The global warming debate:
hesitations:
global warming has happened in the past through natural cycles
not enough evidence that it is human caused and serious enough to worry
about
what is happening in one place may not reflect the whole globe
not the most serious issue for us today
dubious of the use politicians are making of the issue
STS approach:
is this an issue that requires action
some people think it does
where are they coming from?
- people who are already concerned about how humans are
damaging the environment
- argue we have reached the stage of scientific consensus (National Academy of Sciences)
- some people think this is a different scale and
therefore we need to take it more seriously (sea
level risk)
- global warming is already causing natural disasters and
disease
- more severe hurricanes
- can see it in glaciers and the polar ice cap
- more variable and more severe weather
- in some poor areas of Africa global warming has
already worsened disease
problems
- believe strong evidence that global warming is caused by
human beings, not just natural cycles
Figure
from Hegerl, G.C., et al., 2007: Understanding and Attributing Climate
Change. In: Climate Change 2007:
The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the
Fourth
Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
[Solomon, S., et al. (eds.)]. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
some people don't think this is an
issue that requires action
- some of them dispute the evidence
- is global warming happening? (in fact there is
overwhelming scientific
evidence)
- is this caused by human action?
- is this just a natural cycle--surely we can't change the
whole earth
- maybe the earth can compensate for what we do and
restore its balance
- maybe global warming is something we can live
with
just fine
- people see a healthy economy as more important than
doing something about global warming and believe that regulation will
hurt the economy
- because it is already
too late or it would be too hard
to fix
- people aren't willing to change how they live
- people can't quite believe that human beings are able
to change the whole earth
what questions do you want to ask?
