Climate Change has become a somewhat controversial topic these days due to opposing opinions that either claim or dismiss human involvement in the overall environmental changes occurring throughout the globe. The reason there’s so much discrepancy in this straightforward issue is mostly because the planets do, in fact, have a climate cycle that resonates between different temperatures. The Earth is very well going through a “spring break” in between an ice age period as we speak.
We are fairly lucky in this regard, to exist in a time away from the extreme foci of temperatures. Since all planets regularly change their temperatures on such a massive scale, how can we as humans do anything to interrupt that cycle? Well, there is a lot of data to indicate our involvement in this phenomenon, but the problem persists because people are too skeptical about the sources that push this agenda of global warming, allegedly harboring ulterior motives.
The primary factor in human contribution towards global warming is attributed to the use of fossil fuels, which amount to more than 80% of our global primary energy consumption.
You wanna guess how much overall carbon emission is released into the air each year? Take a guess, now sit back. The answer is over 37 Billion Tonnes of Carbon Dioxide, more than double from half a century ago. Nature can absorb only so much, and there are billions of tonnes of surplus that we add to our atmosphere every year.
Find more statistics at Statista
I’m sure if you believe in conspiracies then this sounds like fear mongering, because:
1. Why should I trust this data?
For starters, this data does not come from a single source, it comes from an amalgamation of global researchers. For example, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) issued an extensive report that essentially elaborates on the impact of global warming if we’re to limit our climate impact to 1.5 degrees Centigrade. This report has been compiled by referencing over 6,000 published research papers, has input from over 130 publication authors, and has been vetted by over a thousand scientists worldwide.
2. Even if I do, so what? What’s the harm in CO2 emissions?
Referencing the previously mentioned report, the stated increase alone would still result in a rise of sea level that will put an additional 10 million people at risk, and this is apart from the droughts and the increasing severity of natural disasters like storms and tornadoes, etc. Deaths from air pollution are also largely a result of these emissions.
Now, in my opinion, even a single death about which we could do something and choose not to do anything is a death too many and is a moral failure on our part but that’s just me. Perhaps, economic factors related to this matter are far more important than I realize. And I know, that one could argue that due to the trickle-down effect, any toll that the economy would take will eventually fall on the consumers like us, but that’s because we blindly trust and follow the economic system, and when it comes to generational or global issues like the climate change, we come up with excuses to discredit the sources, or some other excuse to not do our part.
It is disheartening to see such a spread of misinformation and excuses for essentially no other reason but stubbornness, lethargy, and ego. This is the age of information, any source we don’t trust, we can vet online. We can check the authenticity and reliability of everything if only we tried to do so.
If only we wanted to…
