Though global warming is usually a political issue, the fact is that few people understand how it works because almost nobody is sure how it works. Global warming is such a complex issue that any attempts to simplify it will often lead to scary-but-incorrect conclusions. Most arguments boil down to if human activity is affecting global warming, which it is, but the issue is so complex that humans may never have the capacity to truly understand how global warming works with enough comprehension to produce any sort of predictive model.
The Causes of Global Warming
Scientists are unsure as to what causes global warming, and despite media hype, most are starting to see that the problem is multifaceted and relates to many global issues that humans do not comprehend on a full level. Our own inability to comprehend all the many factors in global warming is why so many predictive models are severely misleading. What is more frustrating is that as one factor changes, it then affects others and changes those, which again affects other factors, which complicates matters further.
(Root, 2003)
The most cited factors that affect global warming are sea saline concentrations, global ice coverage, upper-atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, El-Nino, weather systems relating to hurricanes and tornado, concentrations of bio matter decomposition, the rate at which greenhouse gasses are produced, winter and summer weather in different hemispheres, fresh water use and availability, tree coverage globally, volcanic activity, global nuclear tests and global nuclear disasters.
(Hansen, 1998)
Effects Of Global Warming
As mentioned in the previous section, the most important effects are those that influence global warming itself. For example, the fact that global warming causes rain to fall less frequently in deserts will have a negligible effect, but the fact that global warming may alter mid-Atlantic air currents means that whole species of flora and fauna will be unable to exist in countries of their origin, which will invariably affect local ecosystems which will then affect other factors that affect global warming; especially when other species move in to replace the species that are no longer supported.
(Cox, 2000)
The effects are both macro and micro. For example, some areas see slightly drier periods during summer, which may not seem important, but things such as grassland dies and dries far quicker than it should, which leaves it prone to burning, which kills off its seeds, releases greenhouse gasses, kills off species of fauna, and reduces water absorption when it rains the next time, and all while leaving the grass unable to regenerate because it has been destroyed and so has its seeds.
(Cline, 1992)
Macro effects include shifting patterns in El-Nino, which affects everything from how much it snows during winter to how quickly the earth spins on its axis. Plus, some theorize that global warming will reverse itself, but that the bounce-back will feature global disasters such as increased weather phenomena such as large and frequent hail, frequent tornadoes/hurricanes, and flash flooding.
(Peng, 2004)
Solutions To Global Warming
The truth is that the only solution to global warming in our time is capitalism. Despite the problem that capitalism has been blamed for most of the damage that is done to the earth, the fact is that capitalism is the only method on the planet that can stop, slow and/or reverse global warming.
For example, one could wipe out battery farmed eggs overnight and make sure that this horrid process never happens again. One could do it by making free range eggs cheaper than caged eggs. That act alone would cause a capitalist market to force caged egg farmers out of business.
Do not forget that flash drives and email have saved more trees than every earth-friendly charity combined, and things such as flash drives and email were created because of capitalism because the market demanded faster and easier ways of sending written messages and storing them.
There was an invention called the “Google Burger,” which was meat that was grown in a laboratory. Instead of killing cows, scientists can take a cell of its meat and grow beef in the same way that human skin is grown for skin grafts. Such a technology could use mass production so that it is cheaper and easier to grow meat than it is to raise and butcher livestock. Not only would this fix any ethical questions to eating meat, but it would also halt the massive amount of deforestation that is conducted to raise cattle, and it would lower the amount of greenhouse gas produced by cattle. Such innovations, allied with capitalism, would help save the world from global warming.
Conclusion
Is global warming fixable? Yes it is, but the human race is not going to fix global warming out of the kindness of its heart. Luckily, we have capitalism to help save the day, and its market forces may be leveraged to direct people to save the world. Nobody uses electronic messaging such as emails over paper letters because they are forced to. People use electronic messages because they are easier, cheaper and more convenient, and as a result we are now cutting down fewer trees. The manipulation of market forces while allied with government policy and new technology may one day save the earth.
Bibliography
Cline, W. R. (1992). The economics of global warming. Institute for International Economics.
Cox, P. M., Betts, R. A., Jones, C. D., Spall, S. A., &Totterdell, I. J. (2000). Acceleration of global warming due to carbon-cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model. Nature, 408(6809), 184.
Hansen, J. E. (1998). Sir John Houghton: Global Warming: The Complete Briefing. Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry, 30(3), 409-412.
Peng, S., Huang, J., Sheehy, J. E., Laza, R. C., Visperas, R. M., Zhong, X., … &Cassman, K. G. (2004). Rice yields decline with higher night temperature from global warming. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(27), 9971-9975.
Root, T. L., Price, J. T., Hall, K. R., Schneider, S. H., Rosenzweig, C., & Pounds, J. A. (2003). Fingerprints of global warming on wild animals and plants. Nature, 421(6918), 57.
