Stories of Popshie : The Climate Change Scrutiny

By: Olivia D. Purba

Although most of the government all around the world has already start varieties programs related to climate change, hence the debate whether the climate change is really exist or merely political driven issues is still ongoing. There are still many people who are pessimistic about the cause of the temperature changes. These anti climate action people tend to think that climate change is just another political agenda by the government to take more tax from the society. The facts that environmental disasters are taking place around the globe with more frequency and intensity than ever before just are not enough for them to recognize.

Regarding the world's climate change scrutiny, arguments that global warming is the earth normal circle and have no significant relations with the human existence is still going strong. However the recent polls showed that 97.4% of active climatologists agree human activity in increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere -especially from deforestation and burning fossil fuels- is the main cause of global warming. Furthermore, there is a very clear consensus from the scientific community on climate change sources that the industrial age was the first point where human started producing huge CO2 emission to the air. Since then, as technology has advanced and human population has multiplied to over 9 billion people, human start to push the caring capacity limit. If the emission from human activities keeps being uncontrollable, the temperature will keep rising, and thus it will most likely bring serious consequences toward the earth.

During the debate over the climate change issues, the main research on climate change are mostly taken from the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change), which is a body formed by the WMO and UNEP. The validity of the IPCC reports can be validated because it is a compendium of peer reviewed and published science. In addition, thousands of scientists and other experts contribute to writing and reviewing reports on a voluntary basis, which are reviewed by representatives from all the Governments, with summaries for policy makers being subject to line-by-line approval by all participating Governments. Thus, it is actually not hard for us to trust the validity of IPCCC reports.

It was later revealed that many of the individuals and organizations challenging the idea of climate change have received funding from companies. ExxonMobil was one of the largest sources of funding for such scientists for over a decade. Records show that the oil giant paid out $125,000 in 2008 to several climate action opposition groups. The parties who oppose the existing of global warming are those who don't want the world to switch using the world's highly dependent energy of fossil fuel into the renewable energy.

From the argument above, we can conclude that the debate has slightly shifted from whether climate change exists or not into how to tackle the global climate change problems. Therefore, our job is not to debate over it but to work together to tackle the climate change impact and to find the real solution.