Climate Change: Why It’s Not a Hoak – Blog Post 12 - October 10

            This week I read the first few sections in The Global Warming Reader, which discussed the science and history behind the realization that climate change was occurring as a result of human activity.  In earlier human history, people viewed the world as limitless.  They figured that the world, including the atmosphere, was so big that humans could not have any significant impact on them.  Yet, as the Industrial Revolution moved along, led by fossil fuels, this changed drastically.  As society unlocked the energy behind fossil fuels, their populations were able to grow as more food was able to be harvested.  Additionally, more resources per person began to be used as people’s standard of living increased. 

            In 1896, Svante Arrhenius was the first man to propose that fossil fuels could rise the world’s temperature, based on the fact that the carbon dioxide released with the burning of fossil fuels traps heat in the atmosphere.  About forty years later, G.S. Callendar started measuring carbon dioxide and temperature around the world and correlated the two, stating that an increase in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels may increase the temperature of the world globally.  Following this, Revelle and Suess concluded in their work that the ocean would not take up the excess carbon dioxide released from fossil fuels. 

            The real concern over climate change did not occur until Keeling began modifying infrared gas analyzers and began taking samples from Mauna Loa and other areas around the world.  He could see the seasonal variations in carbon dioxide across the globe, as well as a general rise in carbon dioxide and temperature over time.  James Hansen, the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, brought this to the attention of the public and increased funding for the study of climate change.  Finally, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created by the United Nations in 1988, which was set up specifically to study the global climate and to determine if humans were generating any significant impacts on it.  The IPCC began to do attribution studies, trying to establish a cause and effect between human actions and the climate.  They analyzed the usual background noise of climate variability over time, which included fluctuations that were internal and external to the system, and then added the human-induced effect on top of them.  Inevitably, the IPCC found that humans were almost certainly causing a large effect on the climate, increasing the concentrations of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous dioxide, and other chemicals.  Finally, Naomi Oreskes conducted a study in 2004 of 928 scientific papers and found that essentially none of them denied that climate change was real.

            The reason that I bring all of this up is simple.  Climate change itself is generally accepted by the scientific community by countless research papers.  The climate is changing, whether it is natural or not, is the first point that needs to be made.  Second of all, the IPCC, along with the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meterological Society, and the American Geophysical Union all agree that it is human-induced.  So why is the topic of human-induced climate change still debated today?  Why do people not believe it?
            I think that there are two main reasons why people do not believe in human-induced climate change.  The first is the fact that on news coverage, journalists many times present both sides of the story, no matter how skewed the two sides are.  This can easily lead to confusion among people watching the news because they do not know what to believe.  Additionally, the big fossil fuel industry does not want people to believe in climate change because if they did, more regulations would be put on them and that would hurt business, so they lobby and push their agendas in certain ways to make the facts look unclear.  Human-induced climate change cannot be proven a fact, just like anything in science, but it is agreed upon by almost all scientists today.  People need to know this and understand the implications that human-induced climate change can cause.

            The other main reason that people do not believe is because of their own beliefs in science.  Many people say the world is too big for people to have that much of an impact on it.  Other people strongly claim that it is just a natural cycle that the Earth is going through.  When debated on sea level rise, some people state that the sea level can’t rise because ice melting in water doesn’t raise the sea level, not realizing that there is ice that can melt on land.  These people need to realize that they are not specialists in the field.  People do not debate other fields of scientific research nearly as much as they do climate change.  For some reason, maybe because of the fossil fuel industry and media, many people dismiss climate change because of their own belief on how the global climate works.  These people need to trust the science, and realize that the IPCC and other organizations take into account natural variations and other pieces of research while making multiple models, which many times are more conservative than what actually happens.  In conclusion, the thought that human-induced climate change is a hoax is essentially wrong.  People need to be educated on the science behind climate change, and the research methods that show that the research is sound and has already considered many of the variables that people use to dismiss it in the first place.  From here, people need to understand its implications and begin to fight against the change.  

Obama’s “Historic” Rule: Good or Bad for the Environment Overall? – Blog Post 11 - October 7

    In June of 2014, President Barack Obama used his executive power to pass a new rule with the Environmental Protection Agency to lower carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by thirty percent of its 2005 levels by 2030.  He could do this because he has the ability to make executive decisions and rules based on the Clean Air Act.  President Obama decided to act in this way because he thought that something needed to be done about climate change and knew that Congress would not allow anything to get passed.  Although coal lobbyists are screaming out energy crisis claims and a rising cost of electricity for the general American, Gina McCarthy, the EPA administrator, points out that this rule will lower medical costs, protect our jobs, and fight the environmental injustice that surrounds power plants (Obama Unveils). 

            This is a groundbreaking rule for many reasons.  First of all, this is the first time that any president has tried to limit the amount of carbon dioxide that power plants emit (Obama Unveils).  Second of all, it shows that environmental groups are finally having their voices be heard.  Finally, it shows that things can still be done in the government, even with lobbyists and a stalemated Congress.  This event is definitely a huge moral victory for the environmental movement as a whole.

            The question I pose is, will this rule necessarily help the environment overall?  Generally speaking, carbon emissions from coal power plants was decreasing overall because of the drop in the economy and because natural gas is on the rise in the United States (Obama Unveils).  Additionally, not all of the strategies to reduce carbon emissions from coal power plants are that environmentally friendly.  For example, natural gas could just take over for coal in energy generation.  Natural gas burns cleaner and releases less carbon into the atmosphere than coal.  But natural gas is still a fossil fuel that needs to be harvested, processed, and delivered, which creates many environmental problems of its own. 

            Another option may be to begin using carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) at coal power plants.  Canada recently started up their first carbon capture power plant, which is estimated to reduce carbon emissions from coal ninety percent.  That is equivalent to about one million tons a year, or about 250,000 cars.  This is a great technology because it enables society to keep using a similar infrastructure while reducing carbon emissions, until other alternative energies can be fully phased in.  The only problem is, the process is so expensive that it is argued that the only way that a carbon capture power plant can be economical is if the coal is nearby and if they sell the carbon dioxide to help in priming oil fields in the surrounding area (Canada Switches).  This limits how much the technology may be able to be used, and encourages the production of oil. 

            Other ways to lower coal power plant emissions would be to reduce energy usage overall or to begin phasing in alternative energy sources such as wind energy or solar photovoltaics.  Unfortunately, these alternative energy industries may not capitalize on the opportunity as well as the natural gas industry does because natural gas companies are already very powerful and can implement their technologies faster than most alternative energy companies can.

            Overall, I think that President Obama’s rule with the Environmental Protection Agency is a good thing, at least for the momentum for the environmental movement.  Environmental rules like this need to keep being associated with protecting jobs, public health, and increasing environmental justice to gain momentum, because the coal industry will lobby hard to say that it will lose jobs and cost the economy dearly.  People need to realize that acting in environmentally-friendly ways has many positive benefits to many other areas of life that may affect them more directly.  Unfortunately, I think that this rule may just increase the amount of natural gas that is used, which I do not like because I feel like their impacts on the environment are many times even greater than coal’s!  Hopefully, coal tries to clean up its practices to lower its environmental impact, and alternative energy companies take advantage of the more expensive energy prices to start implementing themselves further into society.  Different states have different rules that they need to comply with under this law, so alternative energy companies targeting states with higher amounts of regulation may make their products more competitive.  Carbon capture and sequestration seems too expensive to be practically implemented on a large scale at this time, so I doubt it will be. 

Works Cited

Goldenberg, Suzanne. "Obama Unveils Historic Rules to Reduce Coal Pollution by 30%." The Guadian. N.p., 2 June 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/02/obama-rules-coal-climate-change>.

Goldenbern, Suzanne. "Canada Switches on World's First Carbon Capture Power Plant." The Guardian. N.p., 1 Oct. 2014. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/01/canada-switches-on-worlds-first-carbon-capture-power-plant>.