
There is no question the Earth is going through a warming phase, and a lot of people are pointing fingers at who or what is behind it. On one hand, there are the drastic climate change advocates, who will tell anyone that will listen that the Earth is dying and it is all due to the conservative, fossil fuel loving Republican Party. Contrary to this argument, these conservatives view climate change as an over-exaggerated and under-proved theory that scientists are fighting tooth and nail to salvage. While this is all going on over the past three decades, public popular opinion on climate change has swayed from a strong majority believing in climate change due to manmade exhausts to slightly less than fifty percent of people surveyed, according to a study detailed by Charles Schmidt (Schmidt, 1). Conservatives have made a habit of calling out scientists for their lack of evidence or consistency, but they have also received a lot of backlash. Although Republicans do have a long history of shoving environmental concerns aside, climate change scientists have done little to justify their drastic claims. Scientists have just as much, if not more to gain when it comes to convincing the public that their side of the climate-change debate is the right one. As politics become more involved in the climate change argument, Republicans are proving a great deal more successful in convincing the public that their stance is the accurate one. 

Historically speaking, political and environmental concerns did not mix until the late 1900's, but since then they have grown to greatly influence one another. The Republican Party first earned the title of "anti-environmentalist" during the Reagan Presidency, when these issues were considered unimportant and economically straining to the conservatives. In an article written for Environment Magazine, Dunlap explains, "Nonetheless, partisan differences in support for environmental protection among the general public remained relatively modest until recently. The gap began to widen in the late 1990s, likely reflecting voters' tendency to follow cues from party leaders and political pundits. Nowhere is the partisan gap on environmental issues more apparent than on climate change," (Dunlap, 1). Between the heated debates and passionate beliefs on either side of the political spectrum, it makes sense that the public would begin to pick and sides. Over time, conservatives began more fervently arguing the science behind climate change, and these climate experts retaliated fiercely. Not before long, both sides were accusing the other of being corrupt, ignorant, or both. The more fervent the politicians and scientists were, the more involved American citizens felt they needed to be.

Why should anyone believe that global warming is not what scientists originally predicted it to be? In grade school a student is taught that the most important rule when formulating a scientific theory is to take into account all evidence, especially any that can disprove your theory. This fact doubles as a scientist's worst nightmare, which explains why such a large majority of them ignore these contradictions- climate change scientists included. Just imagine spending the better years of your life working on one idea, proving it right, running tests and experiments, all to have it disproved one day when one small element strays off course. It would be all too easy to disregard this one little thing that brings your life's work crashing to the ground. Natural instinct is to shove it aside and make excuses for why these pieces of contradicting evidence do not matter and do not count, which is often what climate-change opponents find to be true of their counterparts. Yet, as a population we are supposed to just trust these scientists, and believe that even though they have the most to lose, at the end of the day they will figure it all out. According to Naomi Oreskes, that is exactly what we are supposed to do. In the Ted Talk titled "Why We Should Trust Scientists", Naomi Orsekes sets out to convince her audience that they should "just trust" that scientists will know what they are doing. After twenty minutes, Naomi proved unsuccessful in convincing her audience to blindly believe, but instead wasted her efforts and gained the opposite of her intended result. She refers to the philosophical concept titled "Pascal's Wager" for backup, explaining that we should believe in scientists because if they are wrong, then there is no harm done. Yet, on the off chance that they are right, then we will all be better off for trusting them. In some instances, yes, this way of thinking can be beneficial, but climate change science is not one of those instances. There is a lot to lose for those who blindly believe that climate change is caused by humans, such as the opportunity to see other options for this warming period, or unnecessary worrying added to a person's already stressful life. I have personally experienced times where false claims by scientists caused extreme stress on my life. Back in 2011, when I was barely into my teens I recall the never ending hype about how the world was supposed to end in 2012. This kept my young self up at nights, worrying and wondering what would happen to my family and the Earth, but when the time came, nothing happened. Since then, I have learned not to buy into the hype, or blindly believe information that other people try to feed me. After all, it is a scary thought what people could do if they knew that nobody could understand their work enough to question it. 

Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz is one of many to have publicly questioned global warming. He calls out the tendencies scientists have to focus on the facts that support their claims, and ignores the ones that do not. In an interview for the Washington Post, he takes an opposing stand on the possibilities of global warming, and calls out the "so-called" experts on the subject. Cruz states, "My view actually is simple. Debates on this should follow science and should follow data. And many of the alarmists on global warming, they've got a problem because the science doesn't back them up," (Mooney, 1). He begins this interview taking a hard and sure stand. He goes on the offensive informing the public that he definitely disagrees with a lot of the news surrounding this issue. "And in particular," he goes on to explain, "satellite data demonstrated for the last 17 years, there's been zero warming. None whatsoever. It's why  --  you remember how it used to be called 'global warming' and then magically the theory changed to 'climate change'? The reason is it wasn't warming, but the computer models still say it is, except the satellites show it's not," (1). Ted Cruz is no climate change expert, so why should anyone care about his opinion on it? He points out some pretty interesting points, for starters, the fact that the satellite data does not back up the claims being made. Secondly, the fact that the term global warming has been altered to the term "climate change"- a much more vague and all encompassing term. Skeptical minds can try and think that he is just taking the stance against climate change for the Republican Party nomination, but at the end of the day his points do make sense. If scientists could prove that the Earth was warming as surely as they claim it is, then there would really be no reason to adjust the terms they originally set in place to define it.  

Jeb Bush, another Republican presidential candidate, also spoke out against the possibility that humans are having a dangerous impact on global climate change. As to be expected, journalists and Democrats were quick to criticize his opinion on this topic. One example is Jonathan Chait, who wrote an article for New York Magazine about how Jeb Bush is an outlier. He describes the candidate, "In any other democracy in the world, a Jeb Bush would be an isolated loon, operating outside the major parties, perhaps carrying on at conferences with fellow cranks, but having no prospects of seeing his vision carried out in government," (Nuccitelli, 1). However, Chait assumes that the world outside of the United States views climate change the same way as he does, which is totally inaccurate. The fact is that  in the UK, climate change has lost a great deal of support as well (Nuccitelli, 1) which disproves his claim that climate change deniers in the United States are extremists compared to those around the world. So when Chait writes, "Of all the major conservative parties in the democratic world, the Republican Party stands alone in its denial of the legitimacy of climate science," (Nuccitelli, 1) he does not take into account the huge recorded percentage drops in public belief concerning climate change in Great Britain (Nucittelli, 1). This automatically proves that he was too hasty in making his claims, and didn't consider the people in other countries that feel the same way about climate change that the Republican Party in America does. 

As it turns out, public opinion on global warming has decreased over the past decade. Less and less people are as gullible to blindly believe the scientists and the information they feed the public. The Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies looked into this decline, "A 2010 poll by the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies found that 57% of respondents answered yes to 'Do you think that global warming is happening?' compared with 71% in 2008. 17 similar results were obtained in Great Britain by Nicholas Pidgeon, a professor at Cardiff University," (Schmidt, 1). Within only two years there was a fourteen-point percentage drop, which is a huge downfall for global warming scientists. It also proves that the skepticism regarding climate change is not isolated to the United States, but instead spreads to Great Britain. One step further than disbelief in global warming, a British poll shows that there has also been a decrease in the percentage of people who agree that climate change is happening, "Pidgeon found the number of British respondents who answered yes to the question 'As far as you know, do you personally think the world's climate is chaning, or not?' dropped from 91% in 2005 to 78% in 2010," (Schmidt, 1).Only  Here five years ago, nearly one hundred percent of people in the UK believed the Earth's climate was changing. Five years later it went down thirteen percentage points, which again, is a huge change in public opinion.

Climate change advocates love to point a finger at the Republican Party, and accuse them of benefitting too much from denying global warming is induced by humans. Meanwhile, climate change scientists have the world to gain from proving their theory is correct. These men and women have devoted their lives to this topic, spending tens of years working on proving it right. This means hundreds of millions of dollars in lab work, technology and staff, which would all be wasted if their ideas turned out to be useless and irrelevant. They say that Republicans benefit from donations from large oil companies that fund their campaigns, but these scientists owe a lot to the people funding their research. At the end of the day, Democrats, climate change advocates, and scientists, do not have a leg to stand on when it comes to faulting a large party for who funds them. If their technology could properly correlate with all of their theories, and scientists could make some definitive sense of what is going on with Earth's climate, then they would have something to back them up. Until then, these scientists seem to be no more than a bunch of confused men and women, who cannot agree with one another, or prove that any of their doomsday global warming claims are true. 

