Essay: Climate change, global warming and The Great Swindle

What is Global Warming? This term is complicated for there is no one codified definition. National Geographic defines Global Warming as the surge in greenhouse gases –which have increased due to mankind – which trap extra heat in Earth’s atmosphere. This warming has resulted in glaciers melting, sea levels rising, forests disappearing, and all while wildlife is scrambling to keep pace. Long-term weather changes due to the Earth’s climate have already begun and will continue to get worse. To better understand the concept of Global Warming, this essay will examine each aspect of climate change in detail.
One of the most important aspects of global warming is the greenhouse effect. This occurs when gases in the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide trap infrared radiation. Infrared radiation is comprised of rays that are invisible to the human-eye but are felt as heat. The buildup of greenhouse gases creates a layer which, “traps outgoing heat from Earth’s surface,” and keeps some in the lower atmosphere. Greenhouse gases come from many human-related sources. For example, a quarter of human-produced greenhouse gases come from agriculture. Another quarter comes from the production of electricity and other industrial pursuits; these make up about twenty-one percent of all greenhouse gases. This makes finding a cure for global warming difficult as many humans will have to make massive changes to their everyday lifestyle. Global warming has become a worldwide problem as the temperature has risen 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1850. The warmer climate, which is caused by more carbon dioxide, has led to severe environmental changes such as glacial melting.
The Great Swindle:
The film has many statements that ‘the scientific evidence does not support the notion that climate is driven by CO2 , man-made or otherwise’, and related comments, by a dozen or so reputable scientific experts in climatology, oceanography, meteorology, environmental science, biogeography and paleoclimatology, who work or have worked within such reputable institutions as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), NASA, the International Arctic Research Centre, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Danish National Space Centre and the Universities of London, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Winnipeg, Alabama and Virginia, as well as comments by Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist.
The disputed Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period, as shown in the film. The climate has always changed, and changed without any help from us humans’, as shown by the Little Ice Age of 400 years ago (when the Thames River in London froze over), and before that the Medieval Warm Period of the 9th to 13th centuries (when Greenland had settlements, and grapes were grown in England).
From 1905 to 1940, Earth’s temperature rose, when industrial activity was still relatively small. But from 1940 to 1968, during the post-WW2 economic boom (with its huge increase in use of electricity),2 Earth’s temperature actually fell, until the economic recession of the 1970s.
The film said that CO2 is only 0.054% of Earth’s atmosphere and is a small component of greenhouse gases. Human-produced greenhouse gases are a much smaller fraction again. By comparison, water vapour makes up 95% of greenhouse gases—infrared spectroscopists try to exclude water from their spectrometers precisely because water is such a strong infrared absorber.
If global warming were due to greenhouse gases, the troposphere (the layer of earth’s atmosphere 10–15 km above us) should heat up faster than the surface of Earth, because greenhouse gases there would trap the sun’s rays bouncing off the Earth’s surface, but data from satellites, as well as from weather balloons, does not support this and does not match the theory of climate models. ‘Most observations show a slight decrease in the rate of warming with altitude, so in a sense you can say that the hypothesis of man-made global warming is falsified by the evidence.’—Prof. Frederick Singer, First Director, US National Weather Satellite Service.
Ice core drills all show that, historically, increase in CO2 has lagged behind Earth’s warming by up to 800 years, i.e. Earth’s warming produced the increase in CO2 , not vice versa. [So Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth reversed cause and effect.—Ed.] This CO2 was said to come from the earth’s warmer oceans, because gases are less soluble in hot liquids than in cold. Earth’s temperature was controlled by the oceans, and because these are so vast, it took hundreds of years for the oceans to warm up and cool down.
Why is man-made CO2 promoted to the exclusion of other causes?
A rise in funding for promoting nuclear power (and hence climate-related science research) from $170 million p.a. to $2 billion p.a., in the 1990s, has meant that many scientists and ‘environmental journalists’ have jumped on board the bandwagon. The former (climate scientists) need there to be a problem in order to get funding. The latter require more and more hysterical stories for news media to publish. Now tens of thousands of jobs depend on global warming.
A large portion of Government funds went into building computer models to forecast future climate. However, all such forecasts depend on the assumptions put into them, and ‘all models assume man-made CO2 is the main cause of climate change rather than the sun or the clouds’.
Prof. Richard Lindzen (Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT) was quoted saying, ‘Every textbook on meteorology is telling you the main source of weather disturbances is the temperature difference between the tropics and the Pole. And we are told in a warmer world this difference will get less—less storminess, less variability. But for some reason that isn’t considered catastrophic, so you’re told the opposite.’
In the 1990s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)3 issued a report from which (it was claimed by Prof. Frederick Seitz, former President of America’s National Academy of Sciences in a letter to the Wall Street Journal), the IPCC had deleted at least 15 of the key sections of the science chapter,4 so that ‘this report is not the version that was approved by the contributing scientists listed on the title page’.
The IPCC then included the names of these dissenting scientists in its list of 2,500 consenting scientists. Seitz is quoted as saying, ‘I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the event that led to this IPCC report.’
An Inconvenient Truth:
An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore complements the documentary of the same title by providing biographical anecdotes interspersed with information about global climate change. In the introduction, Gore lays the groundwork for the presentation that is the basis for the film, by summarizing his own involvement with environmental issues and describing how he came to create An Inconvenient Truth. He also sets out his goals, which include trying to improve the health of the environment; he hopes that in pursuit of this common goal, people can set aside their differences and come together.
Gore begins with an explanation of the effects of greenhouse emissions on the temperature of the planet, which takes place over about twenty-five pages. Then, Gore writes about Roger Revelle, a professor at Harvard with whom Gore studied. The next topic Gore discusses is the danger of receding glaciers, and global locations where this is occurring, including Mount Kilimanjaro and Glacier National Park.
Al Gore turns to personal stories as he relates how his son’s accident changed his focus. When he was only six years old, Gore’s son was hit by a car. This experience led Gore to shift his political priorities to issues of public service. Throughout the book, Gore moves from the scientific to the personal, and back, as evinced by the next section. For about fifty pages, Gore talks about how rising temperatures affect weather patterns on the planet. He discusses heatwaves and how they’re connected to increased ocean temperatures, which then influence the frequency and severity of hurricanes. Specifically, he writes about the consequences of Hurricane Katrina, focusing on the loss of human life and livelihood, as well as losses to the national economy. He moves on to point out that increased temperatures also lead to more flooding, and surprisingly, to droughts. The latter is caused by what Gore refers to as relocated precipitation.
Returning to personal anecdote, Gore discusses the dichotomy between city and farm life, and how his father instilled in him the importance of being the land’s caretaker. Then Gore focuses on the melting ice caps in the polar regions of the planet. Here, he covers both the receding and breaking ice shelves and the dangers of permafrost thaw. He includes anecdotes from his travels around the globe in an attempt to describe the effects of global climate change he has witnessed.
Gore goes on to talk about how the polar bear population is negatively affected by the melting ice caps, as well as how that melting influences global weather patterns. He continues to discuss how these changes negatively impact whole ecosystems, allowing invasive species to take over. Through stories of his own camping trips in forests and national parks across the country, he proposes that the reason humans treat nature as trivial is because we’ve lost touch with it. We’re not in nature enough, so we’ve stopped granting it priority.
Gore discusses other threats to species across the globe. He reviews everything from the direct threat of global warming (which affects the polar bear population), to how shifts in oceanic chemistry affect marine life, and the risk to humans, animals, and plants that new diseases can pose as they emerge in the shifting environment. Gore writes about how the rising sea levels resulting from polar ice melts affects species like the Emperor penguin.
Next, Gore talks not only about his own public service, but also his father’s. Specifically, he highlights how such service provides an individual with what he refers to as “the spirit of freedom,” which he believes is a defining feature of democracy in America. From there, he moves on to discuss what he considers to be the three factors that have influenced humanity’s relationship with the environment: increased population, the scientific/technological revolution, and an inability to understand the climate crisis. Gore points out that because climate change is often gradual, people don’t tend to notice it—but it’s his hope that this book and the accompanying documentary will wake people up to the dangers of global warming.
He relates the story of his sister’s battle with lung cancer, pointing out that people smoke because they don’t understand the link between smoking and deadly cancer—because the cancer can grow slowly over time. After this story, Gore returns to the problem of people’s refusal to accept the reality of climate change. He identifies disinformation as a prime culprit, as well as fear that positive environmental change will negatively impact the economy. He also states that humanity feels the climate crisis is simply too big a problem to fix. Another problem that Gore identifies is that many of those in power—individuals and companies that make a profit due to current environmental regulations and practices—refuse to acknowledge and address the impact of climate change because it would threaten their monetary wealth.
Finally, Gore calls on Americans to step up and remember that the nation is capable of accomplishing great things, even if those accomplishments are hard-won. He provides solutions for individuals who want to make a positive impact on the environment, such as using green power and conserving wherever possible—or taking part in politics to make an impact at the regulatory level.
Global warming is a threat to humanity, but progress to remediate it has been slow. One reason for the slow-going is political disagreement. Politics touch every aspect of society. In the United States, the two dominant political parties have opposing views on most topics. In the hot debates of American politics, global warming is usually not on the top of the list unless an environmental catastrophe occurs. In 2015, Senator Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma brought a snowball into the chambers of Congress to prove that climate change was not real. He wanted to show the “eggheads” that it was very cold outside, and that global warming was a farce. The senator could have full-heartedly believed in what he was preaching. However, most would think that senators take to these extremes because of corporate money. According to OpenSecrets.org, both Republican and Democratic candidates receive money from oil companies. Republicans receive close to sixteen million dollars while Democrats receive close to four million dollars in an election season. Senator Barack Obama received close to two million dollars during his tenure in the senate, while Hillary Clinton received close to one million during her time in the Senate. Though Republicans usually receive more funding from the oil companies, oil-backed money in politics crosses political lines. Important topics such as climate change cannot be discussed honestly as many people in politics have special interests in their pockets. This inhibits political action, so nations cannot take a stand on the question of climate change. Politics have also engulfed the climate change movement in a terrible way, as well. It seems that the environmental movement needs to be put back in the hands of the scientists and not politicians. Politicians are known to be ruthless and money hungry while scientists might be more inclined to fight for the cause and not their own pocket.
Another barrier in the way of resolving climate change is economics. When it comes to maintaining economic stability, it can be hard to limit people’s environmental footprint. For example, if a government wants to put a tax on oil, consumers would have to pay more for many goods. Many people may become upset and begin to resent the movement. This becomes politically problematic in democratic nations in turn. If a politician was to propose a policy such as a gas tax, they may lose many voters.
To achieve sustainable environmental goals, economic change is needed. The University of Cambridge in 2015 proposed a plan to rewire the economy with different tasks. This proposed plan was set up in five different sections: government, finance, business, social outcomes, and environmental outcomes. The role of government in this proposal is action. They propose that the government should make official goals to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and they should strictly enforce them. A new tax system would also need to be introduced. These taxes would include waste and pollution taxes, which would promote cleaner production and energy sources. These taxes would also allow the citizenry to be more aware of waste. The government should also encourage companies to meet social and environmental goals, even while they pursue their profits. These goals might include low-carbon energy, zero deforestation, and zero waste. The government would also need to take an active role in limiting the media messages that undermine social and environmental progress.
Consumerism is a massive problem. American consumption (and the production processes that are required to fuel it) is the biggest contributor to environmental destruction. The United Nations’ Human Development Report 1998 (UNDP Report) states that “Runaway growth in consumption in the past fifty years is putting strains on the environment never before seen.”
Americans consume at a higher rate than anywhere else in the country, and thus are the primary contributors to environmental issues caused by unsustainable consumption; issues such as forest destruction, ozone depletion, water and grain shortages, and soil loss.
Rising levels of greenhouse gasses come from harmful chemicals such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane. These chemicals are produced from processes necessary to fuel American consumption, including factories that create massive amounts of smoke, forest destruction, and soil erosion. Almost all of the products we consume (aside from food) are produced in a factory somewhere, and factories don’t just emit smoke. Over 100,000 synthetic chemicals are used in production, and almost none of these have been tested for their effect on the environment. U.S. industries admit to emitting over 4,000,000,000 2lbs of pollution a year and produce 22% of world’s total industrial carbon dioxide emissions.
Extensive destruction of forests (Caused by things such as human-induced fires, agricultural expansion, logging, and road-building) is necessary for fuel and, primarily, paper products. This prevents the Earth’s atmosphere from cleaning itself. Massive erosion (partially caused by deforestation) is causing a loss of topsoil and, thus, a drop in the Earth’s ability to produce food crops.
The global environment is being destroyed by processes that exist primarily to fuel Americans’ desperate need to constantly consume. Without constant American consumption the environment would have time to replenish the resources it provides for us.
The way humans look at success needs to be changed. We view success as having more products, a bigger house, more expensive car and so on. This leads into the problem with consumption and consumerism, which leads into global problems. The fix has to come from both the government and the individual. The government can enforce policies such as high gas tax to limit cars and invest in public transportation. They can also give out incentives for electric cars. However, this change needs to also come from within. No government can change the hearts and minds of its people. For this reason, environmental education is important. As well as people fully understanding their impact on the globe. This can come from celebrities who embrace minimalist lifestyles or even allowing this style of life to be broadcasted on TV. If people see it is the new craze, they will join in. The worst thing that can be done is forcing people to do something. We live in a democracy and people have the right to vote for what they want. And no one will vote for someone who tells people this is what they must do. It is human instinct to reject the values if they are being forced down one’s throat.