Climate Change Science: A Call for Global Action - Research Paper

Introduction

Scientists have, in the past several decades, reached a consensus that several climatic changes are happening due to various factors. The factors mentioned are shouldered on the humans inhabiting the earth. For example, human-produced greenhouse gases are proven to cause an upward shift in temperatures, and this has led to a call for significant action on a global scale.

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To conceptualize climate change science as well as climate change, mitigation and preventive measures, scientists have put up several argumentative ideas on how this can be achieved considering it is a crucial part of social being and environmental understanding. According to Connor1, in the sense of human and animal species as well as ethics and cultures, Anthropos sites humans as the much more significant proportion of the co-existence, which is tremendously fundamental when it comes to climate change.

The socio-cultural theories that examine the thoughts of climate change and global warming in the Middle Ages communities. This investigates how learners can view climate change in their settings and lives. Hestness, Randy, and Wayne examined thoughts of students basing on their thoughts and ideas about climate change and the impact it could potentially have on their lives at that particular time. 'The type of scientifically informed ideas about climate change, the sources of climate change they thought as trustful and the extent to which climate change was seen as having a direct impact on their lives in the classroom'2 are the content knowledge perspectives investigated to find out much about climate change. Media was found to be the most instrument informing the individuals about climate change, beyond their formal instructions in the classroom. This makes it crystal clear that the socio-cultural environment in which humans co-exist makes them self-aware of the climate change and their implications to their own lives in the same settings in which they live.

This perspective leads to the belief that there is a secure connection between human beings, their socio-economic interaction, and climate change. Most scientists strongly believe that 100% of climate change witnessed in the 1950s is total as a result of human emissions and activities. Connor 1, for instance, holds on to the idea that men, women, and children in the modern man era dug up rocks from the ground and believed that fires were burning underground, and one day, they could cause darkness on the surface of the earth. This further is related to the mining of coal, its uses, and its implications on the environment. Thus, a belief that humans are the source of climate change, in as much as this has ignited political wars in various economic setups across the globe.

An article on climate change by Zeke 3 explains that since those days of technological advancements of first world countries till today, global warming may be explained by basically human activities and greenhouse emissions. His Carbon brief article gives the insights of how each of the mega factors influences the earth's temperatures in isolation on their own, and when brought together, how these elements would mean a long term change in the global temperatures. This, therefore, makes the earth's natural variability play a very insignificant role in the increase of the earth's temperatures in the long run.

These findings somehow have alluded to the fact that human beings are the causes of between 65 -100% global climate changes, with natural variable factors helping in a slight cooling of the earth. This implies that global warming is a human responsibility, and world institutions, including governments, have to come in place and play a critical role in mitigating and preventing further damage to climate change.

While the Palaeoclimatic reconstructions indicate that the second half of the twentieth century was the warmest, they tend to believe that natural environmental changes may have contributed to the same, though with a minimal measure. The warming lacks consistency, with the scientific understanding of the way the climate should respond to natural external environmental factors like volcanic eruptions and varying solar output from time to time. Zhang, Gouyong, and Fanyan3 believe that the release of carbonates, for instance, from the Calcareous Soil to carbon dioxide, is not usually considered to be a contributing factor in global warming. This may be due to the lack of a clear understanding of the effluxes of carbon dioxide from organic and inorganic sources to asymmetric and symmetric global warming.

It, therefore, follows that a combination of these radiative gas emissions, human activities, and natural variabilities brings about higher and longer-lasting effects of climate change. There may be variables from year to year, for instance, ranging from el Nino rains to dry years, that are not accelerated by these forces.

Over the years, there have been disagreements between the projected and the finally observed climate changes across the globe, as exhibited by both the simple model and more complex climate models. When scientists measured and analyzed the factors that affect the amount of heat reaching and retained on the earth's surface, of all the factors analyzed, an increase in greenhouse gas emission alone was producing the magnitude of heat warming the earth. If it were only this parameter in play, then the planet would be a third warmer than it is. This means that other factors also come into play to experience the climate changes witnessed.

Changes in the way land are used, and its outlook may change the reflectivity of the earth's surface. Converting a forest into a field will cause the amount of sunlight reflected into space, more so in snowy areas. Other parameters, such as aerosols, are usually subjected to more uncertainties due to the difficulty of accurately measuring their impact on the formation of clouds. Overall, climate change associated with human socio-economic activities is much higher compared to natural external variables.

To conceptualize the science of climate change as well as its mitigation and adaptation efforts, several discourse metaphors have been used, such as war, religion, and even politics. Atanasova and Koteyko4 used critical metaphor analysis to study and analyze linguistical and conceptual metaphors. While paying attention to arguments put forward by societies, some employed war metaphors to advance pro-climate change ideas. This metaphor is used to communicate and make the rest of the people and society at large feel the urgency with which climate change needs to be controlled and introduce the politics of climate change. Religion metaphor was put forward by Mail Online to drive the contrarian arguments4. Such religious arguments are used to make the society downplay the urgency of the need to tackle climate change; as individuals imagine is just an occurrence caused by a Supreme being, and things will get back to normal on their own. This metaphor also made sure that there is a transition from climate change ideas to skepticism.

With all these findings of the ideologies put forward, concerns have been raised over policies that will sustain a gridlock on climate change mitigation and make sure that the society is not carried away by the metaphors of war and religion as it has been proven that they were once used in the past. Climate change and global warming communications affect what the society perceives of it. Flusberg, Teenie, and Paul5, in their article, find that many people fail to see climate change and global warming as a global threat. This a serious war between science and public opinion, and seemingly, the latter tends to carry millions of people away. Public opinion in our modern-day socio-economic settings and environments reign supreme as people would not want anything that would interfere or make them change their current way of life. Scholars find it so challenging when addressing the disconnect between what has scientifically been proven and the widely trusted public opinion.

Metaphorical framing plays a significant role in building attitudes of the public towards climate change. Comparing, for instance, the war metaphor and the race one, more people tend to think that war will bring urgent and quick solutions to climate change soon. Individuals look at risk surrounding climate change and develop a greater desire for a conservation behavior regardless of the time horizons. People with no idea about the two metaphorical ideas may tend to develop attitudes about climate change that fall in between the two extremes.

The climate tipping point is another idea that widens the bridge, especially between media and science. In as much as both science and news media continually called for drastic societal change to evade the dangerous climate change catastrophe, the tipping point metaphor became a highly versatile concept allowing itself to be used in multi communication purposes in distinct contexts.

This metaphor is used to note that climate change impact may be so severe such that it may total turn around the entire ecological system on planet earth Environmental scholars have taken criticism with the phrase noting that its tone of irreversibility and alarmism is worrying. The phrase argued to be only making the discourse of world climate catastrophe flourish4. This is only held by the mind of people with an unknown fear of the future. At the same time, the metaphor is seen as a source of revival of human determination, with individuals being left without defense mechanisms against the perils caused by climate change.

The news media also adopted the use of the term with societal implications and, at the same time, exhibiting a deliberate metaphorical meaning to help the human society act with urgency on climate change. Term journalists conceptualized them to help bring about the meaning of impending danger so that people and the governments would take drastic measures against the global warming effects witnessed.

The scientists having brought about the tipping point metaphor to the public domain, the news media took it up and used the same for the general public to see the need to develop measures to mitigate climate change and global warming. This follows that the term has been used so many times in climate change ideas to increase the awareness of the issue and develop the urge for individuals and institutions to work out measures to control the damage that may arise from the change in global temperatures.

There exists a point where there are arguments on climate change and global warming; research has been carried out on causes of the same and other external contributing factors. Human activities stand out to be the highest cause of global warming, but we cannot withdraw the fact that natural external variabilities also contribute towards the change. Due to the impact of the climate change witnessed on the earth's surface, science has a significant role to play in assessing the impact and also generating mitigative and preventive measures to ensure that the ecological system is not tipped by the impact of the global increase in temperatures.

The research on the assessment, impact, and mitigation of climate change has to be done thoroughly to avoid public opinion that a lot of people hold onto as trustworthy. This has to be done by bot the governments and other social institutions in place to prevent conflicting metaphors and work towards a better planet. Climate change, as noticed earlier, is majorly caused by human socio-economic activities. Therefore when finding ways of controlling, the social systems and setups may be touched and interfered with. This calls for understanding and amicable solutions to ensure that the existing social networks are not tampe...