Running head: CLIMATE CHANGE 1

Climate Change

Jacob Bayne

Human Impacts on Environment

Eastern Illinois University

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Introduction

When I discuss global warming and or climate change, I immediately think of Al Gore

and his film The Inconvenient Truth. Former Vice President Gore spearheaded these efforts in

the early 1990s and his movement occurred far before it was cool to be an activist for the

environment. What I need to do more research on is how much of what he and the so-called

experts predicted then and currently say are true? While I am no accomplished environmentalist,

I have watched and read enough to formulate a strong based opinion. I believe climate change is

an extremely complex issue, it is always occurring, it occurred before civilization and it will

occur after civilization. Yes, the earth is warming but it has always warmed after an ice age. I

will say that mankind has probably sped up the process, but like Dr. Peterson says how can we

even measure this. These predictive models showing what the world will be in 50 years are not

reliable in my belief. A few examples of why I say this are the COVID-19 models, hurricane

models, and even weather. If we cannot predict the path of a hurricane, how can we predict

something as complex as global warming. I would not classify myself as big of skeptical as Dr.

Peterson but many of my beliefs align with his. In being a political science major, I am well

aware that is nearly impossible for us to separate politics from climate change. Many of the

environmental and political activist for climate change are some of the biggest hypocrites and

rarely practice what they preach. I’ve always shared the belief that globalization which involves

human emissions and large amounts of CO2 has saved billions of people from starvation or

death.

According to researchers there have been five significant ice ages that have taken place

over Earths history. These ice ages occur for millions of years and obviously require the Earth to
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go through a period of warming in order for them to melt. This is a widely agreed upon

statement, but what is not agreed upon is the rate we as humans are speeding the process up. I

see beyond the apocalyptic statements of politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They

have an agenda and not one credible source has agreed with her statements that climate change

will cause the mankind to go extinct or that mankind will cease to exist over the next 10 to 20

years. Listening to more than just the news, reading credible journals, and listening to both side

of the argument have influenced me to believe that climate change is in fact natural and that we

as humans have made an impact on global warming, but like many I’m unsure to what extent.

Every day we as humans become smarter, we become more innovative, we find more

efficient ways to live our daily lives while lessening our environmental footprint. In today’s day

and age, I personally think radical ideas like the Green New Deal are a pipedream. Renewable

energy has its place, but it is extremely expensive, and the elimination of fossil fuels would ruin

the worlds economy. Advancing our drilling technology and switching from coal to gas has

taken place over the last few years and we have seen an extreme decrease in emissions. We can

continue to add renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydropower worldwide to

lessen our impact on the environment as well. Yes, we as America can continue to make changes

that help aid in the impact, we humans have on the environment, but we are only one country.

China and until recently Russia have done little to nothing to lessen their impact on the

environment and they both are in the top 5 for greenhouse emissions. This is where politics

comes into play as sanctions would have to be imposed on countries that don’t follow suit etc.

Over the next 100 years I believe the earth will continue to warm, though this statement

could be entirely wrong as Professor Laingen pointed out we were concerned about global

cooling in the 1970s. Many developed countries have identified global warming as an issue and
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have taken steps to reduce our emissions. I think more and more private corporations will begin

to reduce their C02 emissions, but they must believe it is the right thing to do. In the case of the

upswing in extreme weather, I’m curious to see if this trend continues into the future or if the

change in climate was not impacting it to the extent we thought.