Alright, so we all know that climate change/ global warming has been a very hot topic lately, especially with.. Trump.. as President.
This leads us to ask the question- what is climate change, is it real?, and why is it as big as a problem as it is?
The President likes to say that climate change is "fake news", but luckily, we live in a world where we have resources to the web so we can educate ourselves and make our own decisions on whether we think it's real or not.
You'd think that climate change is normal, obviously we had the ice age and such so it's just a known fact it's going to change, right? Wrong.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have skyrocketed, starting in the 1950's. With this spike in carbon dioxide and the heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases are being trapped; causing the Earth to warm. The global warming patterns are 95% likely caused by human activity, and there is no hopes of seeing that slowing down anytime soon.
Earth's average surface temperature has risen about 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit since the 19th century- scientists proving that this jump is created from the rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and other human-made emissions- scary, right? Most of the warming had taken place over the last 35 years. 2016 was the warmest year on ever recorded in that times span. The oceans have increased .302 degrees Fahrenheit, which may not seem like a big deal- but it IS! Ice sheets and glaciers are shrinking TONS every year.
Without getting too technical, there's less snow cover, rising sea levels, declining arctic sea ice, and extreme events such as brutal temperature fluctuations and intense rainfall.
I could go on and on about climate change and the effects of it - but I'll take it back home and paint a picture for whoever may be reading.
Picture this: it's 50 years from now and we hardly have winters anymore. There are so many man-made gas emissions in the air and so much carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere that your kids, great grandkids, great great grankids, etc., won't even know what snow is. On the news, they're talking about a hurricane that's killed thousands, and on the other side of the country there's droughts and raging forest fires and heatwaves. The Arctic will be ice free. That is INSANE, but that's the reality we're facing.
We can help slow the process of climate change if enough people tried. We are the future and we can make a change, don't let us kill the Earth.
