Science: Current Event #1

In Geneva, Designing a Global Climate-Alert System

During 2007, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared that it was likely that global warming could be an effect of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Their evidence proved that the gases emitted from the smolder of fossil fuels and deforestation travel into the atmosphere and enhance the greenhouse effect, causing global warming. Most of the idea of climate change has been proven by scientific work and experiments. However, the predictions for the future are still a little hazy because we have no mechanism to hypothesize what will happen in a warmer planet. New updates on climatology don’t come very frequently, about every five to six years. For our rapid global climate change, this frequency isn't enough. As Jane Lubchenco states, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), we have an urgent need for ongoing information about climate change, and we don’t have a mechanism to provide it. Lubchenco will be leading the US delegation at a World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. This conference, along with many others, could eventually allow scientists to predict climate-change just as they daily predict the weather. The NOAA issued an in-depth report about how the climate will change in America, which set the stage for the entire world. At the Geneva conference, it is planned to create a Global Framework for Climate Services. Also, scientists will try to agree on a plan to reduce carbon emissions and other pollution in another world climate conference located in Copenhagen, Germany that will also be occurring in the near future. For now, this conference might be the best we can do, but sooner or later, we will have to take more action.

In my opinion, this Geneva conference could lead to a series of steps towards achieving our goal of recognizing the causes of climate change. With a meeting of world-wide scientists, they can share ideas and cooperate to ultimately create the mechanism which we yearn for, the one that can predict climate change. I strongly believe that such a conference can only benefit us, and if it is followed up by a conference in Copenhagen, then we may actually be able to invent such a machine that will tell us if summer will be in the 90s range or the 70s range in temperature. An update on climatology every five or six years is simply not enough. We need to be able to know if this winter, temperatures will sky-rocket as opposed to previous years which will prevent snow, or if there will be freezing temperatures, the coldest the Earth has ever experienced. We need to know if we are really experiencing global warming, or if the Earth is just entering an Ice Age. This requirement for information can not be satisfied if we just get updates about every five to six years. We need information that comes every year, so we can plan for the next winter, or the the following summer. The NOAA has gotten a head start, hopefully beginning a trend of in-depth reports around the world. However, without collaboration across the globe and a consensus to solve this issue, the world needs to acknowledge the fact that climate change is happening right here, right now, and we need to do something about it before it is too late.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1919932,00.html