No, it’s not global warming. That 2006 phrase you saw Al Gore use in an Inconvenient Truth is out dated horribly. Climate change has and will be an ongoing global threat for decades. This is by far the worst, absolutely worst thing we will experience in our lifetimes. Worse than Obama trying to take all the guns away.
Our planet has heated up at an alarming rate, and the effects of climate change we may not fully see or understand for decades to come. 2015 was the hottest year on record. 2016 will most definitely break that yet again. With all of the ice melting, that has increased our chances of dramatic sea level rise. Not the type you saw in "The Day After Tomorrow," but by the end of this century a few feet, even a meter could have catastrophic affects.
Cities that are built on islands and low lying land areas are in imminent threat. Personally when I think of islands I’m reminded of my home, the island of Manhattan. In 2012 Hurricane Sandy made landfall off the Jersey Shore. It wreaked havoc across the east coast. Especially in New York City our infrastructure was depleted. The Hudson and East Rivers rose during high tides to over 17 feet. Subway tunnels flooded, power outages including a blackout, not seen since the early 2000’s. It was in some ways the worst event since 9/11 for New York.
Sandy did however give us a taste of what is to come. Not next week, month, or year, but within decades and centuries those sea levels could potentially become the new normal. Land maps will have to be redrawn, and a potential mass relocation of millions of people living in low lying flood prone areas will occur. Even while all of this is continuing to unfold, there’s a large number of people throughout the world known as climate change deniers. People who persistently preach the idea the Earth isn’t heating up as fast, sea level rise isn’t occurring and this is a natural cycle the Earth is simply going through.
Human activity for hundreds of years now has our planet for the worst. Since the industrial revolution we have thrown up huge amounts of CO2 and recently within the past few decades at one point almost depleted our ozone layer in Earth’s atmosphere. What we know currently is sea levels will rise no matter what we do from here on out. Temperatures overall will increase and by the end of this century we will globally see a rise of 2-3 degrees Celsius on Earth. Now more than ever adopting clean renewable resources will benefit our planet for the long hall. Especially those Coca-Cola polar bears up in the north sadly will not be safe.
