals that must be taken at once in order to prevent dire consequences for the earth.
The proposed solutions are to Climate Change are two fold, one is political, and the other is practical. Estimates range up to trillions of dollars for how much a solution will cost, but the cost of not acting is much greater. The overarching solution to mankind affecting the climate is to cease the activity that leads to man-caused emissions. One problem is that many of the energy needs, electricity and power all depend on fossil fuels, which have the undesired affect of pollution.
The Natural Resources Defense Council lays out five things that most be done in order to stop these emissions from being released in the atmosphere: Set limits on global warming pollution, Invest in green jobs and clean energy, drive smarter cars, create green homes and building and build better communities and transportation networks. On their website they say that, “ technologies exist today to make cars that run cleaner and burn less gas, modernize power plants and generate electricity from nonpolluting sources, and cut our electricity use through energy efficiency” (NRDC, 1).
These things are easier said than done though. The current industries that make a profit off fossil fuels have powerful lobbying power for lawmakers. This makes it difficult to pass legislation that would restrict the use and sale of fossil fuels. Since much of the world operates under capitalistic market principles, the solution it seems would need to make sense given the current economic state of affairs in the world. Green technology such as solar and wind and electric cars exist, but generally they come at a high cost than the traditional fossil fuel means of energy production.
A promising solution that is controversial in it’s own right, is to replace traditional power such as oil and coal based production, with nuclear power. By 2050, the energy needs of the world are expected to double or triple (Sailor et al, 1). So how can the world reduce fossil fuel emissions when they are the commodities that the world currently relies on to produce electricity? One answer to this question is to move towards nuclear power.
Nuclear power is clean energy, meaning it produces power without producing emission. The trade-off is that it involves a lot of risks for safety. Nuclear power operates on the same principles that nuclear weapons operate under. By splitting an atom, an enormous amount of energy I released which can then be collected. In the form of a weapon, it can destroy an entire city, but in the form of nuclear power it can power an entire city.
Critics to this solution cite known cases such as Chernobyl in Russia when an entire city had to be evacuated due to a meltdown of the reactor. More recently, in 2011 there was the Fukushima reactor, which needed to be shutdown after an earthquake caused a tsunami, which destroyed the ability of the reactor to cool itself. A nuclear meltdown is a term that is used to describe a situation when a reactor’s is impaired from overheating. When a reactor starts producing more heat than the cooling system is able to cool, the entire power system can fail.
Media coverage of certain cases makes the public even less comfortable with the idea of moving further towards nuclear power. It is true that there have been some notable disasters involving nuclear power, but compared to other power systems, nuclear power has an impressive track record. They produce clean energy and also deliver it at a cost which makes it competitive in the energy market place. According tot eh U.S. Energy Information Administration, there are currently 65 such plants in the US. These produce 19% of the total US energy generation (EIA). Coal power plants, a “dirty” energy source, provide 37% of energy production, but there are over 600 plants in the country, ten times as many plants as there are nuclear power plants.
Though it would be costly in the beginning if the US increased the number of nuclear power plants by five fold, it would meet all of the current energy needs, making the US no longer dependent on fossil fuels. The fact of where the world is today with nuclear power is that we have half a century of using the technology and it has never been safer and more efficient. The pros, strongly outweigh the cons that exist. But first there would need to be significant governmental momentum for such a change to occur.
William C. Sailor points out in his report “A Nuclear Solution to Climate Change” that a shift towards supporting the construction of more nuclear power plants can only occur if “there is strong government and popular support in many countries and a major commitment of industrial resources” (Sailor, 2).
Sailor cites the pristine safety record of the industry and puts the accidents that have happened into perspective. He writes that with the US there had been the equivalent of 8,500 reactor years of nuclear power production with only one serious incident at Three Mile Island (Sailor, 3).
Scientists in a position to have an opinion on the issue are continuing to move towards a position that believes that humans are doing things to negatively effect the climate which could cause dire consequences for the whole of humanity. Current green technologies are not moving fast enough and are not becoming economical soon enough to address the problem. The only way to make a significant change would be to embrace a technology that is green that is already in use, nuclear power. With political and public support, his could be a big step forward in combatting the ill effects of climate change.
Works Cited
"An Introduction to Climate Change." Climate Change Facts. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. <http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/climatebasics.asp>.
"Are climate skeptics right?." HowStuffWorks. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. <http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/climate-skeptic1.htm>.
"Existing U.S. Coal Plants." - SourceWatch. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. <http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Exis
Hollingsworth, David. "USGS Newsroom."USGS Release: Human Activities Produce More Carbon Dioxide Emissions Than Do Volcanoes (6/14/2011 11:30:00 AM). N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. <http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2827&from=rss_home#.UojuUGTwKb8>
Sailor , William. "A Nuclear Solution to Climate Change?." NUCLEAR POWER. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013. <http://faculty.publicpolicy.umd.edu/sites/default/files/fetter/files/2000-Science-NE.pdf>.
"USGS Newsroom." USGS Release: Human Activities Produce More Carbon Dioxide Emissions Than Do Volcanoes (6/14/2011 11:30:00 AM). N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2013. <http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2827&from=rss_home#.UojuUGTwKb8>.
