Global Warming: Fallacy or Truth

1146 Words3 Pages

Over 35 years ago, climatologist Wally Broecker coined the term global warming in a paper outlining the trends that he was noticing with temperature and C02 levels (Stefan). Ever since then, the debate has heated up on the controversy of global warming. Politicians have even used the issue to boost their campaigns. Some question whether the earth’s temperature is rising at an unusual rate. Scientists perform experiments from glacial ice to observe the correlation between carbon dioxide levels and temperature. Scientists have changed the debate over the years from debating whether global warming was actually happening to the current debate about what is causing global warming. Therefore, the term global warming in this paper refers to those who believe humankind is the main cause for the current heating trend. The debate falls between two main arguments: Global warming is being caused by man-made C02 emissions and global warming has no correlation with the amount of man-made C02 emissions released into the atmosphere. First off, the climatologists state that they have statistical evidence suggesting that the earth is getting warmer at an abnormal rate (Alley et al.). They show that in the past 100 years there is a rising trend for the global average temperature and it has gone up .5 degrees Celsius. Of course, .5 degrees Celsius does not seem like much but they project in a multi-model graph that it will continue to rise more rapidly according to most projections (see fig. 1). The climatologists based their temperature projections from land weather observation centers that had been recorded over the years (Alley et al.). The critics of global warming are skeptical about the accuracy of land weather temperature observation si... ... middle of paper ... ...mate/greenhouse_effect_gases.html&edu=high>. Schmidt, Charles W. "Document View." 1 December 2010. ProQuest. 11 February 2011 . Siegenthaler, Urs. "Stable Carbon Cycle–Climate Relationship During the Late Pleistocene." 25 November 2005. AAAS. 8 February 2011 . Spahni, Renato. "Atmospheric Methane and Nitrous Oxide of the Late Pleistocene from Antarctic Ice Cores." 25 November 2005. AAAS. 8 February 2011 . Stefan. Happy 35th birthday, global warming! 28 July 2010. 8 February 2011 . Watts, Anthony. Surfacestations.org. 16 July 2009. 13 February 2011 .

Open Document