One's Opinion is Shaped by What One Sees Outsideby | 22-12-2016 10:38 |
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The difficulty with climate change is that it is not a very obvious, abrupt change that everyone across the world can clearly see outside their homes. The phrase "seeing is believing" plays a large role when attempting to teach people about the crisis and persuade them that what we are facing is not merely a hypothesis, or an assumption, rather it is a fact that is happening right now. The United States has been facing rather extreme cold weather within the last few weeks with over eighty percent of the country in below freezing temperatures. This has a drastic effect on people's perception of what is happening to the planet as they are quick to argue that global warming must not be taking place as it is snowing right outside. The difficulty that scientists and environmental activists are facing is that people want to think of climate change as a local issue, rather than a global one - yet it is in fact called GLOBAL warming and the effects are most obvious when viewed on a widespread, global perspective. Although the United States is facing a rather cold winter, the effects of climate change are shown through the changing, yearly climate. However, people are quick to perceive climate and weather as the same. In the last year throughout the world, including the United States, the weather has consistently been setting record highs as desertification and drought has become a more prominent threat. And in the Arctic Ocean, the temperature have peaked to a point that scientists fear that if not this year, in a few short years ahead, we will see the Arctic as ice-free, which most prominently will have a drastic effect on the animals, such as polar bears that depend on the ice to maintain their normal routines, and on the native people that have long-established ways of being. |
