Climate Change Argument Essay

Climate change is rapidly becoming the largest and most complex challenge facing the world today. The politics, along with climate change skeptics associated with this rising danger, continues to sabotage efforts to curb and control this environmental crisis. As large hurricanes, catastrophic floods, and colossal earthquakes obliterate entire nations around the world, the need of the hour is for the various factions to reconcile their differences and come together to deescalate the effects climate change is having on the world. One of the biggest arguments made against global warming is that the Earth’s climate has always gone through phases where it warmed and cooled and that the 20th-century rise in global temperature is just an example
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) contradicts this argument by providing data on the rapidly rising levels of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere, which shows that the year 1950 broke the world record by having over 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere (NASA CO2 Record). Sixty-seven years later we continue to break the record, now with over 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere (NASA CO2 Record). The Earth itself creates carbon dioxide and according to the Department of Energy, “sources of natural CO2 include animal and plant respiration, decomposition of organic matter, forest fires, and emissions from volcanic eruptions” (Natural Sources of CO2 2). Before the large use of fossil fuels, mass-deforestation, electricity production, ethanol
Currently, the effects that climate change poses on both the American electrical power system, and the world electrical power system is unfortunately poorly understood by the public. America gets most of their electrical power from coal and nuclear power plants. Power providers haven’t considered the possibility of climate impacting their development plans, but this could consequently and dramatically reduce power supplier’s ability to meet future electricity needs. Matthew Bartos and Mikhail Chester discuss one of the effects that climate change is having on the world today. Drought conditions are on the rise in thewestern region of the United States where much of our energy comes from. Low streamflow and high temperatures could baseload coal and nuclear power plants that may very well lack the much-needed cooling water to generate at full capacity. Both Bartos and Chester note that “Insufficient streamflow can also limit electricity production at hydroelectric dams, peaking technologies like gas turbines, solar cells, and wind turbines – are vulnerable to acute changes in atmospheric parameters like air temperature. Drought- and heat-related capacity reductions are especially problematic because they are likely to occur during periods of high electricity demand,” (Bartos and Chester 2). Climate change continues to affect the world around us in numerous ways. The threat