Is Global Warming an Issue?

The second article that I researched (Guardian: Environment Climate Change Weather) introduced their topic by first saying that 2008 may possibly be the coolest year since 2000. The temperature is believed to decrease approximately .14 degrees Celsius. Dr Peter Stott, who is the “Manager of Understanding and Attributing Climate Change at the Hadley Centre for Climate Change at the UK Met Office” made a valid statement by saying that in order to truly make a bold statement such as global warming is increasing, you need to look at long term effects rather that comparing years that are in the same decade. There is evidence that the La Niña event, which is an abnormal decrease in the oceans temperature along the equator of the Pacific Ocean, took place. This could have led to a decrease in temperature also. Even if 2008 is colder than 2000 at an average of 14.3 degrees Celsius, that will still make 2008 the 10th hottest year on record. 1998, which was the hottest year in recorded history had an El Niño event which is the exact opposite of the La Niña event. This evidence shows that maybe natural factors play a large role in the earth’s average temperature.

Last but not least, the article on Spiked Online also tried to give facts showing that global warming is not a major issue. From the start, one of the first statements leads to the downfall of the article; “Greenland ice sheet is melting faster now than at any time since satellite monitoring began in 1979”. The entire article basically talks about how much water it would take to do damage rather than stating that global warming isn’t an issue. It seemed as if the creator of this article was simply trying to say that global warming is an issue but it will take a while for it to do any real damage. The only true statistical fact given was that sea levels increased at approximately 1.8 mm each year from 1961 to 2003. They also stated that the sea level is expected to rise anywhere from 18 to 55 cm. rather than saying that there is something that is causing ice sheets in Greenland to melt, the author instead decided to say that it won’t happen in the near future.

Based on the information I have obtained from these articles, I came to the conclusion that global warming is a major issue that needs to be solved immediately. There are noticeable changes in our climate and atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. The articles that were talking about global warming as a major problem stated relevant facts and data that were related to the topic. The dissenting voices did not state any facts that led the reader to believe that global warming is not a problem. For the most part, the dissenting voices talked about how global warming will not harm us in the near future and we have nothing to worry about for now.