This research paper explores the issue of global warming and the shifting attention that the skeptics are receiving in the recent past. This paper focuses on the global warming as defined by the scientists and the skeptic’s point of views in the debate. The skeptics of global warming are attracting attention from the public while gaining a respect from the climate scientists. Despite the skeptics calling for a sharp role back to political and industrial sources thought to contribute to global warming the climate scientist are playing defensive and are not backing down either. The increased momentum in the shifting of the public views over the past years have led to controversy over whether global warming is real or not and whether human activities really contribute to its occurrence. research ha shown that the acts of skeptics of global warming is changing the view that people have on the issue regarding global warming and increasing number of individuals are a strong to believe on these skeptics and it might lead to compromised efforts in curbing the menace.
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This research will provide and in-depth analysis of both the scientific and the skeptical views regarding the causes and effects of global warming on the planet earth and the survival. It will focus on the views of various skeptics that seem to be shaping the thoughts of the public which play a critical role in preventing further global warming. In addition to that the result of this research will help the environmental scientists to strategize on dealing with the skeptic ideas which jeopardize the efforts being put into curbing the causes of the global warming for instance in terms of public education. Finally the research will yield information on whether the global warming is really caused by human activities as climate scientist claim or it’s just a fallacy as claimed by the skeptics.
Literature Review
Global warming is described by climate scientist as a phenomenon that contributes to increase of temperature which is near the earth surface as well as in the oceans which started in the mid-twentieth century and its has been projected to be a continuing process. Assessment done by intergovernmental panel on climate change has shown that global service temperatures has been increasing and its attribute to various reasons which include: increasing concentrations of the greenhouse gases which are caused by the human activities like the burning of fossil fuel and deforestation (Mintzer, 129). The green house gases; nitrous oxide, methane, carbon dioxide and water vapor, which traps the heat and like from the sun in the earth atmosphere which in turn serve to increase the temperatures which affects humans, animals and plants. Interruptions resulting from climate change when tolerance level of the living organisms is exceeded leads to death e.g. extreme high and low temperatures causes extinction of less tolerant species.
Global warming as been argued to result to a rise in the global temperatures which in turn leads to a rise in the sea level as well as altered patterns of precipitation thus expansion of the subtropical deserts. In addition to that the change lad to retreating of the glaciers, sea ice and the permafrost in the polar regions, increase of extreme weather events like cyclones, erratic rainfall and dry spells, extinction of species and changes in the agricultural yields hence affecting human survival. Finally the rising atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to more acidic oceans a phenomenon predicted by climate scientists to continue.
Projections derived from climate models indicate that the global surface temperature is going to rise further during the 21st century. These projections are marred with uncertainties as estimates from these models were obtained from models with differing sensitivities to greenhouse gas concentrations and use of varying estimates of the future concentrations of greenhouse emissions.
The climate scientist have a consensus that anthropogenic global warming is an occurring phenomenon but the political as well as the public debate rages on whether that consensus is actually true or false. This debate has been in the recent past intensified by the increasing skeptics of the global warming who have gradually changed the scientific perception of the public on the issue of the global warming. Many people in the world question whether global warming realty exist or not and if it does exist, what are the reasons of its existence. But the fact is that there has been an increase in the surface temperature of the earth in the past century from 0.45 to 0.6 and believers of the global warming belief that its the warming is a proof of tits existence but skeptics believe that the warming is just a natural phenomenon and it should pose no worry at all. The debate takes a very interesting angle as both skeptics of the global warming and its believers have a valid scientific data that proofs the justification of each side of belief.
Skeptics of the global warming have a belief that global warming is not an environment problem and think that the recent increase in the earths temperatures does not causes any alarm.
In addition to that skeptics of global warming also belief that the earth’s polar caps and coastlines does not show any signs of disappearing in the near future. They have a strong believe that the models that climate scientist use to proof the occurrence of global warming and predict its effects are misrepresented and go further to argue that the models prediction showed that the effects of global warming was to more adverse in the last century than t actually was. Skeptics also argue that temperate increases has been occurring and fluctuations are widespread through out time even before the widespread emissions of the carbon dioxide that climate scientists link to be the root cause of global warming. Skeptics of the global warming argue that the models sued to predict effects of global warming are entirely based on facts hence ca not be trusted.
Some believed that climate change is part and parcel of the planet’s cycle which has taken place before. Bellamy states that ‘the sun is growing old’ and is becoming warm than before, its spots do affect the earth by warming it up and subsequently the atmosphere. Other natural activities or rather processes deemed to cause global warming include out gassing, solar radiation, microbial activities, variation in sea salinity are much responsible for global warming while anthropogenic impacts are negligible. Nicola summarizes all these by saying, “At least 60% of warming the earth observed from 1970 seems to be induced by natural cycles which are present in the solar system…….”
In addition, skeptics of global warming are of the opinion that the projections about global climate are likely to be inaccurate due to inadequate of current models about global climate changes, although it is not stated whether or not the values are high or low.
According to Richard, (11 and 12) he holds that there have been an increase in average surface temperature, increase in carbon dioxide level which is a greenhouse gas with the potential of warming up the earth, but he further said that ‘we’ cannot confidently coin the past change in climate to carbon dioxide and similarly, we are not capable of predicting future climatic conditions. The argument here is that if the increase in carbon dioxide emission warms the earth, at present, the earth could have been warmer. The same is echoed by Garth who said incase there is an increase in emission of the gas so that it is large enough to be recognized, it is not yet fully accounted for/answered.
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Skeptics of the phenomenon, global climate change, have challenged these view held by the majority on the basis of the following that global warming that stimulates GCC is actually not taking place, the causes of global warming is purely a natural process and man has not played any part and if yes the impacts are negligible, some say that the causes of the phenomenon is not known, the negative implications of global warming are few compared to the perceived accrued benefits, and the accuracy of instrument used to project issues relating to climate are deemed questionable. Despite these two contradiction opinion about global warming, those on both sides opt to carry out more studies in order to substantiate their claims and facts. For instance, it is important to correlate carbon dioxide emission and global warming as well as developing global climate change models that are of fewer errors (Nikkhah, 96).
Although there is a very strong consensus that global surface temperatures have risen in the recent past, there are those who are of the opinion that global climate change is not as serious as the way it has been put. The accounted causes of global warming among others include; high solar intensity that keeps increasing, oceanic circulation cycles, biosphere impacts, change in ultraviolet radiation, volcanism, reflectivity, variation on earth rotation, changes in solar systematic, change in galaxy positions and anthropogenic effects. The effects of the phenomenon being rise in the sea level, melting of arctic sea ice, rise in sea-surface temperatures, melting of glaciers and permafrost, prevalence of heavy down pour leading to flooding, desertification due to extreme drought conditions, increase in average surface temperature which affects human health, increase in strength and frequency of hurricanes, increase in frequency of heat waves and acidification of sea water as well as change in ecosystem.
Research methodology
To carry out this research the methodology to be employed will focus on obtaining the ideas and views from the public regarding the debate on the global warming. The manner in which the research is conducted will employ both the qualitative and quantitative methods and bring out clearly the entire mechanisms involved in collection of data, analysis as well as in the interpretation of the research results. Both secondary and primary sources of data will be used to obtain the information from the public on their beliefs on the issue of global warming. The data required will also be collected using the secondary sources and case studies will be utilized in soliciting for relevant information. The data obtained will then be analyzed and presented using charts and tables where appropriate (Gleick, 90).
To ensure that the data required for the research is obtained to ensure that it addresses the objectives as well as the research question, both secondary and primary sources will be of great help. The types of primary sources to be used in the research include: conducting interviews, issuing of questionnaires and personal observations. After obtaining permission from the relevant authorities, the questionnaires will be distributed to the randomly sampled public and collected at a later date. Use of questionnaires ensures that a larger population is covered at a time as they are distributed to different participants at same time. The secondary sources used include the use of the internet source like online publications, the library sources like books, journals and research dissertation to obtain blended information on global warming and past research findings and reports from organizations.
Finally the information obtained in the field will then be analyzed using the non parametric a statistics and this is done after filtering, modeling and transformation process. The analysis of the data will then yield information necessary for drawing conclusions and recommendations. In addition to that descriptive statistics will also be utilized in analyzing the data especially in description of the sample under study. In order to for the significance differences of the hypotheses and research questions a T-test is carried out (Stern, 201).
Use and dissemination of research findings
The findings of this research paper will be of great benefit to various stakeholders engaged in conducting public education regarding the causes and the effects of global warming. Information from the research will play a critical role in identifying the options and views that the public have on the controversy surrounding the existence of the global warming hence they will be able to target in changing the stated views to garner their effort in curbing the menace. Ina addition to that research finding will be used by students and researcher who are interested in the debate and may also be used to elaborate on the issues especially on the part of the literature review of other future projects. Another use of the research findings include increasing understanding on the concerns of global warming by the public hence acting as a resourceful source of information (Watson, et al, 124).
The research findings will be disseminated using various channels like: posting and publishing then in the online resource centers to be accessed by internet users across the world and hard copies will be printed as a dissertation to and distributed to libraries to be accessed by anybody interested in the obtaining information on global change.
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