The Big Picture

For the past week I have watched NBC’s nightly news looking for stories pertaining to global warming or climate change. After studying this subject throughout the past eight weeks I expected to find a global warming story with its emphasis placed on how it affects humans. I was wrong, the first big story that was covered during the week dealt with animals.
The wildebeest makes it home in Africa and makes a trek every year from Tanzania to Kenya in search of food and water. Along the way they have to deal with the fear of vultures, lions, and high current rivers. These problems in themselves are tough to overcome in their search for survival. You can now add another issue to there trek and this one may be the most important of them all and it deals with global warming and climate change. The wildebeest are having immense trouble with the rapid changes in climate on a yearly basis. One year all it did was rain and the next brings a tremendous drought. Wildebeest’s are thrown off by these climate changes because they are unable to adapt to them. So when it comes time to make their journey from Tanzania to Kenya because of these changes in climate they are becoming unaware of even which direction to begin their journey. This has caused more Wildebeest’s to die in recent years of starvation and lack of water when that number used to be attributed to lions and strong river currents. We seem to forget that we share this world with animals as well and our actions not only affect other humans but these creatures. I felt this story to be very informative and was interested with the fact that NBC chose a story about global warming I believe many people are unaware of. People are sick of hearing the same global warming and climate change stories nightly but when you throw this type of story into the news I guarantee it grabs a lot of people’s attention.
Another story pertaining to global warming covered this week dealt with Hurricane Noel. Although it is not a direct result of global warming hurricanes are one of the many perceived results of it. The New England, Cape Cod area was determined to be the most in danger with winds that were suppose to reach as high as 80 MPH. It began off the coast of North Carolina with winds between 30-50 MPH and beach erosion became a huge problem. The shore line was being pushed back very close to homes and other buildings causing concern. Tropical storms such as hurricanes are fueled by warm, moist air that rises and then has water vapor condense (Wikipedia "hurricanes"). Warm, moist air is what gives hurricanes a correlation to global warming. As the years have gone by and the surface temperature has risen hurricanes have become more prevalent and more violent. Although it cannot be proven that global warming is the direct cause of this I believe that it plays a major role.
As I watched the news this week and the stories covered pertaining to my subject I was impressed how NBC went about covering the issue. It is very easy to bore people with stories on global warming and climate change because they have heard about how humans are causing global warming and the effects it is having on them so many times. The fact that NBC brought in a story about animals is a way to gain viewers attention because it is something they may not have heard much about. Earlier in my blog I covered a story about how coral reefs are being destroyed by global warming, that story and the story NBC covered on wildebeests are more interesting to me then just hearing about how the core temperature of the earth is rising. I feel that people need a reason to change there lifestyles in order for them to act. When people see that not only are humans being affected by global warming but animals as well I believe it has a huge impact. Although NBC did not cover many stories pertaining to global warming this week they were still able to inform the public in different ways about this very crucial issue. Also, next week they are having a weekly special called “Goes to the Ends of the earth” in which they look from pole to pole at environmental issues in our world today. So next week it seems they will look into global warming and climate change on a deeper level.
As I have wrote this blog for the past 8 weeks about global warming it is clear to me that something needs to be done. Although this issue cannot be fully resolved overnight we need to start making changes to help slow it down. We have seen that global warming affects more then just humans; it affects animals and other wildlife as well. This problem may never be completely solved but steps need to be taken to control it before some of these issues it produces spiral out of control.