There are two polarized to the issue of global warming and many people wonder how it became that. On one side there is people that argue there is global warming and it must be stopped and on the other are people that do not believe the science in global warming and say it is not occurring (http://www.nationalcenter.org/Z041707=global_warming_arguments.html). These two sides and the issue itself arose from political movements and the discovery by scientist that there would be a warming trend because of the continuous dumping of greenhouse gases into the air. The media helped put this issue where it is today because it stressed to take action against global warming or there could be horrible effects in the future such as severe drought, famine and loss of ecosystems. Some other media stressed of the uncertainty of the results obtained by the scientists on whether global warming was occurring and the uncertainty in the possible effects. In science all data has to be proven true through experiments because there is always doubt in scientific inquiry. This doubt can be applied to the global warming sides as some think that the hypothesis for warming is true while others think it is false (http://www.gfdl.gov/~gth/web_page/article/aree_page6.html).
What I think is needed to bring an end to polarized sides is an objective view of the subject that is being dealt with. If any subjectivity is put into a viewpoint, that point has some bias which allows for that view to become polarized as the person(s) with that viewpoint are less likely to hear all the fact that dispute their argument and more likely to only hear things that support it. All the fact on a certain subject need to be looked at as reasonable, and people should formulate stances on an issue through those facts. If this occurs, the viewpoints on contentious issues will become spread out over a spectrum allowing for many sides to an argument. Also, when people think they are right on a certain issue, they become locked in their stance and polarized on that issue. It is hard to not get into polarized sides because people want a simple yes or no answer to certain things but for polarized sides to end, people must use a sound reasoning method to judge an issue and choose their argument on that issue. That argument is not supposed to be a simple yes or no but it is to be nuanced and complex so there is always a difference in viewpoints not between a couple of people but many. This should allow for argument between two people that believe in most of the intricacies of an issue but disagree on a few points (http://www.thefigtree.org/oct07/wallis.html).
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2 comments:
i know you have to accept all opinions in an argument and take into consideration of people's perspectives but if there is scientific evidence proving that globing warming is occuring how can you deny that? I dont understand how people can deny the proof that science is giving us about the matter...if there is scientific evidence proving them wrong what do they have to back up their own argument?
Response to Kristy:
The problem with the scientific evidence is that there are many ways of interpreting the data. For example the temperature data from satellites has not changed much in the last decade but the temperature readings on the surface have gone up. Depending on which type of temperature reading the scientists use, different results could be gotten. Even though a majority of the people believe that global warming is occurring and something needs to be done quickly about it, there is no law or action taken by the government yet. Another problem with science is the uncertainty inherent within the field, always leading to debate.
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