Inga Zarafyan, EcoLur
On 2 October 2007 the US former Vice President became the Nobel Peace Prize Winner for 2007 with a statement “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change”. (See photos). For the first time the Nobel Committee awarded the peace prize, as a matter of fact, for an environmental prediction, what’s more, this prediction is utopian. The authority of the Nobel Committee played its role and since that moment a new phase for the formation of public consciousness has begun where “global warming” term exists as a fact, a disastrous fact.
In this speech we attempted to collect more common statements and calculations of supporters and opponents of global warming and to pass the way of public opinion formation about this topic, to understand what raises scientific and pseudoscientific arguments so far, clashes viewpoints and, finally, becomes public possessions.
The Apocalypse appears in the same figurative terms: famine, drought, flood, desert, and no people, nothing but fear, Hades, and ices melt. And next to these images we see what we can lose, white bears. Associations work with everybody, even skeptics.
In the terminology it looks like as follows:
1. World Flood: Temperature increase leads to melting of eternal glaciers that will bring to the increase in sea level and flooding of densely populated regions on the earth. Already now Europe gives alarm in regard to melting of high-altitude glaciers and they try to compute this process.
2. Drastic temperature imbalance: Rainforests will have more precipitation, as additional heat will increase the content of water vapors in air. In arid regions rains will be rare and these regions will become deserts. As a result people and animals will have to leave these places.
3. Great resettlement of nations, and consequently economic and political crises.
4. Famine resulted from the reduction in land areas suitable for human inhabitation and farming.
5. Drastic decrease in biodiversity, as many species will not be able to adapt to climate changes.
6. Sickness rate increase.
Each of these risks has its own calculation data connected with temperature increase scale.
These are risks that supporters of global warming try to prevent, for example by using the mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol. The opponents of this concept call them scarecrows of global warming and define this concept as mythology.
However, the issue is not only the discussions led by scholars. We speak about a very important political and economic process. If the concept clarified by Albert Gore is true and greenhouse gas emissions may lead to a global disaster, the solution to this issue needs enormous financial aids by international financial institutions and governments of developed countries. Moreover, we need political will of state leaders, opposition to big business, united efforts of society different layers, informational resources etc for responsible decision making.
Public consciousness is trapped by contradictory opinions immediately reflected in the mass media.
In the countries of Post-Soviet area public paid attention to the issues of global climate change with the processes accompanying to acceding to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol.
Under Russian sociologists, 62% of the Russians surveyed think that global arming is a serious threat. The first two places in the rating go to epidemics of earlier unknown diseases and anthropogenic disasters.
The concept of global warming is opposed by business running into billions represented by those country leaders having not acceded to the UN Convention on Climate Change or the Kyoto Protocol. It should be noted that these countries include such giants as the USA, China and India.
We observe complete tangle of myths and reality in public consciousness exactly reflecting the positions of the country governments both having acceded to the Kyoto Protocol and not. What myths our consciousnesses experience and what reality it results in.
- Till now global warming has become a proven reality.
- The myth that global warming is a natural process has been discredited as it has been proven that temperature increase exceeds natural changes.
- Myth about World Flood caused by global warming is probably a myth as a mean earth height above sea level is 840m and it’s not suitable for the World Flood.
- Myth that global warming is the only reason for drastic and unpredictable climate changes is not the absolute truth, as uppermost such factors as ocean current, cyclones, changes in the earth’s magnetic field and just coincidence influence on them.
- Myth about impact on greenhouse gas emission is most probably turning into reality, proven by coincidence of diagrams reflecting carbon dioxide concentration in atmosphere and temperatures at that moment.
- Myth about humanity death has no evidential basis and it is also counteracted by mythical theory about global fall in temperature.
In Armenia public interest in such problems is not high, first of all, as none of the country’s leaders, famous politicians, scholars, i.e. people possessing real mechanisms for power or public weight paid due attention to this topic.
We should make public interested in this issue and bring to the understanding that global warming is called global as it may touch upon the planet’s each inhabitant, including Armenia.
October 16, 2009