Why Do We Need To Have A Conversation About Climate Change?

There is no denying that global warming and the fast-paced climate change are very serious issues and need our urgent attention. The global increase in temperature has been influencing the physical, biological, and human systems. The variations in physical systems can be observed in the melting of the poles, which are correspondingly causing glacial regression, snow melting, warming and thawing of permafrost, flooding as well as droughts in lakes and rivers, coastal erosion, sea level rise, and extreme natural phenomenons. In the biological systems, flora and fauna in terrestrial and marine ecosystems are dying, many species are on the verge of extinction and some have already gone extinct.

There is displacement happening in the case of many flora and fauna in search of better survival conditions. In human systems, climate change effects and destroys crops and overall food production causes diseases and deaths. The increasing destruction and loss of economic livelihoods have also increased the migration of climate refugees. These negative consequences are interrelated and thus feed each other back and increase in magnitude, for example; Droughts frequently cause wildfires, which then destroy crops. The melting of glaciers, ice and snow cause sea level rise, which then erodes the coast and involves the destruction of many economic means of subsistence.

The Earth's climate has been changing throughout history. Just in the last 65 thousand years, there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, the abrupt end of the last ice age ,7 thousand years ago marked the beginning of human civilization and the modern climate era. Most of these climate changes are results of very small variations in Earth’s orbit changing the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

Intergovernmental Panel says the scientific evidence of the warming of the climate system is unequivocal. The current warming trend is of particularly significant because most of it is the result of human activity since the mid-20th century. Technological advances and Earth-orbiting satellites have enabled scientists in collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. All this data collected over the years reveal the signals of a changing climate.

The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases has been demonstrated in the mid-19th century. There is no question that increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the warming of Earth in response. Most of the warming has occurred in the past 35 years, Earth's global surface temperature in 2018 was the fourth warmest since 1880. The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean, since 1969 showing warming of more than 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit.The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have decreased in mass, Antarctic lost about 127 billion tons of ice while Greenland lost an average of 286 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2016, the ice mass loss have tripled over the last decade. Global sea level has rose about 8 inches in the last century. This rate has nearly double that of the last century and is accelerating slightly every year. Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has been declining rapidly over the last several decades.