Global Warming: The Signs and The Science

Global Warming: The Signs and the Science

Global Warming or “Climate Change” is one of the biggest issues in the world today. For that reason, I chose Global Warming: The Signs and the Science as the film for this paper. There are many underlining facts in this film that make for a very influential piece of work. Few people know about this issue in the world since only for the past few years, scientists have been given a chance to prove its credibility. I feel now after films like these people throughout the world are being educated about what they are doing to the environment and the reparations.

This film deals with an extremely important issue today. Not everyone knows about global warming. This unawareness is due to companies and businesses such as electric factories or oil companies that are emitting the CO2 or green house gases into the atmosphere at an alarming rate. These companies are able to pay scientists the correct amount of money to research against global warming and its effects on the Earth. The scientists do not make up evidence; they merely research and perform experiments which provide data counter to the evidence supporting a global warming. Since those dreaded times, many scientists have done their own research and concluded that global warming is taking effect and it is real (“Global Warming: The Signs and the Science”). I enjoyed this movie since it educates regular citizens, not scientists, about the issue. Global warming is already effecting on our lives and the areas we inhabit. It is possible that if we decide not to do anything now it will dramatically impact the lives of our children and the future generations of this world. The United States is a main contributor to climate change. Around five percent of the world’s population lives in the US. That is about three-hundred million people; however the US contributes twenty-two percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. With emissions like these, the rest of world will be affected. These effects will come in the form of stronger hurricanes, more droughts in some areas, and increased coral bleaching throughout the oceans of the world (“Global Warming: The Signs and the Science”).

This movie also brought many items to my attention that I had not explored before; one item was the outbreak of the West Nile Virus in Colorado. I did not realize that the spread of disease caused by warmer temperatures and more ideal environments for diseases to grow had affected the United States yet. To this day, I had not yet heard of any effects of global warming within the US besides the obvious rising oceanic levels throughout the globe. According to the British Meteorological Office, “it is clear that rising temperatures are enabling carriers of disease such as insects and rodents to expand their range and thus their ability to infect people” (Smith, 2002). The mosquito, in the case of Colorado, can now reproduce faster and it bites more species as temperatures are rising. The mosquito has broadened its range where it can live. Mosquitoes can now reach places that used to be far too cold to survive. Do not forget that these climates include elevation now so now peoples that had never had to deal with these insects are now being introduced to these pests (“Global Warming: The Signs and the Science”). "Not only have we underestimated the rate at which climate would change, we have also underestimated the rate at which biological systems would react," said Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and Global Environment of the Harvard Medical School (Smith, 2002).

One of the other items that this film brought to my attention is the fact that global warming is increasingly affecting people with asthma and allergens. It had never occurred to me that increased pollen production by plants because of increased CO2 in the atmosphere could result. This causes the plants to grow faster and bigger with a larger production rate of pollen (Ogren). Millions of people suffer from conditions such as Hay Fever and Asthma which are caused