The Controversy of Global Warming
In the year of 2017, the government of the United States announced its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, and President Trump claimed that global warming is a hoax. As a result, the topic that has been debated for nearly a century has gained renewed attention. Is global warming real? Are human beings primarily responsible for increasing the greenhouse effect? Do people need action about global warming now? These are some topics of the global warming controversy. Some organizations like IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel Climate Change) and UNFCCC (U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change) hold that global warming is happening and that human activity is responsible for it. However, some scientists and organization from different countries and diverse fields think that the cause of global warming is unknown or that global warming is a natural process (Botkin 8). When people are burning fossil minerals to produce energy, or wood for warmth, and some greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are produced at the same time. In addition, these gases have high permeability to the visible light radiation from the sun and have high absorbency of the reflection to the earth’s long wave radiation (Botkin 3). This process is known as the greenhouse effect that leads to global warming. Therefore, readers could have a more precise comprehension of global warming through reading the illustration of the three topics mentioned above. Human behavior causes the vital issue of global warming that requires all human beings to take responsibility.
Global warming is a serious phenomenon that inspired great attention around the world. However, there are many people who believe that global warming is temporary. In the early 1960s, meteorologists talked openly about the drop in global temperatures, even though global temperature has been warming since the 1940s. At that time, carbon dioxide was steadily increasing, but temperatures were falling during those years, which cannot be explained by the “greenhouse effect” of carbon dioxide. Meteorologists could not make a reasonable explanation and only called it an odd puzzle. Indeed, since the mid-1940s, and especially since the 1960s, the climate in the Arctic and higher latitudes near the Arctic had become significantly cooler (Singh 3), and these changes are clearly reflected in many aspects of meteorological observation, biological ecology and the natural world. In the 1960s, the North Atlantic ice expanded, creating a bitter cold not seen in decades across much of Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Thanks to the freezing waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, there was a natural ice cover between Greenland and Iceland, on which polar bears could travel freely. As a result, some people think that global warming is not real, and it is only a natural process. Other scientists hold a different view: the polar ice caps are a symbol of the beginning of a little ice age. In 1986, the British government’s climate research unit at the University of East Anglia completed the first reliable and comprehensive global analysis of average surface temperatures. They found that of the 134 years on record, the three warmest years were all in the 1980s, which implied unprecedented warming is on the way. The fact that various cities have broken maximum temperature record since 2000 reminds that temperatures are rising. For example, according to NASA:
On August 10, 2003, the temperature in London reached 38.1, breaking the record set in 1990. On the night of August 7th of 2003, Germany also broke the record for the hottest temperature in a century. In July 2004, unusual high temperatures in Guangzhou broke a 53-year record. In July 2005, the historic heat record was set in 200 cities across the United States (NASA).
Therefore, many people believe that global warming is real and the globe is becoming warmer.
Various facts manifest that human activities contribute to global warming. Since the establishment of IPCC in 1988, it has gathered many famous international scientists and set up a particular research group to study and discuss the earth’s climate change from various perspectives. At present, it has completed and issued five assessment reports. In 1990, the first assessment report of IPCC held that climate change in the recent century might be caused by a natural variation or human behaviors or both. The second report, in 1995, pointed out that more and more facts showed the impact of human activities on global warming. The third report, in 2001, made clear for the first time that the global warming detected over the half-century may be due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases caused by human activity. The fourth report in 2007 raised the judgment on the causal relationship between social activities and global warming from the original minimum of 60% to 90% and pointed out that human activities are very likely to be the cause of global warming. The fifth report in 2013 confirmed that climate change is happening around the world and that global warming is undoubted (Bayeh 9). Hence, most people believed that human activity should be responsible for global warming. However, in November 2009, a hacker intruded into the email server at the University of East Anglia, and he had stolen thousands of emails among British climate scientists. The hacker claimed that the studies of those meteorologists are not serious, and they even tampered with their research data to prove that human activities play a huge role in climate change (Jang 2). That is why some people claim that the reports of IPCC were unreliable and they believe that global warming has nothing to do with human beings. However, the leading cause of this issue is the heavy use of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and petroleum. In the last hundred years, human beings have emitted a mass of carbon dioxide into the air. People need a body of energy to meet the rapid development of all fields, they cut down countless trees and forests and burn uncountable fossil fuels. That would result in the low ability of the forest to absorb carbon dioxide and lots of carbon dioxide that the environment cannot bear. In short, human behavior with rapid industrial development causes climate change and global warming.
The increasingly serious ecological environment requires people to take immediate action to mitigate the deterioration of global warming. Some scientists argue that the impact of continued warming on the ecological environment is uncertain. However, global warming has caused the influence which cannot be ignored in each aspect. Global warming has forced a negative influence on the biological chain and food chain, bringing more serious disaster to the natural world. Take a migratory as an example, and it flies from Australia to northeast China to pass the summer every year. However, the temperature in northeast China has significantly increased because of global warming, resulting in longer summers. This bird now leaves China later in the year and comes back later in the next year. As a result, a pest as a food of the migratory birds surged in number, which devastated vast tracts of forest (Leahy 2018). Global warming increases the number of natural disasters, as well. It has increased precipitation in areas of abundant rainfall, such as high latitude area, while decreasing precipitation in some regions that lack water, such as Kenya. These effects lead to floods and droughts that have caused considerable damage to human property and health. Global warming would result in the loss of biodiversity. If the temperature keeps the increasing speed of 1.1 to 6.4 degrees, about 30 percent of all living plants and animals will be at risk of extinction by the year of 2050. Global warming also creates a better environment for the spread of the virus. Due to the high-temperature weather, mosquitoes, mice and other organisms carrying potential viruses reproduce rapidly. Data shows that about 150,000 people die each year from climate-related diseases (Leahy 2018). Frequent natural disasters should be paid attention to, and people should take effective action to mitigate the deterioration of global warming.
Countless facts prove that our living environment is deteriorating, global warming is caused by human activities, and people must have consciousness as well as action to protect the environment. Even though there are some people claim that global warming is a hoax because of some information like the hacker’s behavior, and the growing carbon dioxide did not increase the temperature in last 1960s, and skeptical attitude to IPCC’s reports. The global living environment can no longer stand the arbitrary human events, and people have to realize that the living environment is facing a great crisis which cannot be ignored. People could take various measures to mitigate the deterioration of global warming. For individuals, people could focus on those tiny aspects in daily life. People can choose to ride a bike and take a bus or subway instead of driving a private car. People should keep a good habit to turn off the lights in time. Additionally, people could choose a proper temperature for the air conditioner rather than an extreme degree with high power consumption. For the government, it should make strict supervision to the carbon emissions. Governments of various countries should collaborate to make efforts to mitigate of global warming. Those factories with relevant emissions should keep the necessary standards to avoid emitting more harmful gases. They need to adopt effective measures to clean up gases, making worse consequences away from the environment. They also can make efforts to develop and utilize the clean energy source to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. Every person in the “global village” has the responsibility to improve our living environment and should adopt active behaviors to create a more comfortable world for both current human beings and future generations. If each person, government, and industry undertakes enough responsibility, the excess carbon dioxide will be greatly reduced, the severity of global warming would get significant mitigation, and the harsh living environment will receive a vital improvement. In conclusion, people should have a profound realization of the importance of global warming and then take positive behaviors to release the burden of the planet.

Works Cited
Bayeh, Birhanu, and Melkamu Alemayehu. “Scientific Community Debates on Causes and Consequences of Global Warming: Review”. Bahir Dar University, 29 January 2019, http://ejol.aau.edu.et/index.php/JAES/article/download/1192/962/

Botkin, Daniel B. “Global Warming: What It Is, What Is Controversial About It, and What We Might Do in Response to It”. UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy, 1991, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9kg192ns

Erdman, Jon. “All-Time Record Heat in Germany”. Climate and Weather, 16 August 2015, https://weather.com/news/climate/news/europe-heat-wave-poland-germany-czech-august-2015

Fast, Dennis. “The Reality of Climate Change”. The New Yorker, 14 October 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/books/double-take/sunday-reading-the-reality-of-climate-change

Jang, S. Mo, and P. Sol Hart. “Polarized frames on ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ across countries and states: Evidence from Twitter big data”. University of South Carolina, 17 November 2015, https://research.fit.edu/media/site-specific/research fitedu/coast-climate-adaptation-library/climatecommunications/youth-climate-amp-social-media

Leahy, Stephen. “Climate change impacts worse than expected, global report warns”, 7 October 2018, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/ipcc-report-climate-change-impacts-forests-emissions/

Singh,Laishram Sherjit, and Kh Mohon Singh. “Global Warming: The Past, Present and Future”. International Journal of Engineering Technology Science and Research, April 2018, www.ijetsr.com