Global Warming Since its first mention at the UN General Assembly, global warming has come to be regarded the greatest human development challenge for the 21st century (McInerney-Lankford, Darrow, Rajamani and Banque, 2011)
However, these levels have remained at this level since the 1970's. This effectively means that developing countries are now major emitters of the greenhouse gases (accounting for 65% of emissions) (Peach, 2005)
And while there is no known safe repository for all the waste, more than 2,000 metric tons of radioactive waste materials are produced each year by the reactors in the U.S. (Biello, 2009)
In the process of repairing flaws in the reactor that work "only created new cracks," and subsequent to those events, Duke Energy announced it was retiring Crystal River. "The decommissioning process is a well-defined, structured lengthy process," said Duke Energy spokesperson Heather Danenhower (Cascio, 2014)
"Natural gas is too cheap, demand is too flat, and the upfront costs [of building a new nuclear plant] are way too high" (Phillips, 12). Cases in point vis-a-vis the cost of new nuclear plants, post-Fukushima An article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists points out that in February, 2012, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a license to build two new reactors, "for the first time in more than 30 years" (Cooper, 2012)
They want top-down control, and carbon dioxide regulations will give this to them" (McAuliff, 2013). But notwithstanding the public personalities that deny climate change -- and in the process cast doubts in the minds of citizens -- the United Nations' sponsored group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has issued its latest report asserting that the problem "…is likely to grow substantially worse unless greenhouse emissions are brought under control" (Gillis, 2014)
Meanwhile, the Japanese government has allowed some residents (360 of the 80,000 that were originally evacuated after the meltdown) to return to their homes in a portion of the Miyakoji district of Tamura, about a dozen miles inland from the Fukushima plant. According to the Harvard Health Blog, measurements of radiation levels a week after the accident in Miyakoji were "…as high as 80 to 170 microsieverts per hour" (Kiger, 2014)
The report went on to explain that climate change will likely slow down economic growth, make poverty reduction "more difficult," and that climate change is not just an event that may happen in the future. Climate change scientist Michael Mann's article in the Scientific American (April, 2014) posits that "…if the world keeps burning fossil fuels at the current rate, it will cross a threshold into environmental ruin by 2036" (Mann, 2014)
It is also an expensive one for ratepayers, wrote journalist Ivan Penn with the Tampa Bay Times. Customers of Duke Energy will be asked to pay $100 million to "stabilize the reactor's broken concrete containment building" (that workers are blamed for causing) but Duke Energy will "pocket roughly 7%" of that $100 million (Penn, 2014)
In Kentucky and other Appalachian states like West Virginia, "mountaintop removal" is a strategy that literally scrapes away mountaintops to reach valuable coal deposits. "Over 500 mountaintops have already been destroyed and more than one million acres of forest have been clear-cut" in order to reach coal deposits in the cheapest way possible (Perks, 2011)
S. Congress authorized "…$18 billion in federal loan guarantees" for the building of new nuclear plants (Phillips, 2013)
S. after World War II were designed to produce plutonium -- for the "sole purpose of making weapons" (Silverstein, 2013)
(Wilkinson, 2006) As pointed out before, terrorism in the UK has been treated, from the point-of-view of privacy, with over-reaction and with low proportionality, both in preventing and reacting to terrorist attacks. In the 2011 Review of Counter-Terrorism and Security Powers, the Secretary for the Home Department states that "in some areas our counter-terrorism and security powers are neither proportionate nor necessary" (HM Government, Review of Counter-Terrorism and security powers, 2011)
Democracy: The Liberal State Response" touches on sensitive issues for the UK society like over-reaction to terrorism, using too much military and less intelligence to prevent terrorism and especially the unpopular measures of surveillance, human rights abuses or control over citizens personal life -- all in the name of preventing terrorist attacks. (Wilkinson, 2006) As pointed out before, terrorism in the UK has been treated, from the point-of-view of privacy, with over-reaction and with low proportionality, both in preventing and reacting to terrorist attacks
Some extreme weather events like heat waves, droughts and heavy downpour, and acidification are largely due to change in global temperatures. Poor crop yields and loss of habitat have contributed to food insecurity (Battisti 241)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has projected that there is a likelihood that the global surface temperature will rise to 6.40C in the 21st Century (Hansen 174)
Poor crop yields and loss of habitat have contributed to food insecurity (Battisti 241). If global warming continues without mitigation, there is a likelihood that by 2030, there could be a 30% decline in maize production in Southern Africa (Lobell, Tebaldi, Mastrandrea and Naylor 608)
There are other climate changes that are not due to human influence they include long ocean cycles that have also been attributed to global warming. From an inductive point-of-view the writer portrays all this factors to be the causes of global warming are clearly explained in the background (Crossman, 2011)
He then goes further to elaborate the measures taken to deal with the issue by developed countries and tries to explain why it is a challenge to deal with global warming in developing countries as compared to their counterparts in developed countries. All these ideas are properly put forward and they are developed in a logical way such that any person reading the article will be convinced on the issue of global warming (Kemerling, 2011)
Climate change can have terrible consequences on the lives of millions and hurricane Sandy is a self-explanatory case. "Global warming heated the water of the Gulf and Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in greatly increased energy and water vapor in the air above the water" (Lakoff)