Angela Fields
Natural Disasters
11/15/2015
My Opinion on Global Warming
I am not sure when I started to hear about climate change and global warming but I do know that it’s not a new concept. All over the world there are indicators of its existence even with human race’s short recorded history, from dying coral reefs which provide homes for 25% of all marine life to the melting of glaciers which is the humans race‘s largest fresh watershed containing 87.2% of the total usable freshwater on earth. The snowball effects of these giant changes are widespread and despite the claim, for instance, that average temperatures have only gone up a percent or two at most, it only takes a percent or two to have massive consequences.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change when the average of all land and ocean surfaces are totaled the warming has been 1.53 degrees F from 1880 to 2012 and rising faster than previous earth trends. In 2014 the Panel also reported that global warming is being caused mostly by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and other human activities and scientists were 95% certain that this was true. That certainty may be higher in this past year after new dramatic highest records were met; for example just recently Hurricane Patricia in the Pacific Ocean was the largest hurricane ever recorded, along with some high ocean temperatures around the globe. Scientists also project that during the 21st century global temperatures would likely rise with best case scenario (with immediate changes in emissions and halt of fossil fuel use for power and production) 0.3 to 1.7 °C (0.5 to 3.1 °F) and the worst case scenario, 2.6 to 4.8 °C (4.7 to 8.6 °F) (if we don’t make any changes). These numbers have not been disputed or disproved by any scientific body of national or international standing. This is the sad fact of the matter to which I believe 100%.
I believe this based on evidence given by scientists around the world, the global evidence from changes in weather to be steadily increasing in intensity just in my lifetime and personal instances I have experienced. Some of these occurred when I was living back east in Maryland. More than just on my farm, water wells began to dry out affecting residential drinking and sanitation use, to other farmers’ agricultural use. Sod farmers were said to be the cause of the lowered water tables due to high daily use of the resource of above a million gallons a day during some of the hottest days of our summers. Residents took those farmers to court attempting to be reimbursed for the wells they then had to re-drill in order to remain on the land they had been on for generations and to protect their livelihoods in farming, my farm included. The farmers lost to the sod farmers because the water table is not regulated in the case of personal wells and therefore anyone and everyone has equal rights to it from their personal property despite the fact that the water table crosses many property lines. This is a prime example both of the “tragedy of the commons” where common resources are exploited and not maintained sustainably for individual gains, and of global warming, since the trend had been that our water table could support the local agriculture but because of climate change, land in the area had undergone years of drought uncommon to it, lessening the tables.
My well over this time sank short of the table which used to provide perfect crystal clear water since my family settled the area. Though we didn’t drain it for agriculture, it was still necessary for the farm’s animals, when my grandfather was alive, as well as our in home uses and consumption. This loss cost us tremendous amounts of money and time and the water well never fully recovered while I still lived there. The tip of the water well continually clogged despite our attempts at repair which was the cause I went without water for many months before moving. My family had lived in that farmhouse for generations even before electricity and plumbing (built and paid for with 5 gold coins), and now because we can no longer bring water to the property it is likely to fall in disrepair beyond its current condition and we will lose it forever.
Beyond that experience after beginning my journeys away from the farm, I encountered other instances that support my belief that global warming is probably not an isolated incident. When I left Maryland I traveled to 6 states and 1 province over many flights to and from. I started my trip in May of 2012. Later that year The New York Times claimed 2012 was the hottest year ever in the U.S. This was the creating force for drought in a lot of agricultural areas causing crops to fail, covering 61 percent of the nation, killing corn and soybean crops and sending prices skyrocketing. The temperatures also caused wide scale devastation in the Midwest States that were hit with a multitude of storms, some with tornadoes, and the hurricanes the east coast experienced late in the year, specifically Hurricane Sandy (which personally affected my family back in Maryland that lived near the Wicomico River). I was even in Colorado watching the forest fires as they came down the mountain and blackened the skies staying with my friend Gary in Colorado Springs. The next day we drove through the ash so he could help at an animal shelter he worked at. These were claimed to be the worst fires experienced in the area in over a decade.
More than half of my flights were delayed during my progressive traveling that year due to the heat and I regret choosing to fly for any of it, after learning of the harm planes do, adding high amounts of greenhouse gases to our atmosphere. I was one of those that denied all the signs around me thinking that by biking and recycling I don’t make a high carbon footprint that can have global impacts. I was wrong and I am still facing the fact that I can’t change (neither is the rest of the world) fast enough to keep this from happening. As the saying goes and it applies here, “day late and a dollar short,” but what is also true is that our procrastination and unsustainable lifestyles will be paid for more times than measurable, by us and the future of this planet.