In America, the global warming debate has raged on for decades now without any conclusive answer and no irrefutable evidence on either side. Although recently the tide has turned in favor of the skeptics of man-made global warming, the controversy is still largely at a stalemate. Back in 2007, Newsweek’s editorial “The Truth About Denial” illustrated just how much proponents and skeptics have spent on bickering over the theory of unnatural climate change, about 50 billion and 20 million in funding, respectively. Newsweek’s main goal here was to show how staggering the difference in funding was between the two sides, and use it to discredit advocates of a man made cause for global warming. What I find troubling, is that this amount of money is being spent at all on either side on mostly publicizing the dispute instead of coming up with practical solutions.
Maybe global warming actually is just a natural cycle, or maybe it really is man-made. Who knows, maybe both theories are correct. It doesn’t really matter who is right and who is wrong, either way we still face the very real and dangerous problem. Unfortunately, global warming has become a part of a larger culture and political dispute rather than a scientific one, which may be why there is a lack of cooperation. I will outline two scenarios which will show that no matter what you believe about the cause of global warming, the solution to these problems would be one in the same.
Scenario 1: Global warming is proven to be caused by the production of greenhouse gasses by man.
Stricter regulation might be placed on greenhouse gas emissions, along with more public awareness. Increased public awareness and regulation can only do so much, however. What about developing countries such as China, who have already overtaken America in greenhouse gas emissions, with no signs of slowing down. Also, what about all the CO2 that is already in the atmosphere? CO2 is known to remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years. At this point We need to create something that will not only stop global warming, but reverse it.
Scenario 2: Global warming is proven to be caused caused by a natural phenomenon.
If global warming is a natural occurrence, this probably means that the earth is only just beginning it’s heating cycle(see graph above). If global warming is natural, it would be by no means less dangerous and still brings forth the consequences of drought and rising sea levels, along with economic and ecological disruption. That brings us straight to creating an artificial way of cooling down the earth.
Solution: Geo-engineering. There have already been engineering proposals to reverse global warming, such as pumping sulfur dioxide into the earths atmosphere to reflect sunlight. Sure it’s not perfect, but perhaps if we used that 50 billion on geo-engineering, we would have an even better solution by now.
Evoluto 