"Global warming" and "climate change" are two phrases that have been forced out of their scientific definitions and into political buzzword territory, with legislators and pundits alike using them as weapons or platform additions. It's no surprise this has happened; the fact our climate is changing is a loaded topic that impacts everyone and everything, from business regulations (or lack thereof) to the health of citizens.

A major side effect of this political gridlock, however, is that people are denying basic science in the name of what they believe in (or, in the case of many, in the name of the corporation lining their pockets). Global warming is seen as a "liberal conspiracy," an excuse for government overreaching, or science with an "agenda," and this makes it easy to ignore the very complex and extraordinarily threatening issue that out changing climate has become because, sadly, it's no government conspiracy. It's a scientific phenomenon. Climate change is real and we are the cause. 99.9 percent of scientists agree that human-caused climate change is occurring: “It’s now a ruling paradigm, as much an accepted fact in climate science as plate tectonics is in geology and evolution is in biology" according to the head of the National Physical Sciences Consortium.

The amount of carbon in our atmosphere has crossed a 650,000 year threshold in a matter of decades. (Credit: Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record, via NASA)

However, even these numbers are not enough to convince the most resolute of those who oppose the idea that our planet is undergoing rapid and irreversible climate change. And while opposing opinions are typically a great thing to have, especially in science (we wouldn't move forward in discovery without naysayers and critics!) in this case, the issue is too large and dangerous to ignore. The predictions are stark: Parts of Earth are expected to become uninhabitable to humans by the end of the decade. Pacific Island nations are already facing rapidly disappearing shoreline due to the rising of the oceans, which may not seem a big deal if you're a citizen of the U.S. with its 3.8 million square miles, but when you live on an island 0.23 square miles in size, even the loss of a foot of shoreline in each direction is life-changing.

A recent report revealed the collapse of a major part of Antarctica is now unstoppable. (Source: Michael Studinger/EPA, via Guardian)

Species are dying off at an alarming rate, so much so that the present has officially been designated the sixth mass extinction in the history of the planet. Massive weather disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods and wildfires are getting far more powerful and dangerous. Never mind our increased risk of all sorts of problems from inhaling polluted air and drinking tainted water (which can happen as a result of algae bloom--a phenomenon becoming more common as the Earth warms)--the human species is not guaranteed to be exempt from the growing list of species that will not survive the Sixth Mass Extinction Event. The news gets larger and starker and less changeable every single day.

We cannot afford to keep our heads in the sand about this. We cannot afford to let corporations like Exxon-Mobil (who knew about human-caused climate change 40 years ago and spent millions spreading misinformation to the public) continue to hijack our legislative system to keep practices that contribute to global warming in place. If we don't start acting now and acting fast, we could soon be seeing the third world war being fought over drinkable water, or a drastic change in our diet because of climate change, or maybe even the end of our species.

Contact your legislators. Contact your governments. Become educated on the complex issues surrounding our changing climate and the ways we must adapt for the future. Learn the ways you can help. Climate change is real and it's enormous and it's frightening, but maybe if we stop using it as a political buzzword and start treating it like the scientific phenomenon that it is, we can change the course we're taking. Maybe we can change the world.