Mark Braboy
Blue & White Flash / Staff Writer
This year, Global Warming and Climate Change have become hot button issues for Americans and the government as it continues to affect the world around us.
The National Climatic Data Center has recently reported that 2012 has been the hottest year on record, setting over 34,000 new highs, 6,664 new lows, and the national average temperature increasing by one degree. The Mississippi Gulf has been affected as The Union of Concerned Scientists reports that the sea level along the Gulf has been rising.
According to the National Science foundation, Global Warming occurs when the average temperature of the earth’s atmosphere rises and is caused by excessive greenhouse gases which accelerates the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse gases are gases that come from the burning of wood, gasoline, oil, and coal. This has been widely confused with another phenomenon known as Climate Change, which is the natural change in temperature overtime.
Loren White, associate professor of meteorology at Jackson State University believes that Global Warming is a bad term for the increase in temperature that is occurring.
“There’s climate change, and it’s always been climate change. The term Global Warming comes from averaging everything together and giving one number for the entire earth, which doesn’t reflect all the things that are going on in different regions and in our case that’s a bigger effect than the global effect.,” said White.
He added: “That doesn’t mean that the global average may be increasing and yet, some areas may not participate in that as much as other areas. The part that’s most well defined right now it’s defiantly getting a lot warmer, especially in the arctic compared to other parts in the world.”
Many JSU students believe that global warming is having a great affect on Mississippi right now.
Demetrius Atkins, a senior biology major from Jackson, Miss. said, “When Summer hits, it’s going to be hotter. I know Mississippi weather and it fluctuates. It’s not as cold, during the winter it’s warmer. I think Global Warming has a lot to do with it.”
Brandon Rankin, a senior systems science major from Jackson, Miss. said, “I think that global warming is deeper than people realize. Considering the economy, human activities, traveling, and pollution, the environment around you will also change due to the energy we have placed in it. In exchange, it’s giving you negative energy therefore the Global Warming phenomenon is solely up to us to make that positive change for the environment and everything around us.”
Whether one believes in Global Warming or Climate Change, it is understood that the climate across the nation has gotten much warmer.
In 2012, there have been many cases of wildfires, unusually warm seasons, a major drought, and major storms such as Hurricane Issac, which hit the Gulf Coast and Super storm Sandy that hit across the East Coast.
White does not believe Global Warming is the cause of natural disasters.
“That’s the concern, but it’s a lot easier to try to figure out what the average conditions will be in the future than it is to try to figure out what the few big storms could be.” He added: “The biggest fact is that it’s not so much the change in the climate but the change of the culture and where people are building things. There’s been more and more [people] in the last few decades moving towards coastal areas and less developed countries. Even if the climate doesn’t change, there will be more damage just because there are more things to damage and more people to damage.”
White believes that their are other important issues affecting Global Warming.
“The standard answer would be fewer emissions of greenhouse gasses and less energy use. But switching from gas to electricity doesn’t necessarily change that because you would have to have things that generate electricity. The things that gets lost in all that is there are a lot of other environment issues that may be just as important, if not more as greenhouse gasses that we have more control over such as Deforestation.”
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