Climate Change and El Salvador

In an article published by Al Jazeera, it discusses El Salvador’s stance on Climate Change and Climate Change’s effects that the world is currently facing. Last year on July 20^th, the President of El Salvador put Climate Change as the number one issue for the region, Central America. El Salvador’s position is due to the fact scientists have done studies to show anthropogenic  forces on the climate is impacting the planet more than ever and predict it to worsen. 2010 was tied for the hottest year ever and was the wettest year ever.

Huge floods across the world and record-breaking heat wave, and severe die-offs of coral reefs show the acceleration of the global trends in Climate Change. Nine out of the 10 warmest years ever recorded have occurred since 2001 due to what scientists say is the 40 percent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the Industrial Revolution. El Salvador, like every other country in the region, has been recently plagued by heavy rain falls resulting in flooding.

Measurements taken from over 6,000 weather stations around the word show us that anthropogenic heating of the planet has already made rainfall more intense across the globe. Warmer air contains more moisture which attributes to more precipitation. El Salvador believes climate change is already a reality and is not something to expect but something to cope with. They have recently aligned themselves with Group 77 which is an intergovernmental panel of more than 130 countries. This group believes, “Climate Change poses serious risks and challenges to particularly developing countries and, therefore, demands urgent global action and response.”

The article goes on into detail about more of the effects of Climate Change and the ignorance of some of the counter-scientists. They mistaken the long-term patterns of climate change with the short-term variations of weather, and ignore the region variation in climate change impacts. El Salvadorian officials then go on to say if carbon emissions are not reduced in developed countries, like the United States then migration from country to country is a concern.

This directly links to the Climate Change aspect that we have not yet discussed in class but it is spelled out in the article that this is an issue and it much be taken into consideration. Climate Change is happening around us and it has a significant effect on developing countries more so than developed countries. Even though the developed countries are fueling this change.

I agree with this article entirely. I took a Global Climate Change class last semester and everything that we discussed in class was also covered in the article. Climate Change is occurring right not. It is not so much can we expect it? It is what should we be doing about it? It is in the present, not the future. If the developed world does not level out its carbon emissions than the world’s ice caps will melt by 2050. The world’s entire climate will be different by 2050 if the emissions are not cut. That is within my lifetime and I don’t want to see that happen. I think that a lot has to be done within the policies of our government and it can only start in grass root organizations.

I noticed in the article they did not provide much climate skepticism. There are plenty of theories that support the climate is not changing due to anthropogenic forces. It was entirely sided with the fact humans are causing this warming and change in the climate. If there were more sides to the story, I think the article could have been more legitimate.