It is difficult to find an issue with greater global implications than environmental change. It sounds simplistic but environment is everywhere. In fact one can correlate everything we do, feel, and experience with our environment. Whether we like it or not or believe it or not our environment has been changed significantly with a likely anthropogenic component, since mankind has been in existence. It is well understood that this man-made influence has primarily been in the past few hundred years, correlating with our desire for scientific knowledge, thirst for industrial expansion and insatiable desire for progress. From history one can point out various events or topics that have some global aspect to them but very few compare to environmental change. Most were regional or national in scope with some connections around the globe. The various twentieth and twenty first century wars were considered global due to the many nations involved but even those left some parts of the world untouched. One commonality exists among all global events; collective and individual fear (Weber and Stern, 2011).
Shermer (2011) stated there is an attraction to the many doomsday scenarios including global environmental change and that there is indeed a logical human connection; it is in our psyche. We are apparently drawn more to disaster and death than to peace and well being, getting a sort of satisfaction that we do not recognize as correlating to our ancient ancestry. Shermer also found that are brains are wired in such a way because our ancestors decision-making process concluded that danger lurked behind every bush and therefore the best way to cope was to assume that there was indeed danger everywhere; sort of a better to be safe than sorry at...
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...e expectations and outcomes; something that we do not like and that continues the cycle of angst.
Works Cited
Doherty, T. J., & Clayton, S. (2011). The psychological impacts of global climate change. American Psychologist, 66(4), 265-276. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0023141
Ehrlich P.R. (1968). The Population Bomb. New York: Ballantine.
Ford, D., Steward, J. R., & Bacus, J. (2013). Millennium Madness! Y2K?: A Content Analysis of Catastrophic Themes in Selected Print Media. Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology, 31(1), 89-98.
Gardner, D. (2011). Future Babble: Why Pundits Are Hedgehogs and Foxes Know Best. Penguin.
Shermer, M. (2011). The end is always nigh. New Scientist, 210(2815), 30-31.
Weber, E. U., & Stern, P. C. (2011). Public understanding of climate change in the united states. American Psychologist,66(4), 315-328. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0023253
Many people’s opinions are influenced by political leaders and their beliefs, which can have a negative effect on science’s efforts. Mere word changes have shown to make a difference in people’s willingness to pay for taxes that they don’t necessarily support or are even aware of. The use of storytelling has shown to be a powerful means in communicating science to the public as well. Although education and science understanding are not directly correlated with the acceptance of climate science, there is evidence that shows that a brief explanation of greenhouse effects “enhance acceptance across the political spectrum”. Researching source credibility has also boosted the political acceptance of certain scientific information.
Global warming is an issue we are all pretty familiar with. It is the climate change that we, humans, are responsible for. The warming of the earth’s atmosphere is caused by the fossil fuels we burn, clearing of forests, and the carbon dioxide and other harmful gases we release into the air (Cunningham, Cunningham, 2009). There are other harmful toxins we use such as pesticides that are supporting global warming. Some effects of global warming include: increase in weather catastrophes, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and the impact on species could lead to extinction (Cunningham, Cunningham, 2009). “Many scientists regard anthropogenic global climate change to be the most i...
The fear of the world ending has for a long time, even though the thought isn’t always at the top of our mind nor our biggest problem but it is still a worry that affects many. Whether it's an asteroid hitting earth, a zombie apocalypse, or a killer plague, we often think about what we would do when the world ends. We think about our families and our daily lives taking a turn for the worst. Some people even suffer daily from the fear that the world might end at any second and it's known as the doomsday phobia. Although most of us don’t have the doomsday phobia it is still something that we think about. Most of us think about the end of the world as only a sify movie while there are others preparing for a day that the syfi blockbuster movie
Climate change has become of the world’s major issue today. The earth’s climate is always changing in a very fast and also in different ways. Climate changes affect our lives psychologically, emotional and also physically. Climate change is defined as a long term change in the earth’s climate, especially a change due to the increase in the average atmospheric temperatures. Due to this change in temperature, a lot of changes has occurred in our environment, these changes include rising sea levels, flooding, melting of polar ice caps, hotter days, colder nights and heat waves. These climate changes plays an important role in shaping our natural ecosystem, our human economics and also the most important, it affects the human race. For
Overall, humans impact the global environment in multitudinous ways whether positive or negative. While creating issues such as overpopulation, pollution, biomagnification, and deforestation they also intrude into many other factors such as environmental, social, political, and economic. Problems caused by society itself are leading up to solutions to fix these environmental problems and may also just benefit the world as a whole.
The mass media plays an enormous role in influencing the public. In the age of globalization many technologies like Internet, television, newspapers, magazines, radio and so on, make news available and accessible for everyone around the world. The media can easily get any information out there to the public regarding any subject such as political views, health issues, entertainment, education, human tragedies…and those information do have an impact on our everyday life decisions, opinions and raise our awareness on a subject. The media is most of the time the only way people can get information on subject that they cannot fully understand such as science. Because “science is an encoded form of knowledge that requires translation in order to be understood” (Ungar 2000), many studies have shown that the media plays a very crucial role in raising people understanding of the scientific world and the environmental issues, especially the climate change and global warming. Climate change has become an important issue today and people need to understand how serious it is in order to take actions to prevent it from getting worse; and the only way the information can get to the public is via the mass media. Today global warming is raising many concerns and the media coverage is increasing but yet many scientists complain about the limited coverage of the subject because it seems that it is not enough compared to the gravity of the situation. Because of the lack of information, many people are still very skeptical and some are just very confused about the global warming and how it affect our atmosphere.
In an effort to create a sustainable global environment a significant area of focus needs to be on the interrelationships that contribute to this goal. As with the relationships associated with globalization our actions are interconnected with one another, one nations decisions in a particular geographical area can often times impact those in another geographical areas. The same cause and effect theory applies to environmental interrelationships. An area that this can be most prevalent...
Barnett, J., Adger, W. (2007) futher suggest “that there is a need for systematic, comparative and cross-scale research to enhance understanding of the connections between climate change, human security and violence. This includes understanding the ways in which it may affect environmental changes in localities, the extent to which people are susceptible to damage from those changes, and their capacities to avoid or adapt to them so that their livelihoods can be sustained and their needs and values can continue to be satisfied” (Barnett, 2007, pg. 651). This research would also have to include the ways in which people are affected by climate change and most importantly how they respond to it in the sense of their livelihood.
“An introduction to climate change.” Natural Resource Defense Council. Natural Resources Defense Council 8 November 2015 n. pag. Web. 28 November 2015.
This week the National Institute of Environmental Health Science (NIEHS) removed all mentionings of climate 'change' from their website. As the NIEHS, they are charged with the responsibility of twenty seven institutes and the centers of the National Institute of Heath under the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). With a focus on environmental health, the NIEHS is meant to be a resource for the public, to educate on environmental matters that affect public health. One major issue that would, or once fell under this umbrella is climate change. This concerns not just the technological and digital spaces within the US, but the brick and mortar spaces run by these departments and where people are accessing the information.
Due to climate changes, we are a “gradual and uncertain rather than immediate and obvious” process, we as humans cannot understand it (Jamieson, 102). In addition, climate change effects have no geographical bounds and because very few people pay attention to events that occur beyond national boundaries, most people are oblivious to its existence. Jamieson makes the point that climate change must be thought rather than sensed, and we as humans are not very good at thinking (Jamieson, 103). On top of that, even if we succeed in thinking that something is a threat, we are less reactive than if we sense that it is a threat. Since we cannot even comprehend climate change's presence in our world right now, it also makes it extremely difficult for us to comprehend how our anthropogenic actions of today will affect future generations all over the world.
Climate change has been an extremely controversial topic in recent history and continues to create much debate today. Many questions concerning climate change’s origins and its potential affect on the globe are not fully understood and remain unanswered. What is climate change? Is climate change happening? Is it a natural cycle of the world or are there other catalysts involved such as human activity? What proof is there? What data correlations show climate change is accelerated by humans? How serious is climate change and how will it affect the future of our globe? What are we doing to address climate change? Should we really be concerned about climate change? Questions such as these have made climate change a very serious issue in today’s world and created the ideology of climatism. The issue of climate change has affected many different aspects of our lives and the world we live in. Policymaking, human activism, technologies, emission control, global warming, alternative energy sources and many other things have been greatly affected by the mania of climate change. This research report will present climate change in a light of common sense and rationality that will take a grounded discussion of the science behind climate change, global warming, human activity, and how the ideology of climatism has corrupted and driven the actions to combat climate change.
The Earth is currently locked in perpetuating spiral of climate change. While the global climate has unarguably been changing since the dawn of it's manifestation, the once steadied ebb and flow of climate change has become increasingly more unpredictable.The risk of rising sea levels, and drought plaguing the fresh water supply, during the time that flooding and sporadic storm conditions turn once fully inhabited regions into uninhabitable death traps. Climate change catalyzed by human's increased production of carbon dioxide, is more noticeable than ever in our recorded history (United States, 2014 National Climate Assessment). Thankfully however, with the changing weather conditions due to carbon related emissions, the change in public opinion about their personalized influence on climate change is also increasing. Kevin Liptak Jethro Mullen, and Tom Cohen note that In reaction to the most recent governmental report on climate change, even the U.S. government believes that a stronger approach needs to be taken to correct our self-generated cataclysm.
Subpoint A: Not long ago, a documentary film called “An Inconvenient truth” came out in 2006. This film raised international public awareness of climate change and reenergizing the environmental movement. A former U.S Vice president Al Gore campaigned to educate citizens about global warming through a simp...
Spotts, Pete. "Global warming? Public attitudes often at mercy of the weather, study finds." Christian Science Monitor 13 Jan. 2014: N.PAG. Academic Search Complete. Web. 30 June 2014.