Home > Global Warming Group > Discussion Board

what are the opposing viewpionts on global warming?

There seems to pretty much universal agreement that the world's climate is undergoing serious change at the moment. The evidence of melting ice at both poles and rising snowlines on mountain ranges across the world would seem to confirm that global warming is well under way. However, there is still strong dispute about the extent to which human activity is responsible for it. It has been pointed out that severe climate changes took place in the past, long before the age of cars, aeroplanes, heavy industry, industrial-scale agriculture and so on. Another argument is that volcanoes have been emitting carbon gas into the atmosphere for millennia and that modern human life plays only a minor part in the emissions 'problem'. I would say that that is the central debate on the issue today but I certainly believe that we should act as if we are part of the problem rather than wait to find that we've left it too late to do anything at all about it.

All knowledgeable and responsible people and organizations across the world in recognizing the problem of global warming. They all agree that post industrial revolution era the average temperature around the globe has risen, and that it continues to rise. All agree on the nature of catastrophes that Will be caused if urgent action is not taken to first halt this global warming and then to reverse it. They also agree on the cause of the global warming as the indiscriminate pollution of our environment and indiscriminate use and destruction of Earth's natural resources including the forests. People also have fairly good agreement on measures necessary tackle this problem.

The major disagreement on global warming center around who should be responsible to what extent for taking the required action. One way to control global warming is to stop or even reduce all further industrialization. But no country is would like to do that. So there is no agreement on the extent to which each country limit its industrialization.

Another factor impacting global warming is the nature of technologies used. Unfortunately, the technologies that are less polluting are also costlier. So one view to tackle global warming is to close down industrial plants using most polluting technologies and replace them with less polluting technologies. But there are some very real problems. The less developed countries generally use more polluting technologies, and they do not have the resources to upgrade to better technologies. Further, even though under developed countries use more polluting technologies, the total pollution created by them, due to lower level of industrialization, is lower than that by developing countries. And on that account, the developing countries may feel that the developed countries have greater responsibility to reduce pollution.

I have liste some main point of disagreement, but there re many other issues such as the exact mechanisim to motivate individual enterprise to behave more responsibly.