Environmental Issues

Introduction

This includes a brief description of climate change and the various arguments related to the cause of climate change.

Causes of climate change and related human effects

This includes the various definitions related to the climate change. It also covers on the causes of climate change both natural and man made. Lastly, the area describes on the human effects and climate change. This includes the green house gases and the land use.

Debate on climate change
Supporting argument on climate change
The section gives detailed evidence on climate change as a real phenomenon. It also argues in support of climate change as caused by the human effects through the daily activities.

Argument against climate change
In the section, emphasis is on climate change as a conspiracy where it is not more so related to the human effects but naturally occurs through the various dynamics of the atmosphere and the changes in the solar cycle.

Australia and climate change
This includes the various ways that the Australian government is approaching the climate change phenomenon. They include Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), cap and trade schemes, carbon credits and carbon offsets Greenhouse and friendly Skills for the Carbon Challenge.

Conclusion
Gives a summary of the contents in the study

Global warming and Climate change
Introduction
Have you ever had questions emerging whether global warming is a scientific phenomenon or its a conspiracy issue For the scientific world, global warming is a real scenario and the global climate scientists are intensively working on the ways of adaptation and mitigation of the impacts. For some scientists, climate change is headed for the extreme point with the compounding of feed back mechanisms. This would lead to large scale events that would be impossible to mitigate and manage.

Considering the oceans are one the major absorber of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the recent increase in the acidity of the ocean according to the Exeter report would affect the system balance and lead to more severe effects more so to the marine ecosystem. The effects of climate change are speeding up and the level of severity of the impacts is increasing as a result of the feed back mechanisms and processes. (Schellnhuber et al 2006).

The argument on climate change has been taking various dimensions. However, the amount of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere as well as the global temperatures has increased. In Australia, some groups including the Lavoisier Group negates the climate change phenomena denying the fact that the twentieth century was no the hottest century. They have also denounced the Kyoto protocol as lies where they suggest the lack of relationship between the melting of ice and the increased carbon dioxide. Some like Pittock term it on the uncertainty of the climate prediction models. However he terms global warming as a joint between natural and manmade climate change. He also states that soils and vegetation have turned to be sources other than sinks of carbon dioxide. (Schellnhuber et al 2006).This has resulted to increased heat waves. Global warming results to a negative and a positive feedback mechanism to the dynamics of the atmosphere thus need to be well understood to avoid losses. The elite, being the policy consultants if not the leaders thus requires the knowledge for preparation of the policy papers.

Causes of Global Warming and the Human Effects
Definition of terms
Climate is the weather conditions of a given area over a long period of time of roughly thirty to thirty five years. On the other hand, climate change is the change of the mean state of the climate that persists for a long period of time, several decades or longer. This includes the changes in the mean weather parameters and more so in the occurrence of the extreme weather events. Climate change may occur naturally due to the changes in the solar cycle thus the change in the direct radiation, or may occur due to the human effects including the increased green house gases and the land use activities. Green house gases includes, carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons, with the major one being carbon dioxide. (NOAA 2004).

The energy from the sun drives the climate system that is controlled by natural processes including carbon cycle, green house effect, orbital cycles, ocean currents and the atmosphere-ocean circulations. Carbon is contained in soils and rocks, fossil fuels, ocean sediments, coals and also in the atmosphere. The climate system is mainly affected by the human activities as they alter the carbon cycle. Burning of fossil fuels and deforestation releases carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the amount of green house gases which acts as a molecule for the absorption of more radiation whether direct or long wave. In turn, this energy is then emitted and warms the earths surface and the lower atmosphere. Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is on the increase with about 30ppm increase. Cattle production, rice cultivation and land fills have increased methane amounts. The industrial processes and auto mobiles on the other hand have increased nitrous oxide emission. (NOAA 2004).

The industries through burning of sulfuric fossil fuels increase the sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere and also generate black soot from pollution. These reduce the radiation reaching the ground as they absorb and reflect the atmospheric radiation causing a cooling effect. (NOAA 2004).

The debate on Global Warming
The science behind global warming as a human effect is filled with renewed upwelling of uncertainty. However, the amount of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is ever increasing and also the average global temperatures are on the upward trend. This brings forth the debate whether these effects are as a result of the carbon dioxide or is the natural climate variability. The Inter-government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) statistically relates the climate change with the human effects with 90 certainty. This has led to the divided debate with some going for the 10 uncertainty and relating climate change with natural climate variability. (Ritter 2009).

Global warming protagonists are strongly supporting the anthropogenic global warming theory and the reduced use of fossil fuels energy where they view the antagonists as financed by the oil and gas industry and other politicians. They argue that activist journals are being published but they lack enough data to support their arguments and conclusions. The scientists rally behind the climate theory that uses a number of assumptions on radiation balance to include valuables called forcings that causes lack of equilibrium. They make use of CO2 as the variable responsible for global warming due to the significant changes in its amount. IPCC makes use of climate sensitivity in their models to predict the future climate trends thus increasing their validity.

To defend the bias in temperature climate scientist compares station data with that of neighboring station and satellite data before analysis. (Ritter 2009).

In denial of global warming as resulting from human activities there is the call that, humanity green house gases emissions and atmospheric pollutants are not related to the climate system. Singer, an atmospheric physicist argues that the data used by the IPCC in deriving climate change is not evident of human caused global warming. There is on quest that IPCC uses imperfect climate models and excludes some crucial studies, hence should be discarded. They also denounce the control of carbon dioxide emissions as an expensive exercise where they termed the increase of temperature and CO2 as effective for increased plant growth thus increased economic growth. They terms the IPCC as a politically motivated organization based on political findings  who are actively involved in the censuring of valid but contradicting information. On the temperature data, there is no single global temperature thermometer and the surface temperatures used were termed to be skewed and biased where the stations are substandard. They indicated that the medieval warm period IPCC temperature data was lower than reported and claims that the atmosphere controls itself. (Ritter 2009).

Australia and climate change
The Kyoto protocol took effect in 2005 and the Australian government being one of the annex 1 countries is working on schemes aimed at reducing the carbon pollution.

In Australia there are efforts to reduce pollution without harming the economy. This includes the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) or carbon taxes. This aims at reducing carbon emissions and at the same time increase business profits by utilizing it as an opportunity. The various mechanisms Australia is using to combat carbon emissions are the one proposed by the Kyoto protocol involving emission trading, clean development mechanism and joint implementation. (Laini 2008).

For Australia it uses cap and trade schemes, carbon credits and carbon offsets. Carbon offsets involves investing in low emissions activities where they plant trees that act as carbon sinks. This is practiced even in air lines and banking industry. For carbon trade schemes, depending on the market conditions, the government is now auctioning the carbon emissions permits. Emission trading scheme in Australia started back in 2002 the government is also using renewable energy sources at the expense of electricity. The carbon pollution reduction scheme was meant to be launched in 2010 to report on green gases. (Laini 2008).

Conclusion and Recommendation
Climate change is a great calamity with the various observations, including the NASA observations on the rapid recession of arctic sea icing and the melting of the permafrost in the northern hemisphere. The effects of this is the reduction of the albedo and the reflectivity of the surface which in turn leads to the increased global warming as a result of the increased absorption of the direct solar radiation that also increases the amount of the long wave radiation.

But to some scientists and non scientist, global warming is a conspiracy that has led to the heated debate. Some Scientists are supporting the global warming theory and others are discarding it.
However, the Australian government is working hard in the implementation of the Kyoto protocol to combat the climate change through reduction of carbon emissions. This is through the emission trading scheme.

Global warming is a reality and as a scientist I would relate it with the global warming theory and efforts to reduce carbon emission should be amplified.