Global Warming
I really never thought I’d be investigating global warming, but I think this is something real and saving the planet should be something that we should all be worried about. Global warming is an increase in the overall temperature of the earths atmosphere. It is generally due to greenhouse effect that is caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and many other pollutants. Global warming is something that never really caught my attention because it’s never been such a big problem like it is now. I would hear people talking about it every now and then but it really wasn't something I was worried about until now. I would like people to take this situation more serious because it actually is something dangerous and it can really affect our environment.
There are many sides to why people argue that global warming is going on, but here are some causes of global warming. Climate change, which generally means a long term change in global temperatures it is known to be one of the main causes. Human activities is another cause, specially causing the earth to get hotter by burning fossil fuels. Earth temperature depends on the balance between energy leaving and entering the planet system. Another reason why global warming is going on is because of the “greenhouse effect”. Greenhouse effect is the warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from earth towards space. There are certain gases in the atmosphere that block heat from escaping. Gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect include: water vapor. It is one of the most abundant greenhouse gases. Water vapor increases as the Earth’s atmosphere warms up. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a minor but really important component of the atmosphere; this is the most important long lived forcing of climate change. Methane which is a gas produced by both natural sources and human activity. Nitrous oxide a powerful greenhouse gas that is used in organic fertilizers, fossil fuel combustion, nitric acid production, and biomass burning. (1)
Some consequences that can occur due to global warming are kind of difficult to figure out but at the same time they’re pretty obvious. Earth will become warmer. In some regions they may welcome the warm weather and in others it may not be such a good thing. Warmer conditions will lead to more evaporation and precipitation. This will cause for some regions to become wetter and others dryer. Sea level will also increase because of the warmer temperatures. It will cause glaciers to melt world wide, especially on the Earth’s poles.
Dysfunction of many animals natural habitat is a huge consequence. The number of penguins has had a tremendous decrease in Antarctica, where the numbers went from 32,000 breeding pairs to 11,000 in just 30 years.(2) Butterflies, foxes and alpine plants moved farther to cooler area. The pika is also endangered of losing its habitat. It’s moving further up in the mountains because of the warm weathers trying to run away from the climate change and pretty soon there will be no more mountain for it to go up on.(3) These are just some of the things that have been going on just these past few years due to global warming, there are way more things that can come along further in time.
Effects that can happen later on if global warming continues are scary and very dangerous. Some of these things are that sea level can be expected to rise from 7 and 23 inches. If the poles continue to melt this can add up to 8 more inches to the sea level rise. Hurricanes and storms will become stronger. It will be more common for floods and droughts to happen. There will be less fresh water, if the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru continues to melt at its current rate, there it will be gone by 2100. This will leave a lot of people (thousands) who rely on fresh clean water without no source. Diseases will spread more, like malaria which is spread by mosquitos. The ecosystem can totally change. Species will try to move further north to try and survive and there are some that won’t be able to move and could become extinct. As the ice continues on disappearing on the sea, the polar bears will as well.
The beginning of the greenhouse effect goes back a long way. In 1842 French physicist Joseph Fourier was one of the first to describe a “greenhouse effect”. In 1861, Irish physicist John Tyndall researched on radiant heat and absorption of radiation by gases and vapor including CO2 and H20. He proved that carbon dioxide can absorb the infrared spectrum, and can cause the change in temperature. In 1869, Swedish chemist Savante Arrhenius proposed the idea of man-made greenhouse effect. I think that this was very smart of him to do because as soon as he brought up the idea of greenhouse effect everyone will start looking deeper into this. He was trying to find out why the earth experienced ice ages and thought that if they increase the burning of coal, it would lead to increased CO2 in the atmosphere and heat up the earth. In 1938, a British engineer Guy Stewart Callendar did temperature statistics and realized that the temperature had increased tremendously over the previous century. He also discovered that the CO2 levels had increased within 10 percent and came to the conclusion that CO2 was most likely the reason. In 1958, Charles Keeling began to monitor CO2 levels and after only two years of measurement in Antarctica an increase level was visible. The graph became known as the “Keeling Curve” and it became a big global warming debate. In 1970, the first “Earth Day” took place on April 22nd. In 1979, the first World Climate Conference was held. In 1987, was officially the hottest year on record and three years later is confirmed as the hottest decade since the record began. In 1995, the hottest year on record. I think when this happened and the hottest year on record people started to dig deeper and started to notice that it was all human caused. Four years later the 1990’s were confirmed as the hottest decades in 1000 years. In 1997, industrialized countries agreed to cut their emission of six key greenhouse gases by an average of 5.2 percent . In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that the evidence of global warming over the previous 50 years by human activity is stronger than ever. In 2003, Europe experienced the hottest summer on record causing a widespread drought. In 2008, 160 square miles of the Wilkins Ice Shelf breaks away from the Antarctic coast. Scientist are worried that climate change is happening faster than it was expected.(3) When this happened that's when scientist started to notice that global warming was going on and that there would be things we can do in order to make it slow down.
Since it’s known that global warming is going to keep going on over the years, there are practical solutions that can be done to dramatically reduce our carbon emission. In other words, slow the pace of global warming. One of the things we can do to slow down the pace of global warming is to reduce emission. In order to address global warming, we have to reduce the amount of heat- trapping we are putting into the atmosphere. We have to transfer our energy system to something that doesn’t depend as much on coal and fossil fuels.We can do this by walking instead of taking a car. This will make a tremendous change because there won’t be that much fossil fuels going into the atmosphere. We can also reduce tropical deforestation, and these things will help reduce emission dramatically. Boosting energy efficiency, power, heat, and coolers in our homes has been known to be a large contributor to global warming. Greening transportation, which generally means improving efficiency in modes of transportation. Revving up renewables, use renewable energy sources like solar, wind, geothermal and bioenergy. These are available all around the world. Phasing out fossil fuel electricity, reducing use of fossil fuels especially carbon and coal is something extreme that can reduce climate change. Not building power plants, and capturing and storing carbon emission from power plants. Using solar panels instead of fossil fuel energy in our home would be a huge contributor to lowering climate changes. Managing forest and agriculture is also something we can use. Tropical deforestation and emissions from agriculture represent about 30 percent of the worlds heat-trapping emissions. We can help global warming by reducing emission from deforestation and by making our food production more sustainable. These are just some of the few things that we can do in order to save our planet. If we choose to walk instead of driving our cars or ride bikes, that can impact the planet tremendously. It's the little things we can do that would help our planet out a lot. (4)
There is a lot of questioning to whether it's human activity that’s the substantial cause of global warming. Here are some con arguments that make this statement true. 75 percent of the 20th century increase in the atmospheric greenhouse gas CO2 is caused by human actions like burning fossil fuels. Human produced CO2 is warming the earth, not natural CO2 released from the ocean and other “carbon sinks”. Carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion has a specific isotopic ratio which is 48, that is different from CO2 released from natural “carbon sinks”. Measurements from the 20th century of isotope ratios in the atmosphere confirm the rise is caused from human activity and not a natural process. Human produced greenhouse gases are going to continue to accumulate in the atmosphere causing climate change because the earth’s forests, oceans, and other “carbon sinks” can not absorb them properly. As long as we keep doing the same exact things like we are today the temperatures will continue to rise and rise. I honestly think this is all in our power if we’re determined to decreases the temperatures.
Since 2009 carbon sinks were only absorbing 50 percent of human produced CO2, the other half is going into the atmosphere. These human greenhouse gases are not changing the sun’s radiation, but are causing the climate to change. There are measurements in the upper atmosphere from 1979- 2009 that shows the suns energy has gone up and down and down in cycles, but there is no increase in the suns radiation. All the warming is occurring in the troposphere which is the lower atmosphere, and while that happens the stratosphere (upper atmosphere) is cooling. If the sun was the one controlling the temperature there would be warming in the stratosphere as well, not cooling. Although the amount of human-produced greenhouse gases may seem small to some people, the warming potential increased by water vapor. This allows them to cause warming and climate change. As the greenhouse gases heat the planet, increased humidity results. Since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, it can double the warming effect of greenhouse gases like CO2. Since human greenhouse gases are heating the planet, climate models show that this warming is causing an increase in of tropical cyclones. In 1975-1989 had 171 category 4 and 5 hurricanes while 1990-2004 had 269 of them, this shows that humans actually induced climate change. The human produced CO2 is causing the climate of the oceans around the world to change. As the excess CO2 is absorbed, the oceanic acidity level increases. The oceans have absorbed 48% of the total CO2 that is released by human activity and the acidity levels are 25-30% higher than prior to human fossil fuel use. An 8” rise in the ocean level happened from 1961-2003 because of human induced global warming. Sea levels rose an average of 0.07 inches per year from 1961 through 2003. The sea level rise is a result of warming waters and melting ice glaciers, ice caps, and polar ice sheets. This is an important confirmation of climate change models. I think this is important because this basically shows that all of this is human produced.
Global warming is also caused by human produced greenhouse gases is changing the earth’s hydrologic climate. Rainfall is increasing in many areas due to increased evaporation stemming from global warming. Higher altitude areas are also causing to receive rain rather than snow. According to researchers, 60% of the changes in the river flow, winter air temperature, and snow in the western US where human induced (1950-1999). Greenhouse gases produced by humans is changing the rate of glacial melt and altering the climate in many regions. Since 1980, glaciers worldwide have lost about 40 feet in average thickness. Global warming is also caused by human produced greenhouse gases and black carbon produced from burning fossil fuels and deforestation, it is reducing the size of the arctic ice cap. The small ice cap reflects less of the suns energy away from each other. The energy is absorbed so it’s causing the air and water temperature to rise. It’s predicted that the Arctic sea ice will continue to melt through the 21st century due t o global climate. There is many organizations that believe that human activity is a substantial cause of global and climate change. These organizations include: the World Meteorological Organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the InterAcademy Council, and a few other ones. Nearly all climate change studies show that humans are the main cause of global warming. There are studies that contradict the claim, but they are often funded by petroleum companies which explains alot. From 2004-2005, ExxonMobil gave $2.2 million in grants for climate change researcher to deny that humans caused climate change. (5)
My personal thoughts to global warming, are that scientific knowledge is growing, the debate is moving away from whether humans are causing it or not. I personally think that all of this is human produced & there's a lot we can to to decrease the rising temperatures. Scientists have concluded that the burning coal, oil, and gas is what is what's causing the warming of the earth. The atmospheric greenhouse effect works on naturally keeping our planet warm enough to be livable. As the atmosphere "thickens" with more greenhouse gasses, more heat is held in. A single gallon of gasoline, when burned puts 19 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. How do we know that it's humans what's causing global warming? Greenhouse gases trap infrared heat energy. The isotopic clearly shows that the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is from fossil fuels. We are no longer in the natural cycle, we have largely departed from the natural cause of climate change and there is no natural mechanism that explains it. All the models and observations match. There is simply no other mechanism that can explain the significantly rise in climate changes in the radiative forcing other than humans causing it. This is why I strongly believe that global warming is definitely caused by humans and it's up to us if whether we want to keep all our animals and earth alive.
Works Cited
1. http://climate.nasa.gov/causes “A Blanket Around the Earth”
2. http://www.pbs.org/now/science/climatechange.html “The Political Climate”
3. Interview with Susy Ellison
4.http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/03/31/Intro.timeline “A Timeline of Climate Change Science”
5. http://climatechange.procon.org/ “Is Human a Sustainabe Cause of Global Climate Change”
I really never thought I’d be investigating global warming, but I think this is something real and saving the planet should be something that we should all be worried about. Global warming is an increase in the overall temperature of the earths atmosphere. It is generally due to greenhouse effect that is caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and many other pollutants. Global warming is something that never really caught my attention because it’s never been such a big problem like it is now. I would hear people talking about it every now and then but it really wasn't something I was worried about until now. I would like people to take this situation more serious because it actually is something dangerous and it can really affect our environment.
There are many sides to why people argue that global warming is going on, but here are some causes of global warming. Climate change, which generally means a long term change in global temperatures it is known to be one of the main causes. Human activities is another cause, specially causing the earth to get hotter by burning fossil fuels. Earth temperature depends on the balance between energy leaving and entering the planet system. Another reason why global warming is going on is because of the “greenhouse effect”. Greenhouse effect is the warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from earth towards space. There are certain gases in the atmosphere that block heat from escaping. Gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect include: water vapor. It is one of the most abundant greenhouse gases. Water vapor increases as the Earth’s atmosphere warms up. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a minor but really important component of the atmosphere; this is the most important long lived forcing of climate change. Methane which is a gas produced by both natural sources and human activity. Nitrous oxide a powerful greenhouse gas that is used in organic fertilizers, fossil fuel combustion, nitric acid production, and biomass burning. (1)
Some consequences that can occur due to global warming are kind of difficult to figure out but at the same time they’re pretty obvious. Earth will become warmer. In some regions they may welcome the warm weather and in others it may not be such a good thing. Warmer conditions will lead to more evaporation and precipitation. This will cause for some regions to become wetter and others dryer. Sea level will also increase because of the warmer temperatures. It will cause glaciers to melt world wide, especially on the Earth’s poles.
Dysfunction of many animals natural habitat is a huge consequence. The number of penguins has had a tremendous decrease in Antarctica, where the numbers went from 32,000 breeding pairs to 11,000 in just 30 years.(2) Butterflies, foxes and alpine plants moved farther to cooler area. The pika is also endangered of losing its habitat. It’s moving further up in the mountains because of the warm weathers trying to run away from the climate change and pretty soon there will be no more mountain for it to go up on.(3) These are just some of the things that have been going on just these past few years due to global warming, there are way more things that can come along further in time.
Effects that can happen later on if global warming continues are scary and very dangerous. Some of these things are that sea level can be expected to rise from 7 and 23 inches. If the poles continue to melt this can add up to 8 more inches to the sea level rise. Hurricanes and storms will become stronger. It will be more common for floods and droughts to happen. There will be less fresh water, if the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru continues to melt at its current rate, there it will be gone by 2100. This will leave a lot of people (thousands) who rely on fresh clean water without no source. Diseases will spread more, like malaria which is spread by mosquitos. The ecosystem can totally change. Species will try to move further north to try and survive and there are some that won’t be able to move and could become extinct. As the ice continues on disappearing on the sea, the polar bears will as well.
The beginning of the greenhouse effect goes back a long way. In 1842 French physicist Joseph Fourier was one of the first to describe a “greenhouse effect”. In 1861, Irish physicist John Tyndall researched on radiant heat and absorption of radiation by gases and vapor including CO2 and H20. He proved that carbon dioxide can absorb the infrared spectrum, and can cause the change in temperature. In 1869, Swedish chemist Savante Arrhenius proposed the idea of man-made greenhouse effect. I think that this was very smart of him to do because as soon as he brought up the idea of greenhouse effect everyone will start looking deeper into this. He was trying to find out why the earth experienced ice ages and thought that if they increase the burning of coal, it would lead to increased CO2 in the atmosphere and heat up the earth. In 1938, a British engineer Guy Stewart Callendar did temperature statistics and realized that the temperature had increased tremendously over the previous century. He also discovered that the CO2 levels had increased within 10 percent and came to the conclusion that CO2 was most likely the reason. In 1958, Charles Keeling began to monitor CO2 levels and after only two years of measurement in Antarctica an increase level was visible. The graph became known as the “Keeling Curve” and it became a big global warming debate. In 1970, the first “Earth Day” took place on April 22nd. In 1979, the first World Climate Conference was held. In 1987, was officially the hottest year on record and three years later is confirmed as the hottest decade since the record began. In 1995, the hottest year on record. I think when this happened and the hottest year on record people started to dig deeper and started to notice that it was all human caused. Four years later the 1990’s were confirmed as the hottest decades in 1000 years. In 1997, industrialized countries agreed to cut their emission of six key greenhouse gases by an average of 5.2 percent . In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that the evidence of global warming over the previous 50 years by human activity is stronger than ever. In 2003, Europe experienced the hottest summer on record causing a widespread drought. In 2008, 160 square miles of the Wilkins Ice Shelf breaks away from the Antarctic coast. Scientist are worried that climate change is happening faster than it was expected.(3) When this happened that's when scientist started to notice that global warming was going on and that there would be things we can do in order to make it slow down.
Since it’s known that global warming is going to keep going on over the years, there are practical solutions that can be done to dramatically reduce our carbon emission. In other words, slow the pace of global warming. One of the things we can do to slow down the pace of global warming is to reduce emission. In order to address global warming, we have to reduce the amount of heat- trapping we are putting into the atmosphere. We have to transfer our energy system to something that doesn’t depend as much on coal and fossil fuels.We can do this by walking instead of taking a car. This will make a tremendous change because there won’t be that much fossil fuels going into the atmosphere. We can also reduce tropical deforestation, and these things will help reduce emission dramatically. Boosting energy efficiency, power, heat, and coolers in our homes has been known to be a large contributor to global warming. Greening transportation, which generally means improving efficiency in modes of transportation. Revving up renewables, use renewable energy sources like solar, wind, geothermal and bioenergy. These are available all around the world. Phasing out fossil fuel electricity, reducing use of fossil fuels especially carbon and coal is something extreme that can reduce climate change. Not building power plants, and capturing and storing carbon emission from power plants. Using solar panels instead of fossil fuel energy in our home would be a huge contributor to lowering climate changes. Managing forest and agriculture is also something we can use. Tropical deforestation and emissions from agriculture represent about 30 percent of the worlds heat-trapping emissions. We can help global warming by reducing emission from deforestation and by making our food production more sustainable. These are just some of the few things that we can do in order to save our planet. If we choose to walk instead of driving our cars or ride bikes, that can impact the planet tremendously. It's the little things we can do that would help our planet out a lot. (4)
There is a lot of questioning to whether it's human activity that’s the substantial cause of global warming. Here are some con arguments that make this statement true. 75 percent of the 20th century increase in the atmospheric greenhouse gas CO2 is caused by human actions like burning fossil fuels. Human produced CO2 is warming the earth, not natural CO2 released from the ocean and other “carbon sinks”. Carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion has a specific isotopic ratio which is 48, that is different from CO2 released from natural “carbon sinks”. Measurements from the 20th century of isotope ratios in the atmosphere confirm the rise is caused from human activity and not a natural process. Human produced greenhouse gases are going to continue to accumulate in the atmosphere causing climate change because the earth’s forests, oceans, and other “carbon sinks” can not absorb them properly. As long as we keep doing the same exact things like we are today the temperatures will continue to rise and rise. I honestly think this is all in our power if we’re determined to decreases the temperatures.
Since 2009 carbon sinks were only absorbing 50 percent of human produced CO2, the other half is going into the atmosphere. These human greenhouse gases are not changing the sun’s radiation, but are causing the climate to change. There are measurements in the upper atmosphere from 1979- 2009 that shows the suns energy has gone up and down and down in cycles, but there is no increase in the suns radiation. All the warming is occurring in the troposphere which is the lower atmosphere, and while that happens the stratosphere (upper atmosphere) is cooling. If the sun was the one controlling the temperature there would be warming in the stratosphere as well, not cooling. Although the amount of human-produced greenhouse gases may seem small to some people, the warming potential increased by water vapor. This allows them to cause warming and climate change. As the greenhouse gases heat the planet, increased humidity results. Since water vapor is a greenhouse gas, it can double the warming effect of greenhouse gases like CO2. Since human greenhouse gases are heating the planet, climate models show that this warming is causing an increase in of tropical cyclones. In 1975-1989 had 171 category 4 and 5 hurricanes while 1990-2004 had 269 of them, this shows that humans actually induced climate change. The human produced CO2 is causing the climate of the oceans around the world to change. As the excess CO2 is absorbed, the oceanic acidity level increases. The oceans have absorbed 48% of the total CO2 that is released by human activity and the acidity levels are 25-30% higher than prior to human fossil fuel use. An 8” rise in the ocean level happened from 1961-2003 because of human induced global warming. Sea levels rose an average of 0.07 inches per year from 1961 through 2003. The sea level rise is a result of warming waters and melting ice glaciers, ice caps, and polar ice sheets. This is an important confirmation of climate change models. I think this is important because this basically shows that all of this is human produced.
Global warming is also caused by human produced greenhouse gases is changing the earth’s hydrologic climate. Rainfall is increasing in many areas due to increased evaporation stemming from global warming. Higher altitude areas are also causing to receive rain rather than snow. According to researchers, 60% of the changes in the river flow, winter air temperature, and snow in the western US where human induced (1950-1999). Greenhouse gases produced by humans is changing the rate of glacial melt and altering the climate in many regions. Since 1980, glaciers worldwide have lost about 40 feet in average thickness. Global warming is also caused by human produced greenhouse gases and black carbon produced from burning fossil fuels and deforestation, it is reducing the size of the arctic ice cap. The small ice cap reflects less of the suns energy away from each other. The energy is absorbed so it’s causing the air and water temperature to rise. It’s predicted that the Arctic sea ice will continue to melt through the 21st century due t o global climate. There is many organizations that believe that human activity is a substantial cause of global and climate change. These organizations include: the World Meteorological Organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the InterAcademy Council, and a few other ones. Nearly all climate change studies show that humans are the main cause of global warming. There are studies that contradict the claim, but they are often funded by petroleum companies which explains alot. From 2004-2005, ExxonMobil gave $2.2 million in grants for climate change researcher to deny that humans caused climate change. (5)
My personal thoughts to global warming, are that scientific knowledge is growing, the debate is moving away from whether humans are causing it or not. I personally think that all of this is human produced & there's a lot we can to to decrease the rising temperatures. Scientists have concluded that the burning coal, oil, and gas is what is what's causing the warming of the earth. The atmospheric greenhouse effect works on naturally keeping our planet warm enough to be livable. As the atmosphere "thickens" with more greenhouse gasses, more heat is held in. A single gallon of gasoline, when burned puts 19 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. How do we know that it's humans what's causing global warming? Greenhouse gases trap infrared heat energy. The isotopic clearly shows that the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is from fossil fuels. We are no longer in the natural cycle, we have largely departed from the natural cause of climate change and there is no natural mechanism that explains it. All the models and observations match. There is simply no other mechanism that can explain the significantly rise in climate changes in the radiative forcing other than humans causing it. This is why I strongly believe that global warming is definitely caused by humans and it's up to us if whether we want to keep all our animals and earth alive.
Works Cited
1. http://climate.nasa.gov/causes “A Blanket Around the Earth”
2. http://www.pbs.org/now/science/climatechange.html “The Political Climate”
3. Interview with Susy Ellison
4.http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/03/31/Intro.timeline “A Timeline of Climate Change Science”
5. http://climatechange.procon.org/ “Is Human a Sustainabe Cause of Global Climate Change”
Half the Sky
The film “Half the Sky” introduces the idea that The worldwide Oppression of Women could be the dominant civil rights issue of our time. The film shares stories of women in different countries who are trying to change cultural ideas that are extremely oppressive to women. Some of these issues include: sex trafficking, prostitution, and gender based violence.
Sex trafficking is constituts a global crime that goes largely unnoticed. An estimate of 2.4 million people are victims of human trafficking. Nearly half are being used for commercial sex. The ages for sex trafficking keep decreasing day by day to as young as three years old. Sometimes there own family members sell the victims. India’s brothels are among the world’s most brutal. Women and girls who are uncooperative are faced with daily beatings and gang raped, sometimes killed. One reason trafficking has been ignored is because the victims are voiceless.
Gender-based violence is both persistent and widespread, and rank as top public health crisis for women in the world today. In Kenya life for women is very different than in other parts of the world. Men usually try to take power and be in charge. Women age 15 through 45 are most likely to die due to male abuse than from cancer, malaria, traffic accident and war combined. This violence can take many different forms such as acid attack, bride burnings, rape or domestic violence. In most countries between 30 and 60 percent of women had experienced physical or sexual violence. When a women has a baby they kill the baby if you have it without being cut.
No matter how a girl enters prostitution, the experience leaves a lasting imprint on her future. Economic necessity, a lack of employment options, drug addictions, or coercion by family can all be reason why women are forced into sexual slavery. There are 2 million to 3 million prostitutes in India, most of them entered the sex industry unwilling. In India and Nepal prostitutes who began as teenagers, about half said they had been coerced into the brothels. Meanwhile women who started in their 20s were most likely to have made the choice themselves, often to feed their children. Once a girl or woman enters prostitution it can be hard for them to leave.
In conclusion, in the film “Half the Sky” I talked about sex trafficking, gender-based violence, and prostitution. I learned how unfair life can be for girls who are born to low income family. Sometimes even women make their own decisions to enter into brothels just to support their family. I also learned that the less power a woman has the more advantage they try to take of her. If women would learn to speak up maybe they can be heard to stop this violence against them.
The film “Half the Sky” introduces the idea that The worldwide Oppression of Women could be the dominant civil rights issue of our time. The film shares stories of women in different countries who are trying to change cultural ideas that are extremely oppressive to women. Some of these issues include: sex trafficking, prostitution, and gender based violence.
Sex trafficking is constituts a global crime that goes largely unnoticed. An estimate of 2.4 million people are victims of human trafficking. Nearly half are being used for commercial sex. The ages for sex trafficking keep decreasing day by day to as young as three years old. Sometimes there own family members sell the victims. India’s brothels are among the world’s most brutal. Women and girls who are uncooperative are faced with daily beatings and gang raped, sometimes killed. One reason trafficking has been ignored is because the victims are voiceless.
Gender-based violence is both persistent and widespread, and rank as top public health crisis for women in the world today. In Kenya life for women is very different than in other parts of the world. Men usually try to take power and be in charge. Women age 15 through 45 are most likely to die due to male abuse than from cancer, malaria, traffic accident and war combined. This violence can take many different forms such as acid attack, bride burnings, rape or domestic violence. In most countries between 30 and 60 percent of women had experienced physical or sexual violence. When a women has a baby they kill the baby if you have it without being cut.
No matter how a girl enters prostitution, the experience leaves a lasting imprint on her future. Economic necessity, a lack of employment options, drug addictions, or coercion by family can all be reason why women are forced into sexual slavery. There are 2 million to 3 million prostitutes in India, most of them entered the sex industry unwilling. In India and Nepal prostitutes who began as teenagers, about half said they had been coerced into the brothels. Meanwhile women who started in their 20s were most likely to have made the choice themselves, often to feed their children. Once a girl or woman enters prostitution it can be hard for them to leave.
In conclusion, in the film “Half the Sky” I talked about sex trafficking, gender-based violence, and prostitution. I learned how unfair life can be for girls who are born to low income family. Sometimes even women make their own decisions to enter into brothels just to support their family. I also learned that the less power a woman has the more advantage they try to take of her. If women would learn to speak up maybe they can be heard to stop this violence against them.