Climate Change: Are We Witnesses to the Coming Apocalypse?

  This summer Hurricane Ida pounded the American states of Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, Alabama and Pennsylvania to the  tune of 1.4 billion dollars of damage, according to insurance company Allstate. 33 deaths were also caused by the massive storm. The total fiscal damage from the 2021 Atlantic Ocean hurricane season was estimated to be 69.13 billion dollars, the fourth costliest tropical season on record. There has been a total of seven hurricanes, four of which were category 3 or higher ( disasterphilanthropy.org). What does this all mean? For one thing, according to NOAA weather service, due to the increasing amounts and severity of these natural disasters the National Hurricane Center (NHC) have extending the tropical season from May 15 to November 1st. These deadly, destructive storms are beginning a month sooner and finishing 2 weeks later than in 1981 when the National Weather Service began naming these storms (weather.com). 

   Hurricane Sandy in 2012 was the 5th costliest storm in US history, it wreaked a lot more havoc than just the New Jersey shore and parts of the five boroughs of New York City. Sandy inflicted a grand total of 730 billion dollars of damage, killed 233 people, across eight countries from the Caribbean all the way up to the east coast of Canada ( info courtesy of brittannica.com). It even earned the moniker super storm due to not only the carnage it produced but also for the 2 weeks it churned up the North American eastern seaboard before finally fizzling out somewhere near Halifax, Canada (FEMA.gov).

    The whole world remembers Hurricane Katrina in 2005, how the levees failed and the city of New Orleans in Louisiana was battered by 125 mph winds. The aftermath of abandoned residents clinging to their rooftops while the US federal government ignored them was a lasting reminder of the incompetence and carelessness of the George W. Bush Administration. 

  Its not just the incredible spike in enormous hurricanes or the tornadoes occuring in areas where previously were extremely rare. We must also look at the raising in temperatures, not just in the US, but worldwide. According to www.climate.gov, the combined land and ocean temperature has risen 0.16 degrees each decade since 1980, which is double the amount from the same study beginning in 1880. The ten warmest years on record have all occured since 2005. Now global warming deniers whom call this an anomaly must remove those blinders they've had on the last 15 years. A statistic like that is not a coincidence, quite the contrary, it should serve as a warning of the potential doom facing the home of the human race, planet Earth. The planet has risen 1 degree Celsius ( 2 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1880. It may seem like a really insignificant change, but just a 2 degree change was enough to cause a Little Ice Age and a five degree difference was enough to bury nearly the entirety of North American in ice 20,000 years ago ( earthobservatory.nasa.gov).

   Let's get to the root cause of all these increasing semi Apocalyptic weather events and alarming changes in the Earth's temperature. Well what else, mass pollution, burning of fossil fuels and certain ignorant world leaders, hand in hand with oil and coal producers, continuing to pump these gases into the atmosphere.  

  According to science website pnas.org, during the height of the lockdowns due to covid-19 all around the globe saw unprecedented reductions in all forms of pollutants. Levels of nitrogen dioxide dropped by 60 percent in over 34 countries in 2020, the lessening of human activity helped ozone damaging gases, mainly due to mass transportation, reach levels we haven't seen in seventy five years.

    One attempt at tackling this immensely pertinent issue was the Paris Climate Accords which were drafted in November of 2015 ( apnews.com). Some of the Paris Agreements main goals are to reduce the raising of  long term temperature rates to below pre-industrial levels. Global CO2 emissions, per the agreement, are eventually supposed to reach net zero by the mid 21st century. ( unfccc.int) These ambitious hopes are relying on the cooperation by the 190 countries and EU to abide by the guidelines agreed to in 2015. The United States under the Donald Trump Administration withdrew from the climate agreement in August of 2017. Trump's vendetta against "mother earth" was on full display during the entirety of his four years in office and the setbacks to the well-being of the environment will surely be felt long after he's long gone.

   In closing, it's really up to the so called world powers, including the US, UK, China, and India to name a few. It's finally becoming evident to just about every person whom has any knowledge of basic science that the planet cannot survive the destructive actions of the human race. I've quoted many statistics and factual data that proves we are on the verge of a potential apocalyptic weather event in the not too distant future. The only way we as a society and the custodians of our home planet, can possibly overcome the catastrophic amounts of damage we have inflicted over the past 150 years is working together. Countries must start joining forces and using each others capital and many resources available to have any chance at rescuing our permenant home called Earth.