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For my storyboard project I chose to do climate change. According to NASA, climate change is "a long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth’s local, regional and global climates." This change has become more prominent since the 20th century (1901-2000), and demonstrates a range of effects. The issue of climate change has mainly been caused by human activity. Fossil fuel burning causes a rise in heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in our atmosphere, further raising the Earth’s average temperature. This is important to society because we all can be impacted one way or another. Climate change can impact our society through repercussions with social, cultural, and natural resources. Important things like our food and water resources can be compromised or totally unusable. In particular this matter stood out to me the most compared to others because the Earth is where we live. Without Earth, we don’t have a place to live. I watched a documentary on fast fashion and they showed areas around the world that are already seeing impacts. It upset me to see how companies wouldn’t take accountability and that there was nothing being done to fix something they created.

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What contributions to the growing amount of emissions of greenhouse gasses does the fast fashion industry have? 

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What contributions to the growing amount of emissions of greenhouse gasses does the fast fashion industry have? 

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For my particular issue the two distinguishable arguments are, one, there are many contributions companies in the fast fashion industry add to the growing greenhouse gas emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere. The second, without fast fashion companies, it could hurt the economy, take away my personal choice to buy from them, and more. The first side of the argument focuses more on the negative contributions of the fashion industry. Things such as high levels of CO2 releasing into the atmosphere or the large amount of trees being cut down for clothing pieces. The other side of the argument focuses more on the positives of fast fashion for society and disregards the idea that fashion causes higher greenhouse gas emissions. Individuals on this side of the argument believe that the fast fashion industry is cheaper for consumers, it provides jobs for millions of people, and isn’t that bad of a polluter compared to other industries. Personally I fall on the first side of the argument (more negative impacts). Even though I can see where individuals find positive attributes of fast fashion, I think that there are just not aren’t enough to counter the huge amount of negative it's doing to us and our planet.

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the legislative policy that impacts climate change

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the legislative policy that impacts climate change

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The Clean Air Act is the primary federal air quality law that requires the Environmental Protection Agency to work with states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide and methane. This impacts my issue of climate change, because it specifically targets a large contributor to the warming of our Earth, the air. Additionally this law helps to control certain substances listed above that are released, which is positively demonstrating U.S. efforts.

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Side A on this issue believes that there are many contributions companies in the fast fashion industry add to the growing greenhouse gas emissions in the Earth’s atmosphere. This side of the argument focuses more on the negative contributions of the fashion industry. Things such as high levels of CO2 releasing into the atmosphere, the large amounts of trees being cut down for clothing pieces or the grand sum of fossil fuel-based plastics for packaging and hangers being used. This argument is reasonable to my topic of climate change because it is one made by many. The justification of this side demonstrates clear connections to the subject of the environment with the mention of phrases we correlate to it, such as CO2 being released or fossil fuels.

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Side B to this issue focuses more on the positives of fast fashion for society and disregards the idea that fashion causes higher greenhouse gas emissions. Individuals on this side of the argument believe that the fast fashion industry is cheaper for consumers, it provides jobs for millions of people, and isn’t that bad of a polluter compared to other industries. Although this side of the argument doesn’t fully touch on my big question, it still addresses important aspects such as job opportunities in the fashion industry along with other things.

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-George H.W. Bush (Republican) was the 41st president. Bush believed in improving the environment and took action against the issues that were happening. For example, in 1989 acid rain had become a problem. Bush had helped with the Clean Air act to help with the damage that that was not only happening in the U.S., but also in Canada. Another notable action he took was with the Energy Policy Act of 1992. This helped to promote energy efficiency and provide incentives for renewable energy.

-Barack Obama Obama (Democrat) ran and was president for 2 terms. His view on climate change is that there should be major action taken, and his main focus was on carbon emissions. He had the Clean Power Plan which sets to reduce carbon emissions by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030. More specifically he had an executive order (13514), which had instructed federal agencies to set or achieve various emissions reductions and energy and environmental benchmarks.

-Elizabeth Warren (Democrat) was a candidate for the Democratic party in the 2020 election but had pulled out after a clearer candidate winner was in place. Her stance is that the government needs to take more action, and when combating climate change it can create more jobs specifically in clean and renewable energy. She supported and was an original cosponsor of Senator Ed Markey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal resolution, which commits the United States to a ten-year mobilization to achieve domestic net-zero emissions by 2030.

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The Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was a landmark case regarding climate change. In the case, Massachusetts and many other states petitioned the EPA to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming from new motor vehicles. They denied the petition, claiming that the Clean Air Act does not authorize the Agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The Supreme Court ended up ruling 5-4 in favor of Massachusetts. This case found that carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act and can be regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This is so important for the issue of climate change because it acknowledges the issue. Also, it sets down specifically what should be regulated as it impacts the environment.

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1.) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jul/25/facebook-video-spreads-climate-denial-misinformation-to-5-million-users
2.)

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Marc Morano is the real-world fossil fuel industry version of Nick Naylor. His career began working for Rush Limbaugh, followed by a job at Cybercast News Service where he launched the 'Swift Boat' attacks on 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. In 2006, Morano became the director of communications for Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who is perhaps best known for throwing a snowball on the Senate floor and calling human-caused global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

Thus it's unsurprising that in 2009, Morano began directing fossil fuel-funded think tanks designed to cast doubt on the reality of and dangers associated with human-caused global warming. As he admitted in Merchants of Doubt, Morano frequently embodies the strategy of climate denial known as 'fake experts':

Most recently, Morano created a short video that centers on three common climate myths and has garnered over 5m views on Facebook.

Morano's climate fake news

Morano begins his video by denying the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming. Consensus denial is one of the most popular climate myths, and was the subject of the most widely-shared climate story of 2016.

Morano's strategy is to critique two of the studies that found a 97% expert consensus. One, published in 2009 by Peter Doran and Maggie Zimmerman surveyed 3,146 Earth scientists, but fewer than 80 of the participants were actively publishing climate science research (and hence experts on the subject). Basically, the critique is that the study sample size was too small to make a conclusive determination about the level of expert consensus.

That's a valid point, except this was just one among many such climate consensus studies. In fact, the authors of seven separate consensus studies using a variety of approaches (some with very large sample sizes) teamed up in 2016 to publish a paper concluding that the expert consensus on human-caused global warming is between 90 and 100%. So, this critique is invalid when considering all the available consensus research.

The results of seven studies evaluating the expert scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. Illustration: John Cook, SkepticalScience.com.

Morano also critiques the consensus study that my colleagues and I published in 2013. He does so simply by quoting economist Richard Tol saying our 97% figure "was pulled from thin air." Tol argued that the methodology in our study was flawed, but when we applied his critiques in a follow-up paper published in 2014, we found that the consensus was still 97 ± 1%.

Moreover, Tol himself has said, "The consensus is of course in the high nineties" and "There is no doubt in my mind that the literature on climate change overwhelmingly supports the hypothesis that climate change is caused by humans. I have very little reason to doubt that the consensus is indeed correct."

In short, Morano's only evidence to dispute the expert consensus on human-caused global warming is to quote an economist who agrees the consensus is 90-100%, and that the experts are correct that humans are responsible for global warming.

Next in the video, Morano claims that we're not actually in the midst of the hottest period on record, and that 'hottest year' claims are "merely political statements" because for example, he claims, scientists can't say with 100% certainty that 2016 was hotter than 2015 due to the margin of uncertainty in the data. This claim is similar to one made on Fox News that earned a 'Pants on Fire' rating from Politifact based on consultation with climate scientists. 2014 through 2017 are indeed the four hottest years on record, outside the range of uncertainty.

Morano concludes the video by claiming "the most outrageous myth of all is that carbon dioxide is somehow the control knob of the climate." Ironically, Nasa climate scientists published a paper in 2010 titled, "Atmospheric CO ₂: Principal Control Knob Governing Earth's Temperature." Morano argues that the experts are wrong because there are hundreds of factors influencing Earth's climate, and that carbon dioxide "is one of these factors that gets essentially drowned out, and you can't distinguish its effect from natural variability."

That claim is entirely false, as elegantly illustrated in this graphic created by Bloomberg. Human-caused global warming now far outside the range of natural variability. In fact, we're now warming global temperatures more than 20 times faster than Earth's fastest natural climate changes. And of course, climate scientists have observed human fingerprints all over climate change, most recently in the atmosphere. It would be absurd to take Marc Morano's word over the evidence published in peer-reviewed studies by climate scientists at Nasa and other scientific institutions around the world.

Facebook is still spreading fake news

Lately, Facebook has struggled mightily in trying to figure out how to combat the epidemic of fake news propagated via its platform. Mark Zuckerberg made headlines last week when he defended fake news from Holocaust deniers, saying he didn't "think that they're intentionally getting it wrong."

It's virtually impossible to discern an individual's intent, but if that person is spreading misinformation, intent is irrelevant. If Facebook wants to stop misinforming millions of its users, it needs to tackle the problem of fake news regardless of intent. So far, Facebook seems more concerned about the appearance of 'bias' than about making sure the content shared on its site is factually correct.

Fortunately, the exposure to Morano's misinformation video is not as bad as it seems at first blush. Although Facebook implies the video has been viewed over 5m times, a "view" is counted after just three seconds, and videos on the site play automatically.

Nevertheless, the video has been shared over 75,000 times, so it has certainly reached a wide audience. Facebook needs to come to terms with the fact that there is an objective reality. Even if Marc Morano sincerely believes humans aren't causing global warming, that belief is false, and by continuing to host his myth-filled video, Facebook is misinforming tens of thousands, perhaps even millions of its users.

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Facebook video spreads climate denial misinformation to 5 million users | Dana Nuccitelli

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Marc Morano is the real-world fossil fuel industry version of Nick Naylor. His career began working for Rush Limbaugh, followed by a job at Cybercast News Service where he launched the 'Swift Boat' attacks on 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.