Global Warming
I Introduction
My awareness of the phenomenon called either "global warming" or "climate change" started immediately before the Kyoto Summit in December 1997. I read articles in the media which said that many scientists believe that the threat of global arming was alarming and that our political leaders would have to do something in order to prevent the climate from getting hotter and hotter. Since this conference climate change has fascinated me.
This research paper is divided into two main parts: the first one (chapters II and III) deals with the science of global warming. I decided to start with this scientific part because it is no good reading about policies, agreements, subsidies, etc. without knowing at least the basic principles of the science. As I wrote this paper not for a climatology course but for an Area Studies course and thus the main focus is not on science but on policies, I tried to explain the science in a way everybody should be able to understand.
In the second part (chapters IV and V) I summed up what the Clinton Administration has so far done to mitigate the effects of global warming. In each chapter I tried to give the official statements first, mainly EPA and White House documents, and then to contrast these statements with the views of non-government experts and organisations.
The sources cited in this research paper are mainly taken from the internet. I decided to use these sources instead of books because global warming is a relatively recent topic. It would not have been possible, for instance, to find information about the COP-5 meeting in Bonn in books, as this meeting took place only three months before I began writing the chapter.
During my preparation for this paper, I had a look at dozens of web sites concerning global warming. I am well aware that there are two groups of "experts": one says that the human influence on global warming is hardly...
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