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Are humans responsible for climate change?
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Climate change is full of dramatic predictions that won't happen

Climate change is supposed to not only cause a change in temperature but a shift in how the planet functions. It's supposed to make living harder for all lifeforms and change the very topography of the planet. However, the changes seen are minor in comparison to the theories people have been given.
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The Argument

Climate change is a rather recent problem brought to attention back in 1992 at the ‘Earth Summit'.[1] What brought the planet to that point is in part due to history. Back then many countries were developing and having their own industrial and technological revolutions. The main goal was development, innovation, not sustainability until the discovery of climate change in 1896. It then started to become known as a world wide concept and problem.[2] The topic has only been a global problem for about 30 years but in that amount of time it’s been blown out of proportion. While the health of the planet is important many theories that surround climate change are worst case scenarios. Things that could happen and we have yet to see many of those things actually happen. 2020’s greenhouse gas emissions are even lowering despite predictions of the levels only increasing.[3] The weather might be warmer but not dramatically so. Not strange either since the planet regularly goes through varying conditions. A year can be colder or warmer but people have been taking the recent warmer years as signs towards climate change. People talk about climate change as if fire and brimstone is supposed to rain down. The hotter temperatures starting forest fires, entire flocks of dropping from the sky and the sea rising in acidity to kill all aquatic life. These changes in real life are minimal though. To care about the planet is not a bad thing but making people fear a process that’s taken millions of years to affect the planet doesn’t help anyone.

Counter arguments

The data that's been gathered over decades, recordings of weather patterns, temperatures, greenhouse gases, they're only continuing to increase. It's not just a few warmer years the planet is experiencing but global change. There's reason to worry backed up by data and research. While things aren't going up in smoke with disasters happening at every turn that shouldn't be the main reason to start caring about what happens to the planet. Everything is a balanced ecosystem, some more delicate than others. Humans are stubborn and resourceful but that doesn't mean we're instantly saved. We need to care about the animals, the plants, the land, sea and sky because they're the only ones we have. Animals loosing their homes, their ecosystems, cause a trickle down effect which starts to effect the rest of the food chain. It's quite similar to the wolf sheep predation idea, only, exchange them with humans as the wolves and sheep as the trees.[4] Too many wolves 'humans' producing carbon and getting rid of the trees will leave no oxygen to be produced, but allowing trees to go completely unchecked and they'll become carbon sinks. Places where carbon is stored where a fire would be almost impossible to control.[5] Climate change is a very real problem and while it's not an instant judgement day or day of reckoning it's something to be worried about.

Proponents

Premises

[P1] Climate change is a natural change that's been blown out of proportion to cause fear in the populace

Rejecting the premises

References

  1. https://history.aip.org/climate/timeline.htm
  2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/discovery-of-global-warming/
  3. https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2020/global-energy-and-co2-emissions-in-2020
  4. https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/WolfSheepPredation
  5. https://www.wri.org/blog/2017/12/insider-why-burning-trees-energy-harms-climate
This page was last edited on Monday, 19 Oct 2020 at 22:16 UTC