America's Global Warming Legacy

[dsteve01]

These days, the question of whether climate change is 'real or not' is not simply of interest to scientists. It is an issue of importance for the American camping community. Over the past two decades we have seen a dramatic rise in carbon emissions which currently stands at an astounding 401.30 parts per million [1]. The global PPM in 1980 was 338.80 [2]. The world at large increased our global parts-per-million by eighteen percent (18.447%) over the course of 34 years! The situation posed by global warming raises questions about predicting trends in lung cancer, national park attendance, and, even, national security.



The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association has stated that carbon emissions are a very real threat to the American people and our way of life. They cite the atmospheric burdens will dramatically change the way humans live in our environment. Our domestic energy plan needs demands new methods of dealing with this new, global scourge.

“Careful and comprehensive scientific assessments have clearly demonstrated that the Earth’s climate system is changing in response to growing atmospheric burdens of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and absorbing aerosol particles.” (IPCC, 2007) “Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for—and in many cases is already affecting—a broad range of human and natural systems.” (NRC, 2010a) “The potential threats are serious and actions are required to mitigate climate change risks and to adapt to deleterious climate change impacts that probably cannot be avoided.” (NRC, 2010b, c)"

They have also stated that "[O]ur ability to quantitatively predict how the future climate will respond to continued and increasing greenhouse-gas and fine-particle emissions is still limited. Even more limited is our ability to precisely predict how the Earth’s ecological and human systems will respond to climate changes.[3]" An example of the climate change would be the recent California fires. The dry period, during which many of these fires occur, has expanded by 78 days since the 1980's [4]. We've seen many more fires caused by climate change which makes an already bad carbon problem--worse. This is confirmed by western states like Organ who has stated "Large emissions are usually accompanied by dry and hot climate.[5]" Without human intervention; Global warming will cause a carbon-feedback loop in regards to climate change that will, probably, damn our children to a horrible climate.



An argument that lobbyists of the fossil fuel industry or FOX News correspondents might cite is that 'we are trying to scare them'. It was only last week that Bill Nye had to face down a Fox News correspondent while simultaneously bearing the burden scientific of proof.

But that's not really fair. One correspondent demanded to be educated on the facts of global warming, but then demanded that Bill “look [her] in the eye and tell me in good conscience that climate change is our most urgent, number one priority right now.”

What kind of country will we leave our grandchildren if we refuse to respond? To continue down the avenue of obsessive carbon-dioxide consumption will be our undoing. It's unto us to be leaders in the international community for coming up with real solutions for carbon-dioxide.



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(1). Tans, Pieter. "Trends in Carbon Dioxide". NOAA/ESRL. Retrieved May 18, 2014. Retrieved from: <http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/>

(2). Dlugokencky, E. "CO2 expressed as a mole fraction in dry air, micromol/mol, abbreviated as ppm". NOAA/ESRL. Retrieved from: <ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_annmean_gl.txt>

(3). NOAA/ESRL. Retrieved May 18, 2014. Retrieved from: <http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/policy/publicpolicies/promote/globalclimatechange.html>

(4). Wood, D. "California's age of megafires". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved May 18, 2014. Retrieved from: <http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1024/p01s04-usgn.html>.

(5). Liu, Y. "Carbon Emissions from Wildfires in the US". Oregon State Government. Retrieved May 18, 2014. Retrieved from: www.oregon.gov/odf/board/docs/ffac_liuyong_co2.pdf

[swilton]

1. C02 Emissions

can linger in the atmosphere for centuries. According to the World Resources Institute, the US by a wide margin leads the rest of the world as the top emitter between 1850 and 2007 (28.8% to China’s 9%). Sadly, it was President George H.W. Bush who responded to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, the first UN summit on the climate crisis, by stating that the American way of life was non-negotiable.