"The reality of global warming is undeniable."
I feel like when I talk to people around me, that is the phrase I hear the most. And it does not bother me because I know it is true but using that in an argument makes it a weak argument. That is undeniable.
So, let's look at the concrete evidence to settle this matter, once and for all.
Models predict that Earth will warm between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius in the next century. When global warming has happened at various times in the past two million years, it has taken the planet about 5,000 years to warm 5 degrees. The predicted rate of warming for the next century is at least 20 times faster. This rate of change is extremely unusual.
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30 percent. This increase is the result of humans emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the oceans.
The U.S. has also witnessed increasing numbers of intense rainfall events. I mean, the polar vortex in Chicago and the rains in LA are just a few of the examples on how the weather is getting more extreme than it used to be.
Climate change does not refer to just the warming of the globe but extends beyond that.
It describes the contrast in the climate of a place before the changes that occurred with the way human beings have been treating the environment and after.
It can be that one place may be heating up but another may be cooling instead. The planet is diverse in its weather patterns and to recognize if there is climate change or not, it's the weather that we aren't used to in those places that checks the box of climate change.
Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades.This shows how much the globe is warming due to the carelessness of multinational corporations that are dumping huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Similarly, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost an average of 286 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2016, while Antarctica lost about 127 billion tons of ice per year during the same time period. The rate of Antarctica ice mass loss has tripled in the last decade.
Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska, and Africa. The reality that we face is terrifying because yes, this might not change anything for us right now but our future generations are in danger.
You may not care about future generations, that is valid and understandable, but by all this evidence, it is truly undeniable that our planet is going through climate change.
