Climate change, often referred to as global warming, has been a controversial topic for a lengthy period of time, with distinctly different viewpoints. There are some who advocate for better environmental policies in order to prevent the state of the Earth from getting worth, there are others who deny the existence of climate change. Some even going as far as calling climate change a “hoax”, claiming that scientists are fabricating data, attempting to trick the world into believing that things are “worse than they actually are”. However, the truth is exactly the opposite. Climate change real, and it is affecting our planet as a whole negatively. The effects are seen everywhere: our oceans, our air, our land. Our wildlife is being threatened by our actions, as conditions progress to be worse and worse. As we continue to squeeze as many resources we can out of our planet, we affect it in several ways, some that we can not undo. Climate change is a real and serious issue facing our world right now, and if nothing is done about it, there will be serious consequences.

While climate change and global warming are often used interchangeably, global warming only refers to Earth’s rising surface temperature, while climate change refers to the warming of the entire globe, and encompasses all of the effects of the increasing temperatures. Simply put, global warming is an effect of climate change. Climate change is mainly caused by the “greenhouse effect”. The burning of fossil fuels, such as the use of oil in our transportation, or the use of coal for power, has led to a rise of carbon dioxide, or CO2, in our atmosphere. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and nitrous oxide, trap the heat from the sun in our atmosphere, not allowing it to escape. “Global warming caused by human activities that emit heat-trapping carbon dioxide has raised the average global temperature by about 1°F (0.6°C) over the past century” (National Geographic). Most of these changes have happened more recently, “with 16 of the 17 warmest years on record occurring since 2001” (NASA). The trapped heat causes our atmosphere to warm up, leading to several different changes in nature, such as the melting ice caps, warmer temperatures, and more severe weather. These changes are blatant and easy to see, such as the increase in hurricanes recently, or the changes in weather patterns. However, all of the impacts of climate change are negative, and effect nature, wildlife, and humans. 

A major consequence of climate change is seen in the Great Barrier Reef. Located off the coast of Australia, the Great Barrier Reef is the largest reef in the world, stretching more than 1,600 miles. The reef is so large, it can be seen from outer space. Coral reefs are the most diverse of all marine ecosystems, with around one quarter of all ocean species depending on coral reefs for food and shelter (Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History). Specifically, the Great Barrier Reef is home to “600 types of soft and hard corals, more than 100 species of jellyfish, 3000 varieties of molluscs, 500 species of worms, 1625 types of fish, 133 varieties of sharks and rays, and more than 30 species of whales and dolphins” (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority). While the reef used to be known for its beauty, it no longer looks as it used to decades ago. As reported by the New York Times, “Huge sections of the Great Barrier Reef, stretching across hundreds of miles of its most pristine northern sector, were recently found to be dead, killed by overheated seawater” (Cave and Gillis). The increasing temperature of the atmosphere causes the temperature of the ocean to rise as well. As seen in the graph from EPA’s website, the average global sea surface temperature is increasing, and continuing to rise. 

Ocean surface temperatures rose at an average rate of 0.13°F per decade from 1901 to 2015 (EPA). While this may not seem significant enough to cause a change in the reef, coral reefs will eject their symbiotic algae, causing them to turn white, at even a slight constant temperature change. This whitening of the reef is referred to as coral bleaching. Bleaching causes the coral to slow their growth, which leads to an increased susceptibility to disease, and can lead to large-scale reef die-off (National Geographic). As temperatures get higher, corals go from their natural, earthy colors, to neon, and eventually turn bone white, a distinct sign of how unhealthy they are. Terry Hughes, the director of a center for coral reef studies at James Cook University in Australia, says that “only 9 percent of the reef has avoided bleaching since 1998”. The effects of the rising ocean temperature is severe. As seen in the diagram provided by The New York Times, several parts of the reef have shown signs of significant coral loss.

Mark Eakin, a reef expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shared his grim prediction, saying that “I don’t think the Great Barrier Reef will ever again be as great as it used to be - at least not in our lifetimes”. Because the Great Barrier Reef is home to so many different species, its unhealthy state is very serious. If species can’t depend on the reef anymore for shelter or food, their populations could suffer. This could impact the food web of the ocean, and could possibly lead to the endangerment, or extinction of certain species. Climate change is slowly, yet surely, decimating our world, and its natural beauty.

Increasing ocean temperatures affects more than just coral reefs. As ocean temperatures rise, so do the severity of tropical storms. Hurricanes use warm, moist air to gain energy. This means that as waters get warmer, tropical storms are able to pick up more energy. As temperatures increase, hurricanes are expected to increase in frequency and severity, and these predictions have already proven to be true. September 2017 was the most active month on record for Atlantic hurricanes (Weather Channel). Additionally, “scientists have found that the frequency of North Atlantic hurricanes has increased since the early 1980s, as well as the number of storms that reach categories 4 and 5” (NRDC). Extreme weather is not limited to hurricanes only. Climate change has also triggered more severe heat waves, more frequent and heavier droughts, and in increase in floods. In 2015, scientists said that California’s worst drought had been intensified around 15 to 20 percent due to climate change (NRDC). Additionally, in 2011 and 2012, the amount of intense heat waves almost tripled the long term average (National Climate Assessment). The increasing temperatures of the globe means increasing rates of evaporation, leading to loss of moisture in plant leaves. The loss of water in plants leads to the drying out of soil. As soil dries out, a larger proportion of heat from the sun goes into heating the soil and surrounding air instead of evaporating. This leads to hotter summers being experienced, and drier climatic conditions (National Climate Assessment). Climate change has a strong impact on our weather, and as climate change worsens, it’s logical to assume that so will weather patterns.

While several of the effects of global warming are easy to see, there are still those who try to deny the truth of the matter. Skeptics, such as Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge, claim that “global warming alarmists...wildly exaggerate the degree of ocean level increases to the point of absurdity and have been caught red-handed completely fabricating data to continue scaring the public into supporting a non-issue” (Durden). Scientists say that a consequence of climate change is rising sea levels, because the rising temperatures melt the ice. Durden however claims that sea levels are actually decreasing, and attempts to use the graph below, found on NASA’s website, to argue that scientists are lying to the public.

Durden attempts to convince his readers that the small, circled portion of the graph is enough to prove that climate change is not affecting our oceans. However, he conveniently ignores the rest of the graph, as well as the overall trend of the graph since 1995. There have been several other dips shown in the graph, but the overall trend of the graph shows increasing sea levels over the past 20 years. NASA reports from their Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show that “Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006, while Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles) of ice between 2002 and 2005” (NASA). Additionally, ice caps are frozen fresh water, while the ocean is composed of salt water. Because of its varying density, fresh water freezes before ice water. As the ice caps melt, the freshwater of the caps mixes with the saltwater of the ocean, allowing the water in the ocean to freeze at higher temperatures than it did before. This could explain why there are small portions of decreasing sea level amidst the overwhelmingly increasing graph.

Another argument used to try to disprove the validity of climate change is that changes in temperature are normal, and that the Earth naturally experiences periods of warming and cooling. However, at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change, “a group of 1,300 independent scientific experts from countries all over the world under the auspices of the United Nations, concluded there's a more than 95 percent probability that human activities over the past 50 years have warmed our planet” (NASA). While Earth’s climate has gone through periods of warming and cooling for 2.5 million years, within the last century, the climate’s temperature has risen unusually fast (National Geographic). Never before has Earth experienced such a high increase in global temperature. The temperatures are expected to continue to rise as time progresses. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, encompassing more than 1,300 scientists from multiple countries, predicts that temperatures could rise anywhere from 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century (NASA). The correlation between our rising dependence on fossil fuels and the temperature of the globe can not be ignored, or called fake. Our actions as a race has directly impacted the planet we live on, and if we do not change our actions soon, our Earth will continue to deteriorate.

NASA’s predictions for the future of the United States of America are grim. They include hurricanes becoming stronger, sea level rising 1-4 feet by 2100, and the Arctic becoming completely ice free in the summer. Additionally, they provide specific predictions for different regions of the globe. Predictions for the Northeast include infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries, and ecosystems to be increasingly compromised. In the Southwest, NASA predicts increased drought, insect outbreaks, and increased wildfires, as well as declining water supplies, reduced agricultural yields, health impacts in cities due to heat, and flooding and erosion on coastal areas. The predictions for other regions are just as harsh. While many would rather ignore the worsening effects of climate change, and focus on the lucrative industry of oil and drilling, the fact is that climate change may end up being costly to the United States. For example, Hurricane Maria devastated the small island of Puerto Rico in September. If NASA predicts storms could only get worse as our climate worsens, the United States may end up spending a lot more money on humanitarian efforts.

While our actions have caused tremendously negative effects on the planet, there are ways in which we can began to undo the damage that has been done to our planet over the years. For example, researchers at Southern Cross University have developed a way to begin restoration of coral reefs that have undergone bleaching. Peter Harrison, project leader, describes their work as "using the spawning of corals, collecting the eggs and sperm from the corals, growing the larvae and then putting millions of larvae back onto the reef to try to start the restoration process" (ABC News). The project is the first in the world to successfully manage a coral breeding population from larvae directly on the corals. Harrison hopes that the project will be successful enough for the reef to be able to produce enough larvae to disperse onto other reefs, allowing natural restoration to occur. While the research team at Southern Cross University has found a way to start healing the Great Barrier Reef, this does not mean that we can continue to impair our planet. The bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef is just one of the many effects of climate change, and we have not found solutions to all of its consequences. We must face the reality of climate change, and work to undo our actions, becoming more environmentally conscience.

The effects of climate change are prominent and serious. Ranging from the recent deadly hurricanes, Irma, Maria (category fives), and Jose (category 4), to our shrinking ice caps, climate change has changed our planet for the worst. While the evidence is surrounding us, there are still some that refuse to believe science. This refusal to believe the facts does our Earth even more damage. “Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal” (NASA). Our actions, as humans, have directly impacted Earth, and changed its normal ways. The climate simply should not be changing this drastically. If we continue to downplay, or simply ignore what is blatantly going on around us, we risk destroying our planet, with no hope of returning it to the way it used to be.
