Global Cooling vs. Global Warming at Issue

The global warming and global cooling debate has been in the news recently for various reasons, including the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change scheduled for March 2-4 in New York City. For those who don't know the term, global cooling is a hypothesis that has never had any scientific support, but has had plenty of attention. According to an article on USA Today.com, shows that during the 1970s some scientists believed that the earth would experience global cooling, but they were outnumbered by the scientists who believed that global warming was going to occur. The reason why there was less support at that time and today for global cooling is due to the fact that there was no scientific consensus to support global cooling.

According to the Washington Times, the global temperature of the earth has increased a total of 0.7 degrees since the mid 19^th century. The affects of global warming are seen on a daily basis around the world. Many scientist are afraid that soon runaway global warming will take affect but some still hold on to the idea that the earth will go through a cooling off period. According to a news article on the website "Union of Concerned Scientists" there was a report that Exxon Mobil had funneled $16 million from 1998 to 2005 to advocacy organizations in order to cause confusion on the topic of global warming science. Many think this is how the global cooling debate was started up again and the idea that this is a naturally occurring event.

Currently in the news, there has been even more people affected by global warming. In Anchorage Alaska, there is a village that is suffering the effects of global warming and they have decided to take action. According to an article on www.cnn.com, this Alaskan village is eroding into the Artic Ocean. The village of Kivalina has about 390 people in it, and the village has been protected in the past by sea ice. Due to the loss of sea ice the erosion rate has increased. The lawsuit is aimed as some of the largest oil companies, such as Exxon Mobil, BP PLC, BP American, Chevron, Chevron USA, and Royal Dutch Shell PLC to name a few.

So will this lawsuit cause these companies to make serious changes in order to slow down the rate of global warming? Many say that it will probably not and the village of Kivalina will end up being relocated. The fact is that one of the leading causes of global warming is the burning of oil, gasoline, and various additional fossil fuels, although some skeptics think it is a natural occurrence. Each year these affects get worse and worse. What many want is for these major companies to make more effort to find ways that they can help to reduce the affects of global warming. According to www.nowpublic.com the courts are where the fight over global warming is taken place, and not actually in congress. What many are basically hoping for is that if there are enough lawsuits than possibly this will make these companies work harder at finding the solution to slow down the affects of global warming. Instead of trying to push the idea of a natural occurring global cooling.

The court case mentioned above is not the first and it will certainly not be the last one. Many are hoping that by presenting all of these various lawsuits they will bring the needed attention to the problem of global warming and give less attention to the theory of global cooling. The hope is that this will cause those who are having the biggest impact such as the oil companies, will make changes sooner rather than later. What many scientists are now wondering is if the warming is man-made or a natural occurrence. Based on the lawsuit mentioned above a lot of people don't agree with the idea of global warming being a natural occurrence. I personally feel that there is too much proof that supports the fact that this is a man made problem, and that global warming will continue to get worse. For more information on how the climate has been affected by global warming you can visit www.epa.gov.