Shifting Climate
The Truth of a Shifting Climate
By: John Blackwood
Anyone who has turned on a television in the past decade has probably heard the phrase ‘climate change.’ Being such a prominent issue in today’s society, climate change is often brought up as a root cause of other problems in our environment. But what is climate change?
As it suggests, climate change is the altering of the average global temperature. As simple as this sounds there are many contributing factors to the continually changing climate as well as many serious issues that can take form as a result of climate change. Climate change has been shown to negatively impact natural ecosystems, agriculture and food supplies, forestry, energy, water resources and availability, among many other serious problems.The general consensus here is that climate change has a direct influence on many prominent issues facing our society today. It has been widely publicized the impact human activities have directly had on the increasing global temperature.
After going through years of being an issue surrounded by controversy and neglect, it has been proven that the industrious innovations of the United States have come at the cost of bringing harm to the natural environment.
According to the EPA, in a recent test, scientists extracted deep ice cores from the Antarctic region believed to be approximately 650,000 years. These cores were then examined for their carbon dioxide content which can serve as a direct correlation to the carbon dioxide content contained in the air of its time. This study showed that the amount of CO2 is higher now than it has ever been in the past 650,000 years.The EPA states ‘Research indicates that natural causes are very unlikely to explain most observed warming, especially warming since the mid-20th century. Rather, human activities can very likely explain most of that warming.’
Carbon dioxide is part of a collection of gases in the atmosphere referred to as ‘greenhouse gases’ due to the way in which the gases impact our atmosphere. These gases in our atmosphere help to trap heat and keep the Earth warm. With the increasing amount of these gases due to increased human activity, the Earth’s atmosphere is gradually getting warmer and warmer putting the environment, which was once naturally balanced, on its edge.
It might never be possible to bring climate change to a complete halt, however in the pursuit of maintaining a sustainable environment for life to persevere on Earth, everyone must do all they can to help bring an end to these prominent issues.
Contact cabrinicomdept@cabrini.edu with questions and feedback.
