14 DAY TRIAL // The debate on the effects of climate change and global warming has never been an easy one, in the sense that many researchers have resorted to various types of tactics and arguments over the years to get their point across. But in the past few months critics to climate change have gained momentum in their demands, but not in their science-based arguments. Due to an artificial scandal called Climate-Gate, which conveniently appeared just before the Copenhagen UN climate summit, and to the fact that this winter saw two or three severe blizzards, these people think that everything is alright.
Skeptics in the United States even go as far as asking for a rollback on all the measures that have taken many years to promote and implement into law, such as curbing greenhouse-gas emissions and other similar things. But their arguments are not founded on any kind of science, but appeal to people's hearts. If a winter is very cold, then the planet cannot be warming, right? If temperatures have increased by a few fractions of a degree, then this doesn't really count, does it? The answer to both of these questions is unfortunately exactly the opposite of what skeptics promote.
What these people fail to understand, despite many trying to explain it to them, is the fact that global warming is not an annual event. It is a long-term trend that has started being recorded around 1880. Since then, graphs showing annual variations and temperature means point at the fact that the Earth has been getting warmer. Naturally, there were periods of time, as in years, that were colder than the ones that came before them, but, on average, and this is very important, temperatures rose (see image). And for many uneducated people, a few fractions of a degree may not seem like much, but the planet only needs a two-degree increase to start shedding its ices like crazy, and promoting sea-level rise.
“People who are opposed to solving the carbon-climate problem have lost the scientific debate. Therefore, they have had to move from discussion of the facts to character assassination, innuendo, and the politics of the personal attack,” Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology expert Ken Caldeira says. He calls these types of behaviors disgusting, but adds that, “These are the death throes of a wounded opposition.” His point of view is echoed by the vast majority of the scientific community, LiveScience reports.
Conservatives in the United States, of course spearheaded by Republicans, began to “question” whether humans could indeed affect the environment, and the Utah House of Representatives even passed legislation asking the federal government not to proceed with greenhouse-gas emission regulations. And all of these mischievous acts, which will end up hurting the people applying them in the long run, are performed based on no type of evidence, but on a cold winter, which is absolutely normal.
Sean Hannity, the host of the so-called news (read entertainment) station Fox TV (also conservative and a fan of the Republicans), said that the blizzards “would seem to contradict Al Gore’s hysterical global warming theories.” And these reckless people are allowed to spread their propaganda on the airways, without control, and with the potential to influence public opinion. All of this is of course done under corporate influence, as large businesses have no interest in investing money in a technology that would ensure our planet gets to live too. This is not natural, many analysts say, as the focus is shifted from scientific evidence to emotions.