Anthon Money Period 2nd Ms.

Blattman Bio 10/10

Issue Paper: Global Warming

The issue I picked is Global Warming because this and future laws will affect me and future generations. There is multiple sides to this argument but two have science background, one is Global Warming is real and happening fast because of human interaction, and there is the opposing side which isnt against Global Warming but humans have nothing to do with it, its apart of nature it doesnt matter if we cut out human made gasses it will happen no matter what we do. For the people who believe humans have a large impact on Global Warming there is a lot of evidence for human impact like Mr. Churchs evidence from 2006 that ocean levels have increased 8 in the past 40 years and the water is increasing faster per year from .07 inches to .1 inches per year. Also WGMS World Glacier Monitoring Service has reported all glaciers worldwide has lost about 40 feet of thickness from 1980 years to 2008. These are very intense changes in the environment and many organizations say humans are behind the increased temperatures these groups include World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate (IPCC), InterAcademy Council, NASA, NOAA, and EPA. Now most of what I said is just saying global warming exists but there is more that proves that human are involved like the main debate against it is that the warming is caused by Earth is getting closer to the sun by the years but this is not the case proved by US Global Change Research Program that the lower atmosphere is heating up but the upper atmosphere is cooling, so this states that if it was the sun heating up the earth that there would be warming in the upper atmosphere not cooling. What is also a problem is that the Human made CO2 is

making the oceans more acidic, Mr. Sabine from The Oceanic Sink for Anthropogenic CO2 said that the Oceans have absorbed 48% of the total CO2 that is 25% higher than prior to human fuels. Now for the opposing side, they do have a very valid argument against human activity in connection to global warming, like how Global Warming and Cooling are caused by fluctuations in the suns heat as stated by Mr. Soon from Physical Geography, Between 1900 and 2000 solar irradiation increased .19% and this correlates with the rise in surface temperatures in the US. It is also said that human activity caused natural disasters like hurricanes and cyclones but Mr. Mayfield says otherwise it is actually caused by cyclical tropical cyclone patterns driven by ocean currents with the backup from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Not only does the Atmosphere cause warming it also could be caused by ocean currents, Mr. Gray found that the Global cooling from the 1940s to the 1970s and the Global Warming from the 1970s to 2008 correlated with the ocean currents and cloud cover driven by the Pacific Oscillation (PDO) which is a natural rearrangement in the atmosphere and ocean circulation patterns. What I personally believe is that if you dont think that humans dont have an impact on global climate change you in complete denial, but if none of us change our ways we will leave our world a mess for future generations and there will be this that will affect us as a population like the melting of the ice caps and the ocean rising and pretending like none of this is true adds to the problem and a human population we need to work together to help the environment even if this means switching out our fuels for bio fuels it will help our future on this planet we all live on.

CITATIONS
Pro
John A. Church, PhD, and Neil J. White, PhD, "A 20th Century Acceleration in Global Sea-Level Rise," Geophysical Research Letters, Jan. 6, 2006

World Glacier Monitoring Service, "Preliminary Glacier Mass Balance Data 2007/2008," www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms (accessed
Apr. 27, 2010) US Global Change Research Program, "Global Change Impacts in the United States," www.globalchange.gov, 2009

Christopher L. Sabine, PhD, et al., "The Oceanic Sink for Anthropogenic CO2," Science, July 16, 2004

Con
Willie Soon, PhD, "Implications of the Secondary Role of Carbon Dioxide and Methane Forcing in Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future, Physical Geography, 2007 Max Mayfield, PhD, "Oversight Hearing on the Lifesaving Role of Accurate Hurricane Prediction" (792 KB) , US Senate

Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Disaster Prevention and Prediction, Sep. 20, 2005
William Gray, PhD, "MIT Professor's Climate Change Op-Ed Proven False," www.globalwarmingheartland.org, Apr. 7, 2010