Chapter 7, Question 4: Global Warming

In both of their articles, authors Jeffrey Kluger and Richard Lindzen make strong claims regarding the heated issue of global warming. Both men choose to take different routes in stating their claim and supporting it, however.

In his article “Be Worried, Be Very Worried,” Jeffrey Kluger offers a very generic and common explanation of global warming. He writes in a very pessimistic tone from the get go, opening with the line “no once can exactly say what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth” (269). Kluger believes that the planet is in a freefall towards collapsing. He greatly expands on things like feedback loops and how they are the cause of the increases we are witnessing across the planet. He offers all these terrible examples of negative changes across the Earth to strike fear in the readers and alarm them, and then ends by more or less guilting them into feeling the need to change this problem. This article seems to drag on and offer a very negatively biased perspective of the problem.

In the article “Climate of Fear: Global-Warming Alarmists Intimidate Dissenting Scientists into Silence,” author Richard Lindzen offers a new perspective to the global warming issue. Instead of using the same statistics about increases in CO2, temperature, water levels, and storms, Lindzen chooses a more political route. While he does acknowledge the facts about the figures associated with global warming, he says, “what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm non establish man’s responsibility for the small amounts of warming that have occurred” (279). Lindzen uses multiple examples of politicians and world leaders trying to “discredit anti-alarmist scientists” and intimidate scientists into not speaking out about global warming. Lindzen mentions something called the “Iris Effect” which basically claims that CO2 in fact does not increase the global temperature. As a scientist, Lindzen offers new, alternative theories in his essay.

Personally I find Lindzen’s to be the more persuasive of the two articles. Kluger seems to drag on listing statistics and figures and describing climate and environmental changes from all corners of the Earth. Even though I am sure these figures are legitimate, he uses them in a very dry manner that I found to quickly lose the readers interest. He also uses a very cliché ending where after describing what a dire situation global warming is and how at this point there is not much else we can do, he says “we’re finally coming to appreciate the knife-blade margins within which life can thrive” (277). I felt like this essay seems to follow the mold of what every politician and scientist has been discussing and reflection on for the last few years now. Lindzen offers a fresh, alternate perspective, which I found to be intriguing and better supported. It is more direct and to the point, and makes the reader think and intrigues him or her into further looking into the topic. Also, Lindzen comes with a more credible background as a professor of atmospheric science at MIT. While both essays address global warming, they use different styles of argument, and one clearly does a more effective job.