Global warming is an ongoing joke presented by politicians, figureheads, and all people alike. However, when you take a step back from all of the ongoing jokes and jabs at An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, the threat of Global Warming is devastating to everyone and everything on this planet.

Through personal experience I have learned that most people are simply ignorant to the actual meaning of Global Warming. People assume that since “warming” is in the name that that means the planet will warm. This is true, but that is not the only aspect of Global Warming. It is actually the extremes of all weather. Hurricane Sandy, massive tornadoes in unprecedented places such as Indiana and New Jersey, and huge earthquakes are prime example of extreme weather that blasted the country in the past few years.

Let’s take a step back for a moment and view the actual definition of Global Warming.

According to Webster’s Dictionary “Global warming and climate change are terms for the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system and its related effects.” Yes, the temperature is rising everywhere and I am sure everyone living in Washington State and California will attest to that, but the most important part of this definition is also the most ignored.

The “related effects” are the extreme weather that I was talking about earlier. The extreme weather comes from various places such as greenhouse gases, pollution, and solar activity. Although human beings are not the entire cause of the warming, we are continuing to put our planet at risk.

Everything we burn travels into our atmosphere and in turn our atmosphere believes that this is what we want our planet to feel like. Everyone who has ever experience a heat wave will know that this extreme amount of heat is not ideal and neither is life threatening weather.

The west coast has been experiencing hurricanes for years now which never happened before. El Nina and El Nino are happening in off seasons. Tornadoes are now a common threat among the east coast. Earthquakes are more frequent and more violent which could be followed by a just as devastating tsunami.

The joke is that something like the blockbuster hits such as 2012 and San Andreas will never happen, but that’s what scientists said about hurricanes hitting the west coast.

All the nonbelievers out there should take a step back and look at this inconvenient truth before it becomes an inconvenient reality. Global Warming is real and it is more powerful than ever.