When Pope Francis visited the White House at the end of September, he stated that climate change was “a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation.” His comment and others like it have resurfaced conversation about climate change.
The effects of climate change include a rising global temperature, changes in rainfall, more frequent and severe heat waves, oceans warming and becoming more acidic, ice caps melting and sea levels rising.
Dr. Trixie Pittman, assistant professor of science and biology, conducted her graduate research in the arctic studying the hibernation patterns of arctic ground squirrels.
“One of the perhaps under-realized problems with climate change is not just a temperature change,” Pittman said. “There is more moisture and actual storms when you don’t expect them. We had a couple of spring snowstorms which buried everything in a couple feet of snow, and that really hurts the squirrels because they suddenly really need food and they can’t get any food. A lot of them didn’t make it through the spring.”
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, these phenomena are “consistent with the warming properties of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases that we are adding to the atmosphere.”
Dr. Dennis Matlock, chair and associate professor of biochemistry, said that the origin of these gasses can not be conclusively traced.
“To my understanding, the hard part is tracking the source of these chemicals,” Matlock said. “Did they come from the tailpipe of your car or from your breath? In all candidness, I can’t tell you which one. We need to determine if there is a causal relationship or a correlation between technology and climate change. I don’t know what we can do if we don’t understand the problem.”
Junior Seth Garcia said that we should be doing more to limit carbon dioxide emissions.
“There’s no point in denying climate change anymore,” Garcia said. “Regardless of whether it’s caused by humans or it’s a natural process, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be working to stop it. If we continue to destroy the planet for the sake of the economy, will we be okay with telling future generations that what we did was for the sake of our finances?”
According to National Public Radio (NPR), only five out of the 20 current presidential candidates have explicitly said they would try to combat climate change if elected. Another five of them even deny that climate change is real.
Pittman said that she does not understand why climate change has become a political question.
“People now have an idea based on politics instead of science,” Pittman said. “I see a lot of conservative Christians just closing the book on climate change without actually considering what may be going on. We humans were put on this planet to take care of it, and Christians should be able to recognize that this is a responsibility to God. If we are causing problems with the Earth, we need to be aware of it and we need to stop it.”
