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There is a lot currently in the news about the climate change debate. Are you confident that you have all the right facts? Because I am not sure you do.
The purpose here is to draw attention to pure science and expand the possibilities of your opinion on why our climate is changing.
Understanding the fundamentals is essential to arising at your stance on the topic of climate change. When debating on a topic, understanding as much as you can and having as many resources at your fingertips is crucial.
To begin...
It is sometimes easy to get consumed by our daily lives and own personal viewpoints that we forget we are a part of a very large universe that has been around for a very very long time, approximately, 13.8 billion years and our earth is 4.543 billion years to be exact.
Climate has and always will dictate humankind's actions and activities so long as we are on this planet.
When explaining climate change, it may be best to state that science is a way of observing, documenting, organizing, analyzing, interpreting, testing and collecting data in order to logically explain and attempt to understand nature and human society.
Some Facts...
At this point in time, no matter how powerful the world's greatest supercomputer is, the calculations it is capable of performing still fall far short of being able to embrace all of the complexities of atmospheric influenced processes that occur throughout earth, incorporating the earth's oceans and atmosphere, the sun, and the cosmos. Therefore, it can be hard to give the public a set of clear reliable data with which to explain climate change and, moreover, suggest ways to combat it and protect our habitat.
Take note: We still struggle to have computer models accurately and precisely predict a 10-day weather forecast.
Climate conditions have changed in the past, and nothing suggests that they will not continue to change in the future.
Our planet is 4.543 billion years old and has gone through numerous climate changes, all in response to several factors. Earth's climate is that of a complex, nonlinear system consisting of several smaller complex nonlinear subsystems. Concerns have been raised about the future of the earth's climate. Throughout history earth's climate has changed, there is no denying that.
Not all predictions and conclusions that will be drawn will be found to be accurate or correct, however, the beauty of evolution is that even in error we can find answers.
Earth has gone through warming and cooling phases over its time in existence.
We have come to call these cyclical changes glacial and interglacial periods, in which as they sound are periods of the formation and melting of ice caps. Currently, we are in a warm interglacial that began about 11,000 years ago. The last period of glaciation, which is often informally called the “Ice Age,” peaked about 20,000 years ago. Our current interglacial period is a geological interval of warmer global average temperature, which lasts thousands of years and separates the "Ice Age" periods. This has happened before. In fact at points, earth has had no ice caps at all.
Earth will continue to go through periods of warming and cooling, some more rapidly than others and now is no exception.
It would take a great deal of time to explain all the cyclical changes in the earth's warming and cooling phases and the temperature fluctuations in particular that have affected ice caps. Science is a complex system with a multitude of levels. Truly understanding all the intricacies of how our atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere interact could take lifetimes to process, let alone predict variables. So now is the part in which you say, now what?
Some Recommendations...
Further research and education on how many glacial periods earth has gone through and the notable temperatures that earth has naturally fluctuated. If you are going to take a stance on climate change.
When you take a stance make sure you at a minimum understand the science behind it and make sure to weed through all the crap you can find on the internet.
So, do you still think you know the truth about climate change?
Interested in educating yourself further on climate change and extreme weather events so you can make an educated argument?
