Adrianna Rochester – General Assignment Reporter
The two presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, stance on climate change is a topic that may matter a lot in this year’s election. Out of the two candidates only one seems to have a clear plan on how to battle climate change. While Trump has been vocal on not believing in the science on global warming or climate change, Clinton has taken the opposite approach.
For Clinton, climate change and the effects it has on our environment are real. Throughout her political career she has taken a side on environmental issues the world faces. As part of her campaign, Clinton promised to work both domestically and internationally to continue to build on recent progress to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by implementing more robust pollution standards, cut energy waste, implement projects to build solar panels for homes and more. These benefits would not only provide a lot more energy for people, but would also provide jobs to the individuals who would be working on these projects.
On the other hand, because Trump has made it clear the issues of climate change is not a priority to him, it should not come as a surprise that he does not have a strategy to tackle the threats of climate changes.
Throughout his campaign Trump has made statements claiming that climate change and global warming are not man made, but are natural occurring events. In fact, Trump has called climate change a “hoax” created by the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.
The scientific community has a consensus that validates that climate change is manmade. According to NASA, scientific journals show that 97 percent of active climate scientists agree that over the past century, human activity is what has likely contributed to climate change.
Most of these scientists have also made public statements to endorse their position that climate change is occurring throughout the world and the greenhouse gases that are produced by humans are a growing threat to our planet.
Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that climate-warming is real, Trump has not changed his opinion on the matter. Those who do not believe in climate change and the effects it has on the environment are being ignorant to the bigger picture.
Human activity has caused harm to the Earth for many years and the effects of this have been seen in many ways. Sea levels are elevating, mass flooding is occurring due to extreme rainfall, hurricanes are becoming more powerful with more rainfall than usual and various extreme weather events occur more often. All of which are exasperated by mankind’s reluctance to preserve our environment.
Whoever becomes the next president needs to aggressively pursue and implement protocols that will ensure no further damage is done to our planet.
“The scientific community has a consensus that validates that climate change is manmade. According to NASA, scientific journals show that 97 percent of active climate scientists agree that over the past century, human activity is what has likely contributed to climate change.”
You really should stop repeating this falsehood from NASA/Giss. It has been refuted time and again, even by many of those quoted in this unscientific survey by Cook and Lewandowsky.
The appeal to authority, (NASA says it, so it must be true) is not a substitute for evidence. The scientific community also includes many thousands of scientists who disagree with the government line on the effect of carbon dioxide on regional climates around the world, but they are generally excluded from media reports.
Trump is wrong about the Chinese but that doesn’t make the anthropogenic warming claims correct. In the 60’s and early 70’s the worries were all about cooling.
In terms of the Arctic, Amundsen negotiated the NW passage in 1906, in a wooden hulled ship and no ice breaker escorts. There was considerably less ice than now, but no satellites to record it. However direct observation entered in ships logs, with latitude and longitude, shows it to be true.