REPLY TO EACH POST MIN 50 WORDS EACH THERE ARE 7 DIFFERENT POST

1.  For this weeks topic on myths I will be arguing the fact that “no warming in 16 years” is a myth. I do believe that humans are the cause of global warming due to the fact of all of the pollution that keeps increasing all the time. From the studies of the scientists they are saying that their is an expected 2-tenths of a degree per decade, but that doesn’t mean each decade is going to increase like that due to the natural variability. With the air pollution that we have is definitely affecting the ozone layer which causes the rays of the sun to make earth hotter and take more effect of it’s heat to make it increase in heat. Which also from other research that polar bears are also losing the ice in there habitat due to the earth continuing to heat up which is caused by the air pollution that we as humans put out. 

2.  I have chosen number four”There is no consensus”.  To me this myth is absurd and any search of the AMU library can generate a myirad of peer reveiw articles that can explain how and why this change is occurring but whats funny and sad at the same time is that the general pulic beleives the occureance has no scentific following.  It does and any search can generate that proof.  The first peer revirewed article displayed is from
  “Climate Change Consensus.” Science 271.5252 (1996): 1042–1043. Web. written by Michael J. Prather that discusses how the subject was brought foward and then deliberated by the United
Nations Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) as early 1995 this is just on simple search.  The evidence is out to support arguments on both sides but only one side seems to back the science and not the business aspect, the tobacco and oil industries.  Example, and i know this will be hard to beleive Phillip Morris and heir lawyers and so called consultants/scientiests continue to ague that “the nation’s top-selling cigarette, once known as Marlboro Lights and now called Marlboro Gold, reduces the risk of cancer.” 

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/low-tar-cigarettes/481116/

), Insane but true.  Simple sceince tells us that this statement is absurd and dangerous.  In this same article from The Atlantic makes the point perfectly with a quote from Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “Whether it’s the chemical industry, whether its climate change … You see it in industry after industry.” Now, it’s hiring consultants who took its techniques and pushed them further in other industries, relying on their experience to contest the scientific consensus on the dangers of low-tar cigarettes.”  Our CDC gives us the real facts from real scentiests and researches based on imperical eviudence and true research: 

3.  Truth

This myth suggests that the climate change today is completely natural and not caused by humans. The climate has changed before but it does it in patterns. It also takes hundreds of thousands of years to adapt to the oncoming change in temperatures. The changes go along with the earths orbit and right along with those temperature changes the levels in CO2 change too. According to the specifics of the orbit we are in now we should be cooling down instead of heating up. That right there proved that this is not a normal cycle of temperature change. “The Earth was indeed 

cooling over the last 6,000 years

 due to Earth’s orbit, heading into the next glacial phase scheduled for 

about the year 3500 AD

. But all that changed when we got to the industrial era. Global temperatures departed from that cooling trend, and instead rose parallel with our greenhouse gas emissions” which means according to the research that humans are directly behind the warming of the earth. That’s not to say that the earth hasn’t been hot before, it has, but that was before humans even existed. What causes the warming to become sudden instead of slow is greenhouse gases. In the past there have been periods of time when the earth heated quickly but it was directly caused by large emissions of greenhouses gases just like today. In the past though it was caused by unusually large volcanic eruptions. There are no active large volcanos today or even in the past 16 million years. Todays volcanos  by comparison don’t even come close to emitting the same amount of greenhouse gases that humans do. 

4.  The myth  I decided to talk about for this week’s forum is that the climate has changed before. I personally do believe in climate change but was on the fence of choosing a side solely due to the fact that the climate has changed multiple times before humans even existed. While this is true it does not factor in any of the variables that caused these changes in the climate that no longer exists. For example, one variable that caused rapid climate change was massive volcanic eruptions known as large igneous provinces that released enormous CO2 into to atmosphere.

This led to warmer climate change and we no longer have these massive volcanic eruptions and haven’t had them in the last 16 million years. Those rapid global warming changes in the past led to mass extinctions of life on earth and we are currently witnessing those same changes and effects. Therefore, this myth is partially correct but does not consider how our earth is not the same as it was back then. 

5.  For this week’s forum, I chose the myth that “sea-level rise is an exaggeration.”  

I want to start by saying that, seemingly, the reason that some individuals may believe that this is the case is that you can’t actually see the sea-level change due to the fact that it isn’t a drastic amount every day. However, that does not make it an exaggeration. When you really consider and get down to the data collected about sea-level rise, you find in 1990 sea levels were rising 0.1 inches or 2.5 millimeters per year, in 2016 this number has increased to .13 inches or 3.4 millimeters per year, this may not seem like much at all, but consider the increase of sea-level rise on a yearly basis. 2100 will see sea levels rise 26 inches or 65 centimeters per year (Lynch, P., Weeman, K. 2018). 

Have a great everyone and please do avoid that pseudoscience. 

6. For this week, choose to address the myth of “Renewable energy investment kills jobs.”  While this is not necessarily untrue, the intent behind the statement is entirely false. Fossil fuel jobs will go away as renewable energy jobs are created. Similar to the steam engine being phased out in the early 20th century, and replaced with the internal combustion engine, we need to look forward to the future and anticipate the evolving job market.

For me, the perceived job loss is a direct result of a more significant problem that the U.S. is falling behind in its math and science competency. For the naysayers that say “the average fossil fuel worker only has a high school diploma, and would not be able to compete in the renewable energy field”, the Forbes article hyperlinked below addresses that. According to the article “Landing a clean energy job can equal an 8%-19% increase in income, and 45% of all workers in clean energy production (e.g. electricians, installers, repairers, and power plant operators) have only a high school diploma, while still receiving higher wages than similarly educated peers in other industries.” So it’s not a matter of if jobs are available, it’s a matter of if we can accept change.

The article I mentioned before goes on to say that  “The renewable energy industry has become a major U.S. employer. E2’s recent

Clean Jobs America report

found nearly 3.3 million Americans working in clean energy – outnumbering fossil fuel workers by 3-to-1.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2019/04/22/renewable-energy-job-boom-creating-economic-opportunity-as-coal-industry-slumps/#7ab2aa523665

If this isn’t a clear indicator that change is coming, I’m not sure what would be. This article was published in the last 12 months, so for me it’s recent and relevant enough.

We as a society have become too nearsighted, and live in the now, rather than planning for the future. This plays into fear of change. For example, Jeff Bezos sat down with a panel of Harvard grad students shortly after starting his small company named Amazon. One happily announced to him that “he should simply sell Amazon to Barnes and Nobel, the writing is on the wall.” I don’t know about you, but thanks to Jeff not listening, I can order anything I can have groceries on my porch in less than two hours. If we continue to dwell in the now and lack the foresight for future planning, we will always be behind, lack the willingness to change, and lack the skills to be employable in the evolving job market.

The last fact I’ll leave you with is that “

In 2018

, merely running 74% of existing U.S. coal-fired generation cost more than replacing those plants with new wind or solar generation within 35 miles. As solar and wind prices keep falling, that number will jump to 86%

by 2025

, even as federal renewable energy tax credits phase out. The fact this is a debatable topic is hard for me to digest.   

7. The Global warming myth that I chose to discuss in this week’s forum post, is the myth that global warming does not cause wildfires. However, according to science, global warming may not start them, but it does worsen them. Dry vegetation and soil are the fuel that feeds these wildfires and helps them spread faster and further. I chose to write about this myth, because there have been a lot in the news lately about the wildfires in California and Australia, but many people don’t think that this relates to global warming. However, California had a record-breaking wildfire season in 2018. What does this have to do with global warming? Well California’s five hottest years on record was from 2014- 2018, and due to the hot weather and little rain, vegetation happened as well as droughts which fueled the wildfires and made them so dangerous and damaging. Australia’s record-breaking bushfire season was from 2019-2020, which also followed its two hottest and driest years, and even had a heatwave, where the highest temperature reached 107.4 F on December 18, 2019. This data shows that global warming is having some of the hottest temperatures in these years, and in the same years is having record breaking wildfires that spread fast, and far. Therefore, there is a clear relationship between global warming and the affect it has on wildfires, as well as the ability to cause them with high temperatures and droughts.