Making Climate Change Understandable Summary

Climate change is one of today’s most hotly debated topic. Scientists for many decades have made supposed claims that current energy creation and reliance on fossil fuels will lead to inevitable changes to the planet. Today, climate change denial is still a popular to most of the world despite the mounds of evidence to support that it exists. The climate change issue suffers from being mismanaged by various parties through focusing on the wrong issues and the lack of true commitment from the general public, according to Sandra Steingraber.

The documentary “Climate of Doubt” presented by PBS shines a light on the ongoing public debate on climate change and particularly whether it is man-made or a natural occurrence. According to the documentary, new public studies have found that only about 50 percent of Americans today believe that climate change is caused by human activity. PBS Frontline interview John Hockenberry explores and takes the audience through various interviews with scientists, politicians, and skeptics from both sides of the political spectrum to see what is causing the public divide. One side believes climate changed is produced through human activity and that the Fed Gov. needs step in and impose federal regulations like the cap and trade system to cap the amount

Matt Patterson argues in “Global Warming – The Great Delusion” that the alleged scientific consensus surrounding the theory of global warming is based not on fact, but rather on a web of mass hysteria and deceit. Patterson contends that “In fact, global warming is the most widespread mass hysteria in our species’ history”, and that the beliefs of global warming proponents are the result of their own delusional imaginations and a subconscious apocalyptic yearning toward which masses of people tend to subject themselves. While Patterson worries that what he perceives to be the

In his video “What They Haven’t Told You about Climate Change” for conservative media organization Prager University, environmentalist and former President of Greenpeace Canada Patrick Moore expresses his skepticism of humans being a major cause of climate change. While it is true that humans have not been the sole contributors to climate change, Moore significantly downplays the impact that humans have had on the climate. The overwhelming, international, peer reviewed scientific consensus is that recent human activity has caused an unprecedented increase in global warming (“Climate Change: How do we know?”). Moore’s characterization of humanity’s impact on climate change omits important data and research to spin a misleading narrative on climate change.

These last two election cycles have demonstrated the importance of climate change in relation to politics and the american people. What is unfortunate is that what seems to be a very crucial and real problem in our human survival, according to scientists, is being debated by people who do not have the scientific credentials to even discuss the science behind the reality of climate change. Those behind the skeptics, have funded a successful campaign against the reality of the facts and have introduce doubt into the sciences.

Often, the public and “political debate over what to do about global warming is far different from the scientific debate surrounding the issue” (Taylor) as the media publishes discourse relating to global warming which asserts a rhetorical influence through the ideological screen by which such information is subjectively presented to the public. In the example of a New York Times article on the topic of climate change, the author’s decision to discerningly highlight the fact “that concentrations of major greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to increase to record levels […] [and] that Arctic sea ice remain[s] at very low levels” (Chan) reflects a selective rhetorical emphasis and dissemination of information that does not include or illuminate other data suggesting a contrary or skeptical perception of global warming. As such, the public depends primarily on the media’s capricious determination of salience and rhetorical delivery to inform personal understanding and opinion regarding the validity and imminence of climate

Climate change and the effect it has had on global warming has been a scientific subject discussed for the last 30 years; however, only recently has it became a highly debated issue in world politics and pop culture. In fact, according to United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), climate change is one of only a few topics that many countries across the world have agreed upon as a potential future cataclysmic issue which must be discussed by world leaders who should also address it with their citizens. The vast majority of scientists are not only

97% of climate scientists agree that such increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration are man-made (Global Climate Change: Consensus). Why then is it that the news media treats such widely held views by experts as debate rather than consensus? The answer may lie in the media’s current and skewed standards of what constitutes “objectivity” and “balance”.

A major problem and controversy that’s continuing to build up in the world, is global warming. There are two opposing sides to this controversy. One side are scientists and environmentalists who use collective data in order to prove that global warming is real and caused by human activity. The opposing side are interests groups such as an oil company or individual, who believe that global warming is just a bogus subject and misleading information put together by the media. The mass media plays an important role in this controversy because it continues to show information from both sides of the argument, leading to a standstill.

The world is full of controversial topics. One topic has been discussed for nearly decades among the American people. The conversation on the matters of climate change has plagued the nation. Americans have set a record high for the level of concern toward climate change. Up eight percentage points, an average of forty-five percent of Americans are greatly worried about climate change and the effects that it will have on the earth (Gallup 2017). Recently, the cause of climate change has become a hot topic. Climate change can be generally defined as the changing weather patterns over a long period of time. Usually when people discuss global warming, they are actually referring to climate change since global warming is the change in the temperature of earth’s surface, one factor in climate change. Other factors of climate change include but are not limited to: changes in precipitation, severe weather patterns, and changes in the earth’s oceans. A definite answer to how these changing factors, or whether these changes are occurring, has not been presented, but that does not mean that there have not been attempts. Many people and groups of people have offered their personal opinions. Some simply share opinions with the partisan, political, group they belong to while some spend countless hours researching to form their own opinions. This has led to a melting pot of conflicting opinions. The American people have created a divide among themselves by arguing over whether climate

The problem that the pro- global warming theorists have created is that of social standing and little else. While there may be scientific backing to support some of the theory, the media presents the problem with great sensationalism. Global warming and energy conservation has thus become a trend and losses some of its validity through this. The scare tactics used by the media to “promote awareness” are just that, a linguistic ploy to gain favor. “Awareness of this global threat reinforced public concern and environmental problems and thereby provided environmental activists, scientists, and policy makers with new momentum in their efforts to promote environmental protection.” (McCright, 2000) This statement draws line to the potential benefits that would be received if the pro-global warming theorists were to draw enough attention to the issue. Driven by social empowerment and conviction to environmental protection, these activists misrepresent the actual threat and paint it as being much more

The issue of climate change is a recurring topic in the news, there have been scientist trying to gain support from politicians and the general public to combat this issue for years. There are several reasons why there is a lack of support and policy to address the problem relating to climate change. The issue of climate change is so divisive because people are uneducated about the topic. While there are numerous sources of information that is available to the general public, people are still ill-informed. To add, the general public and politicians may disregard conversations of climate change because they may think there are other issues that are more important. To make the public understand and to gain support for control climate change,

Research shows an individual’s stance on the importance of climate change is influenced by personal experience and daily weather events rather than ambient temperature (Marquart-Pyatt 253. For example, someone who experiences a flood in the past five years will see climate change as more personally important. An individual’s stance on climate change is also directly related to their political ideology as “political liberals are 71% more likely and political conservatives are 33% less likely to believe that the seriousness of global warming is generally underestimated” (Marquart-Pyatt 253). Therefore, False perceptions are common could be corrected if proper campaigning emphasizes the true impact of global warming. Enforcement can only go so far without voluntary participation in the effort.

The response to climate change has proved inadequate on many levels. Partially this is because the issue requires scientific literacy that many simply do not possess, allowing leaders to underplay or ignore the danger since the public is not able to analyze the issues, and giving opportunity for groups such as gas companies to wield their considerable clout in favor of what benefits business instead of the environment. Furthermore, because of the large scale of climate change, the consequences are hard to see and the blame can be pushed around. Accordingly, climate change is highly-politicized, and cannot be addressed factually without upsetting one group or another. Whether or not climate change exists may be a difficult question to answer to the satisfaction of some individuals, but it is still not a political question; treating it as such means leaving the potential danger unexamined.

Global warming is an issue which many people, experts or not, have an opinion on and the controversy over its validity has led to two distinct factions: those who believe it is influenced by human actions and those who believe it arises from natural causes. One major consequence of disputing scientific evidence and research that supports anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change due to global warming is the slowing or halting of progress towards better environmental policies. Several special interest groups and leading politicians have created doubt among the public about the reality of global warming, and it is alarming that there are scientists who also support these views and