Climate Change
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (2007), climate change is “a long-term shift in the statistics of the weather (including its averages)”. To a lot of people, especially researchers, climate change is bad thing not only for the environment but also those living within it; however, there those who consider climate change nothing but a natural shift and have low regards in learning about it. Is climate change worth researching about or not?
In the recent occasion when United States President Donald Trump has officially cut off funding, by overhauling rules during the Obama-era which were directed to climate change (Oppenheim, 2017), for further research on climate change, many scientists, such as ecologists furious at the decision. Donald Trump focused his security not on climate change but on military and law enforcement terms (Brown, 2017) and even twitted last 23rd of April, “I am committed to keeping our air and water clean but always remember that economic growth enhances environmental protection. Jobs matter!” (Oppenheim, 2017), which heavily implies that in order to protect our environment, he proposes an improvement on economic growth without giving any logic on how that would help our environment and not fill the rich with more and unnecessary wealth as is.
Unfortunately, there are those who believe in his words and so far, there have been no or barely progress on his statement due to the current news mostly being about how Trump sent his armada to North Korea, only to fail when they realized they have been sailing in the wrong direction (pri.org, 2017), and even how Trump uses tax payer’s money to go golfing during weekends since the beginning of his term (Cilliza, 2017), spending more, if not as much, as Obama spent during his eight years in the White House.
Truly, I am in awe on how much people would still follow Trump’s lead, not bothering with the fact that stopping research about climate change impacts greatly on their way of living and that in order to fix the environment, research about THE ENVIRONMENT itself is a necessity in order to plan successful steps on helping their country prosper not only economically but also environmentally. It is true that ecological research or climate change research requires a lot of funds or to some extent; researchers tend to falsify data due to the large amount of time needed in gathering and analyzing them. However, it is important to take note that a lot of people benefit from the research conducted. For example, the research done by Susan Solomon and colleagues back in 2008 about irreversible climate change due to the carbon dioxide, which is considered a greenhouse gas, emissions. This research helped people from all over the world be informed of the damage done by the greenhouse gas and in nations, help them take measures to lower the amount of gas emissions in order to return to normal climate or seasons once more. People who advocated for Solomon’s work had done different measures such as emphasizing on projects like “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” not only in schools but also other institutions in order to prevent further burning of trash which emits harmful gases into the atmosphere which in general, had improved their respective environments to some extent such as the clean environment such as Singapore and Japan.
In essence, I do hope that research on climate change is given more importance and studied better since acquiring knowledge on this matter plays a vital role in making sure that everyone is aware and be ready to help, protect, and improve environmental conditions and experience the climate they were meant to be aware of instead of getting thrown into a random heap of weather conditions, giving them difficulty in adaptation towards them.
References:
- Brown, A. (2017). Donald Trump is Slashing Programs Linking Climate Change to U.S.
National Security. Retrieved on April 12, 2017 fromhttps://theintercept.com/2017/04/26/donald-trump-is-slashing-programs-linking-climate-change-to-u-s-national-security/ - Cillizza, C. (2017). Donald Trump’s golf problem. Retrieved on April 12, 2017 from
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/10/politics/trump-golf-obama/ - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (2007). Climate Change. Retrieved on April
12, 2017 from http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/brochures/climate/Climatechange.pdf - Oppenheim, M. (2017). Donald Trump fails to mention climate change in Earth Day statement.
Retrieved on April 12, 2017 from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-earth-day-statement-climate-change-a7697451.html - France-Presse, A. (2017). The US fleet Trump supposedly sent to North Korea spent days sailing in the wrong direction. Retrieved on April 12, 2017 from https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-04-18/us-fleet-trump-supposedly-sent-north-korea-spent-days-sailing-wrong-direction
- Solomon, S., Plattner, G-K., Knutti, R., & Friedlingstein, P.(2008). Irreversible climate change
due to carbon dioxide emissions. PNAS. 106(6), 1704-1709. doi:10.1073/pnas.0812721106
