ESL 91
SPRING, 2003
IN CLASS ESSAYS ON
THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT

I disagree with your opinion about global warming, even though you are a professional person in the study of environment.  You said that the greenhouse effect doesn’t change the global warming, and the environment would regulate by itself to a suitable condition.  The environmental changes have their own cycle.  In my opinion, the green house effect will increase the earth’s temperature by human made emissions.  On the other hand, the global warming will cause destructive climate everywhere around the world. If we don’t stop the global warming, the climate will be changed. However, we have special steps to prevent the severe consequences in the future.  The important way to stop the emission is by limiting the air pollution from factories, electric plants and cars.   

After the industrial revolution, the greenhouse effect has been affecting our environment until now. The Greenhouse effect is the heat from outer space and that keeps staying on the earth.  Those greenhouse gases flow in the atmosphere and act like a blanket.  According to the environmental report from Environment Agent Department, carbon dioxide is currently responsible for over 60% of the enhanced greenhouse effect.  As we know our factories and cars have emitted this kind of gas.  Many billions of tons of carbon dioxide are produced every year.  As you said the environment will have a suitable cycle for itself.  How does the environment bear the large amount of increasing air pollution from our hands?

The impact of global warming will affect humans and other kinds of living things on the earth.  When we continue to produce emissions of greenhouse gases, the temperature of earth’s surface will increase rapidly.  As a result, the ice in the North and South Poles is going to melt soon because of the global warming from the green house effect.  The sea level will be higher than before and the water will flood some of cities.  On the TV, you would see and hear the news about flooding around the world. Millions of people will lose their homes because of the raining storm. Do you think that it is an environmental cycle?

According to the global warming, some people can’t survive.  In Africa, people live in a very bad condition.  Deserts are spreading their size close to people’s living place. They can’t plant crops in the dry soil and don’t have enough livestock for food.  And the fresh water evaporates into the sky because of the higher temperature from global warming.  As the result, people in Africa will die.  About 100 thousand people right now still live in the dangerous situation.  We have to do something to help other people and make the environment suitable for all living things.

So, those consequences of global warming reflect the real problems that we face.  If we just let the environment struggle by it, we will have another impact of the climate change because of the greenhouse effect. Rain and snowstorms are everywhere around the world.  I believe that human activities have caused these problems.  Under the situation of global warming, we have to decrease the emission of carbon dioxide, not just sit and do nothing.  However, we have still computer models and other technologies helping us to limit the small number of emissions, but it isn’t enough to control greenhouse gases.  Thus, we must take important steps to limit air pollution and eliminate the risk that causes climate problems.

Dear Dr. Fred S. Singer:

I am a student of an ESL course at Kingsborough Community College. In our class we have learned and done research about the greenhouse effect. We have observed how the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere  warms our planet and studied the possible consequences of the global warming.

During the research we faced  different points of view on this problem, from skeptics to alarming attitudes about the consequences of global warming. At that time I read your interview from the webpage and I totally disagree with your statements, so I decided to write you this letter.

In the interview you say  that climate changes are natural and these changes are not a threat to people because human beings have adapted to all kinds of climate  changes. Yes, you are right. The climate keeps changing all the time, but today we speak about humans modifying the climate, not at one degree per millennium, which is the natural rate, but at possibly several degrees per century. Now the question is how can people and other habitats of our planet  adapt to such a fast changing  environment? Now the climate changes ten times faster than the history for which we have experience.  According to the professor of biological sciences Stephen H. Schneider, ”This seems an absolute prescription for an extinction crisis where we lose a large fraction of the species now on earth. Does anybody care?”

You also say that human beings in producing energy and in just living, generate heat and we are not going to go back to living without energy. It is very difficult to imagine that we might stop using the carbon-based energy in one day, but it does not mean that we should not develop more efficient technologies like fuel cells and we should also switch from coal to gas. It can protect the climate and we can have industrial development at the same time.

You then say that if the ocean warms, the sea level will rise and  counterbalancing this is the fact that the warmer the ocean , the more ice will accumulate on the ice cap. If this is true  how about the NASA studies which show that, between 1978 and 2000, 1,2 million square kilometers of apparently permanent ice melted away? That is an area five times the size of Britain and represents a loss of 9% per decade. As NASA ice physicist Josefino Comiso said, ”At this rate permanent ice will have disappeared before the end of this century”. This means that sea levels will rise 88 cm by the year 2100,causing flooding of low-lying areas and other damage.

In your interview you also make a statement that if we look carefully at other human activities we will see that people can produce things that cool the environment and, for example, you speak about the production of aerosols. While aerosols may cool the environment, we can not use the acid rain which is related to aerosols production to solve the problem of global warming. We know the aerosols are very bad for the environment and they are also part of air pollution which we breathe. This leads to increased lung and respiratory disease.

You say also that high levels of carbon dioxide should not concern us. They will make plants grow faster. They will make agriculture become more productive and obviously, not only lower costs for food, but also produce more food. On the other hand, the CO is also the part of pollutants which are threatening the ozone layer. The ozone layer is necessary for life as we know it. The ozone absorbs the dangerous ultraviolet radiation. The increased ultraviolet radiation is harmful not just to human beings; it also damages crops and plants. The result of this is less food and higher prices.

You say that the climate science has become abnormal in the sense that it is being guided by the money. You state that the scientist  uses data selectively to support the idea that human beings face  catastrophic problem of global warming, because the people who are skeptical about global warming generally do not have government support for their work.  For example, the scientists don’t mention the fact that the weather satellite observations of the last twenty years show no global warming, but a slight cooling. The scientists suppress data that disagree with the idea what they are trying to prove.

If there is  truth in your words, how can the people trust  the scientists? Scientists don’t have a Hippocratic oath, but they have to tell the truth and provide a clear picture of what is occurring in  nature because the people have to take some steps to avoid the coming dangerous consequences of our activities.

In the end of the letter I want to thank you for your attention to my thoughts. I hope that people will be able to observe the scientists’ data, to analyze it , and to solve the problem of global warming to save our planet for our children.

Dear Dr. Fred S. Singer

I as a student in Kingsborough Community College (KCC) in an English as second language class (ESL) with professor Loretta F. Kasper, am writing to you in response to your article “What’s up with the weather?” According to your point of view on “Global Warming Unfinished Debate,” you have ignored the effects of global warming in our life. I want to encourage you to see the reality of global warming concerning the points of view of Al Gore and Rachel Carson. In addition, I want to express my own point of view after contrasting your response with Al Gore’s and Rachel Carson’s point of views about climate.

In this semester, spring 2003, I and my classmates in ESL 91 with professor Kasper together read several chapters from “Earth in Balance” by Al Gore and “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson. I have compared both their beliefs about the imminent dangers of global warming, and contrasted them with your beliefs that “nothing dangerous could happen to the Earth based on global warming problems.”

Al Gore and Rachel Carson are concerned that we humans are going to destroy the Earth if we do not do anything about global warming problems. They are concerned about a necessary balance between environmental protection and earth’s natural resource protection. In addition, they present evidence of environmental impacts from the use of chemical products, the new changes in the atmosphere, and balance in the weather environment. Certainly, Al Gore in “Earth in Balance” says, “Global warming is a real problem and the time to act is now.” He states that, the government has to invest more in conservation, renewable energy and in fast growing technologies that combat pollution; and taking step not just in this country, but every where in the world to reverse the rise in global warming. Carson states that the government has to create more national parks. She describes a community, in which all the elements of the natural world, including humans, work together, where people are able to enjoy the sound of birds and the growth of spring.

On the other hand, Dr. Singer, you do not present a clear scenario of what is the cause of the global warming. Moreover, your exploration of “historical climate data” does not look for a solution for environmental problems. You present a few problems without solutions or suggestions for how to confront or fight against global warming. For example, you answered the question “what do we need to do to fundamentally change the way we produce energy and use energy?” You said, “Climate change is a natural phenomenon. Climate keeps changing all the time. The fact that climate changes are not in itself a threat, because, obviously, in the past human beings have adapted to all kinds of climate changes,” your answer was incoherent from my point of view. You present a thesis that confuses me because you do not present a constructive response for a possible solution to global warming problems. You simply say, “Well there is no question in my mind that humanity is able to affect climate on a local scale. We all know that cities are warmer than the suburbs or surrounding countryside. So there is clear indication that human beings, in producing energy, in just living, generate heat. We are not going to go back to living with out energy.

I believe that we have to listen and pay more attention to Al Gore and Rachel Carson because they have a clear point of view of what can happen to our planet and how the world will look in the future if we do not do something about it. In addition, they both present clear scenarios of what we humans have to do to help the Earth. For example, Al Gore says, “we have an ethical duty to pay attention, resist distraction, be honest with one another and accept responsibility for what we do whether as individuals or together.” Furthermore, Carson says, “the most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials.” 

In general, I would appreciate seeing strong research about global warming that agrees with the realities where you can help people to defend our Earth. We do not want to see our planet destroyed with more environmental problems. I believe as AL Gore and Rachel Carson do that we humans must act now to save the planet from global warming.

If you have made any change in your point of view after reading this letter, please use it in your next debate.

Sincerely,

Julio Cardenas

Dear Dr. S. Fred Singer:

Since I read your interview “What’s up with the weather” on the Internet, you actually gave me a lot of your opinions about the global warming. You are the first scientist I’ve heard about who says that the global warming is not caused by the human activity. However, from what I read, I didn’t agree with your opinions.

As you say in your interview:” The climate change is a natural phenomenon. Climate keeps changing all the time. And there’s no question in my mind that humanity is able to affect climate on a local scale. We all know that cities are warmer than the suburbs or surrounding countryside. So there’s clear indication that human beings, in producing energy, in just living, generate heat.” I agreed with this because the climate was caused by nature; however, I think that the human beings could also change the climate by using some fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal…. As the human beings used these materials to produce energy, we created a lot of harmful pollutants in the atmosphere, are that made the climate change.

According to “The greenhouse effect” by Loretta F. Kasper,” the greenhouse effect refers to the warming of the earth caused by the sun’s rays penetrating the atmosphere. Pollution causes the heat to become trapped at the surface, increasing the temperature and causing the greenhouse effect” (Page 35). When we used the harmful materials such as the fuels, electrics to produce our living conditions. We actually didn’t know that these things could make carbon dioxide and gases such as methane, nitrous oxide, halocarbons, and ozone in the atmosphere, which could also create a blanket that traps some of the heat. So the heat was stuck in the blanket and let the warming rays go through to affect the earth’s climate. In the past few years, we could feel that the climate has had an unusual change. For example, last winter it was warm with no snow, which was so strange that winter hadn’t snow in New York. But in this winter, there was a lot of snow and the temperature was low; even the temperature in May was still between 30-40 degrees. Sometimes we were freezing and sometimes we felt hot. Normally, the weather in May should be warm and the spring should come, but I didn’t feel the spring. So, these were the greenhouse effect signals, which means that the climate has changed.

I think the greenhouse effect not only affects the climate, but also the earth’s environment. For example, we destroyed the forests in order to take the woods to build houses and sell them. As we know, the trees will absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen to the earth. The forests look like the protectors of the earth; they absorb all the carbon dioxide to protect the atmosphere not to be destroyed. If we destroy the forests, we destroy ourselves. Also if the earth’s temperature were raised, it could melt the ice on the polar ice caps, so the sea level would raise and the world’s major cities built on the coasts would be flooded.

Although you think the computer data are ambiguous for measuring the climate, we have to face the fact that the earth’s climate has changed. The earth’s terminator is the human being who made the pollutants on the earth. In order to safeguard our home, we have to stop doing these things. We have to develop some resources that are good for the human beings or the earth’s environment. I hope you will agree with my opinions.

Sincerely,

YUNJI PAN