Climate Change POVSkepticSusan ChangAP Environmental Science Period 9

I am a member of the technologically modern generation, one that has grown up learning of
possible imminent global warming and its causes and effects on Earth. I have been educated in
science classes in elementary school about greenhouse gases such as carbon gases and
chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Therefore, from this long-term exposure to the possibility of such
a reality, I have been hardwired, so to speak, to view many global environmental affairs
predominantly in the scientific standpoint, rather than from the more governmentally pragmatic
political and economic standpoints, as related to our society. Also as a member of this modern
generation, however, I am taught to abandon idealized visions of saving the world from a
romanticized viewpoint and to adopt a more strictly realistic view of the world and its workings.
As times progress and the entirety of the world is forced into practical modernization, I am also
forced to integrate societal pragmatics into my purely pedantic views. As a skeptic, I embrace
both the practical and realistic half and the purely scientific half of the global climate change
issue. However, living in a non-utopian society where political and economic and overall
governmental intervention is inevitable, I find ways to interpolate societal realities into the
scientific information with which I am bombarded.

My views unadulterated with the political and global economic implications, I cannot deny that
the advent of human societal progression offers many more opportunities to cause relatively
dramatic rates of environment impact, as relative to the environmental impacts of developing or
undeveloped societies. I take this as a fact, because mathematically, the environmental impact of
a population equals the size of the population times the consumption per person times the

technological impact per person. Our societal progression, especially since the Industrial
Revolution, has exponentially increased the per capita technological impact, which in turn
increases the environmental impact per capita. The global modernization has also improved the
lifestyles of many people, and therefore has helped exponentially increase the population size
and individual consumption. NASA and other institutions have been collecting data tracking the
progress of environmental elements and impacts caused by humans. These studies have, in
general, verified that the rapid increase in different factors as a result of human societal
technological progression leads to a rapid increase in environmental impact of humans. Hence,
the juxtaposition of this rapid positive feedback loop into this environmental impact to the less
dramatic impacts made by less developed societies shows, intuitively, that human actions can
comparatively dramatically affect the environment and therefore the global climate.

However, the realities of global climate are not so linear as a simple equation. There are many
other factors involved in the fluctuations in the global climate, both superficial and significant.
The issue of global climate change has been commercialized such that it implicitly attributes the
issue to almost purely human faults. In reality, there are other environmental factors that
contribute to the fluctuations, besides those attributed to human activities. Some include solar
activity, volcanic activity, and the Earths orbit. These factors have been reported to cause
previous natural climate fluctuations, so why can this recently declared global climate change not
be another point in the Earths graph of natural global temperature fluctuation? There are a
plethora of other factors that collocate naturally with the Earth that can contribute to climate
change, yet many people, politicians and scientists alike, are holding humans culpable. The
reality is that even with a team of scientists, we cannot control even most of the factors that

could cause global temperature change in this Lorenz Attractor equation of environmental
impact. Using the scientific data that analysts have gathered from the investigation of the global
climate change, we should find preventive methods humans can do in their daily lives to mitigate
the impacts.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
US Environmental Protection Agency. (2009, September 28). Past Climate Change. Retrieved
from
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/pastcc.html
McCarthy, Leslie. (2008, May 14). Earth Impacts Linked to Human-Caused Climate Change.
Retrieved from
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2008/human_impact.html#backtoTo
p
Wratt, David and Brett Mullan. (2009, December 18). Natural Variations in Climate. Retrieved
from
http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/clivar/variations
World Meteorological Association. (2009, December 18). Significant natural climate fluctuations.
Retrieved from
http://www.wmo.int/pages/themes/climate/significant_natural_climate_fluctuations.php#top