Climate Change
Hi!, my name is Abel David Naranjo Casas and I am a ninth grade student at American School, located in Barranquilla, Colombia.
The topic that was given to us was “What is the global issue your are
the most passionate about solving?”. So, today I am present here to answer this
question.
Climate change is the reason why so many animal species are dying at an
unimaginable rate.
A description of the global climate includes how; for example, the
rising temperature of the Pacific feeds typhoons which blow harder, drop more
rain and cause more damage, but also shifts global ocean currents that melt
Antarctica ice which slowly makes sea level rise until New York will be
underwater.
It is this systemic connectedness that makes global climate change so
important and so complicated.
Global warming is the slow increase in the average temperature of the
earth’s atmosphere because an increased amount of energy (heat) striking the
earth from the sun is being trapped in the atmosphere and not radiated out into
space.
The earth’s atmosphere has always acted like a greenhouse to capture the
sun’s heat, ensuring that the earth has enjoyed temperatures that permitted the
emergence of life forms as we know them, including humans.
Without our atmospheric greenhouse the Earth would be very cold. Global
warming; however, is the equivalent of a greenhouse with high efficiency
reflective glass installed the wrong way around.
There are three positions on global warming: (1) that global warming is
not occurring and so neither is climate change; (2) that global warming and
climate change are occurring, but these are natural, cyclic events unrelated to
human activity; and (3) that global warming is occurring as a result primarily
of human activity and climate change is also the result of human activity.
The claim that nothing is happening is very hard to defend in the face
or masses of visual, land-based and satellite data that clearly shows rising
average sea and land temperatures and shrinking ice masses.
The claim that the observed global warming is natural or at least not
the result of human carbon emissions (see Climate skeptics below) focuses on
data that shows that world temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels have been
equally high or higher in the past. They also point to the well understood
effects of solar activity on the amount of radiation striking the earth and the
fact that in recent times the sun has been particularly active.
In general, climate scientists and environmentalists either 1, dispute
the data based on; for example, new ice core data or 2, suggest that the timing
issue – that is, the speed with which the globe has warmed and the climate
changed simply do not fit the model of previous natural events. They note also
that compared to other stars, the sun is actually very stable, varying in
energy output by just 0.1% and over a relatively short cycle of 11 to 50 years
quite unrelated to global warming as a whole. The data strongly suggests that
solar activity affects the global climate in many important ways, but is not a
factor in the systemic change over time that we call global warming.
"You cannot get through a
single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes
a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to
make." -- Jane Goodall
Abel Naranjo's Speech, Step 9
