Global Warming: The Budding Epidemic

After reading this article, I'm really not at all surprised that this past January was the warmest on record. After all, you'd have to be living under a rock not to hear of global warming, especially now that it's become such a colloquially "hot topic" within the media and politics, and even as a standard water-cooler conversation subject. Our carbon emissions result in the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, whereby CO₂ emissions gradually cause the Earth's temperature to rise. The article illustrates what, in my opinion, is proof that the greenhouse effect and global warming are not "socialist, money-sucking" myths, as some will claim.

Now, I'm obviously biased in this assessment. After all, I'm anything but an expert on the subject, and scientific opinion concerning climate change is as varied of a topic as one is likely to find, with many researchers pointing in different directions in terms of the culprit of this epidemic. Wikipedia demonstrates sundry opinions on the topic here, with many scientific authorities artfully shirking the blame to other events and processes. Nevertheless, it's tricky to deny the hard, fast evidence of what is provided: global warming has been linear to the historic release of CO₂, which, as I see it, is undeniable proof that global warming is a man-made problem. As such, a man-made solution is, at this point, essential.

Once the true cause has been (commonly, if not universally) identified, treatment of the problem can effectively begin. Pro-green measures need to be taken in order to guarantee the health and sustainability of our planet for future generations. The Kyoto Protocol represents one oft-talked about solution to this problem, and many nations, like Canada, are speaking about home-grown remedies to the subject that best suit their own economic and social priorities. Ultimately, as the issue becomes more relevant, as temperature increases in years to come will become markedly uncomfortable to ignore, nations are going to have to put pro-environmental solutions on the fast-track to success. While the economy of any country is a widely valued resource, ultimately, the environment needs to take first priority. I can't see too many doing this until the issue has escalated, which, given the sheltering of part of the Western world (ie. the United States) from the weather concerns raised in the aforementioned article, might take some time indeed.

The NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, an agency devoted to the conditions of the oceans and the atmosphere. Threatening weather and marine resources are two highly important topics to the NOAA.

The Goldilocks effect is an analogy (obviously referring to the namesake fable) that outlines the fact that greenhouse gas conditions on Earth need to be "just right" in order to sustain life. The benchmarks for comparison are Venus and Mars, two planets that don't maintain living organisms because they contain the improper proportion of greenhouse gases; Venus has too high of a level of greenhouse gases, while, on the other end of the spectrum, Mars has too low. Earth is the happy medium, achieving the "just right" levels for life to be properly sustained.