Scary story: climate change

Climate change. Ugh. Global warming. Gross. While both suck, I often see the terms climate change and global warming used synonymously. In reality these are two totally separate phenomena that we can’t use interchangeably, rather, one contributes to the other. This isn't a vocabulary lesson, promise, I have a point to this.

Human activity increases the average global temperature, this warming exacerbates the effects of climate change, and we’re left taking the hit by ways of extreme weather, sea level rise, droughts, floods, wildfires, etc. Bummer for us, but rightfully so, considering we’re the reason our planet is so f--cked.

Try to stay with me, I know this shit is bleak.

The term climate change is already pretty explanatory - it’s the Earth’s climate changing - particularly stemming from the mid 20th century to current day. The exceptional justification I hear for this is well, the climate has always changed! That’s true, but for modern humanity’s sake, completely irrelevant.

If you want to see the Earth’s temperature change timeline in cartoon-form, check out Randall Monroe’s artwork here.

Throughout ancient history (i.e.: just after the last ice age ~22,000 years ago), the average global temperature has changed ever-so-slightly over the course of a couple thousand years at a time. Since the mid 20th century, however, humans have output such a massive amount of hazardous shit into our atmosphere that we’re currently on path to increase the global temperature by 2 degrees. For context, 2 degrees seems to be the magic (or more fittingly, tragic) number that scientists agree when we hit that trajectory, things will get a lot worse, and at a faster rate.

To sum up a few examples:

1. Plant/animal habitats and crop yields will be decimated due to the frequency and severity of climate disasters.

2. Droughts/floods/wildfires will continue to f--k up our landscape - but much more rapidly than present day.

3. Sea level rise will cause mass migrations and billions of dollars of infrastructure to be lost underwater.

What I imagine a careless person would say: Oooh so scary! We might have to pay $10/lb for tropical fruit and if I lived on a coastal city maaaybe my property insurance would go up. Big whoop, I don’t like oranges OR Florida, so that’s not going to affect ME - why should I care?

WELL, for starters, we should all care because we are the ones who have selfishly allowed this to happen to our lovely planet. But, if you don’t really care about the environment, or clean air, or safe water, I’ll elaborate.

What’s important for us to realize is that climate change is a serious and imminent threat to human existence. It’s not just the global temperature rising and the polar ice caps melting - it’s how this is creating more frequent and lethal climate crises all over the globe. We see about 5 times the amount of natural disasters today than we did just 40 years ago.

The Earth has dealt with mass extinctions in the past, and it will again, and when that time comes, the Earth will still be here, chillin, making it’s orbit around the Sun like any other day. Earth is a badass, resilient planet. Humans, on the other hand, are fragile little wimps.

It’s us that has to worry. And if you forgot about all the awesome creatures that live on the planet with us, rest assured, we’re bringing most of them down with us. We’ve already contributed to nearly half of all plant and animal species extinctions since the 19th century. Yes, almost HALF! We have been doing WORK killing off just about any living thing we come in contact with. It is truly ~remarkable~ how destructive we are.

To end my scary story of our reality, I leave you with this: a team of international scientists have warned that the loss of all these animals/plants/etc is contributing to what appears to be the start of Earth’s 6th mass extinction. Whaaaat. On that dinosaur shiiit.

Our only hope now is that aliens might come abduct us OR the human race starts taking climate change seriously..... hahahahaha. See ya!