by Brenda Sutherlin
In 2006, Albert Gore, Jr’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, informed citizens of the United States about climate change, later known as global warming.
Former Vice President Gore has been one of the world’s foremost proponents for an answer to climate change. Many people thought the idea was far-fetched and did not give it much attention. His mission was to, “inform the world of this approaching environmental change and its effect on the world,” according to information from the Nobel Prize organization. nobelprize.org
Global warming is caused by excess carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Once an excess of carbon dioxide is released into the air it acts as a covering above the earth and traps the warm air and therefore warms the planet. The emission of CO2 is produced by burning fossil fuels, oil, and natural gases.
Global warming has become synonymous with climate change. But because of global warming, we see climate change now, and a change in the weather pattern worldwide.
In addition to CO2 emissions, some environmentalists have speculated that frequent hurricanes have caused a change in the weather pattern. Still, others have said that the El Niño effect has caused a warming of the earth’s surface. Also, the east-to-west blowing winds have reversed their pattern to west-to-east blowing winds.
After the Cold War ended in 1992, a framework was established to study environmental concerns on a global scale. It was called the Rio Earth Summit, which came to be known as the United Nations Framework on Climate Change ( UNFCC). The convention first met in 1995 in Berlin, Germany to discuss climate change and its negative impact on the planet.
The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 was awarded jointly to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”
Fifteen years after the Nobel Peace Prize, we are feeling the effect of climate change in a worse way. It is causing the earth to become warmer and warmer. One notable example is the thawing of the polar ice cap. It is thawing at an alarming rate and frozen sea waters are becoming warmer.
Polar bears that depend on this frozen environment are losing their homes and starving. Their main food is the seal, but because of climate warming ice floes are melting, which makes it impossible for them to reach their food in the Arctic seas.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01691-2
In addition to the polar bears’ dilemma, climate change is affecting the earth in other forms such as droughts, heatwaves, floods, and forest fires.
In 2009, the drought in Africa (nasa.gov) caused food and water shortages in Kenya, located in Eastern Africa. Climate change and the rain cycle have played an important part in the drought. The drought cycle has decreased from every ten years to every two years. The country and the farmers have not had the chance to recover between the cycles.
Not only are droughts affecting other parts of the world, Allison Chinchar, Brandon Miller, and Dave Alsup, reporters for CNN, have reported that droughts are affecting areas closer to home. The Mississippi River water level has reached an all-time low. Because of the severe drought that has spread across the Midwest, Tower Rock, an island located in the middle of the Mississippi River can now be reached on foot.
Tower Rock by Jeff Miget-photo
From 1992 until the present the world has come a long way in the fight against climate change and its negative impacts on our planet.
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt said, “we are now able to better understand the science behind climate change, better assess its impacts, and better develop tools to address its causes and consequences.”
Climate change has caused conditions that are related to all walks of life. These conditions range from dried-up rivers and streams because of the lack of rainfall, destroyed plants and trees because of flooding, and injured animals caused by forest fires.
Calhoun students need to become aware of the changes that are occurring in the environment locally and globally. It is the responsibility of all of us to be better caretakers of the earth.