Why is Global Warming Such a Big Deal?

Time’s Person of the Year for 2019 was Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old climate change activist from Sweden who travels the world advocating and speaking out against global warming. And indeed she should. The Earth has warmed up by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the last century, and the computer models predict another 3 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit in the coming decades. The internet and the media are flooding media outlets with apocalyptic doomsday predictions, that paint a dim outlook for humanity. Should we be paranoid?

The impact of global warming is not uniform across the planet. It has its worst effect in the polar regions. Most of the Arctic circle, including Alaska, is built on the frozen ground called permafrost, and the temperature has to stay below freezing throughout the year. Here, even a small bit of warming can make the ground unstable. Also, the millions of cubic feet of melting ice will raise the sea levels across the planet, gobbling the increasingly densely populated coastal lines.

Closer to the equator, global warming is suspected to be making extreme weather events (EWE) more frequent and widespread. There are other pieces of evidence, such as the widening Sahara Desert, and drier tropical weather pushing into the Mediterranean.

The gradual and subtle nature of the problem makes it hard to establish causalities concretely, and hence the hyperbolic coverage by the media. As 2019, and the 2010s, come to a close, humanity is left at a very vital crossroads. The threat of climate change is growing larger by the day as melting ice caps, deforestation, and extreme weather conditions jeopardize humanity’s chances of survival. If we are to reverse this trend, we need to take immediate action now. World leaders and individual citizens alike need to make efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and switch to sustainable living styles. The future, after all, is only as promising as we make it.

SOURCES
https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_for_Future_Presidents
http://theconversation.com/why-blowing-the-1-5c-global-warming-goal-will-leave-poor-tropical-nations-sweating-most-of-all-96988
https://e360.yale.edu/features/redrawing-the-map-how-the-worlds-climate-zones-are-shifting https://news.mongabay.com/2019/09/as-climate-change-disrupts-the-annual-monsoon-india-must-prepare-commentary/