“Is it hot in here, or is it just you?” That’s definitely one of my favorite pick-up lines. It’s short; it’s sweet; it’s not excessively dirty. But now that you mention it, it is kind of hot in here…

Global warming is undeniable. The scientific evidence is accumulating, and now includesrising sea levels, melting ice caps, increases in ocean and air temperatures, and an almost palpable increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.

NASA’s 2008 report on surface temperatures revealed that the ten hottest years since 1880 have all occurred in the 12 years between 1997 and 2008. Evidence continues to accumulate with the altered geographic range of beetles, a shift in rain patterns, falling pH levels in the ocean–the list is seemingly endless. Some of you may be thinking, “Dhruv, you crazy. I woke up this morning, and it was so cold that I was shivering (Spongebob, anyone?). I could actually use some global warming right now. And remember when it snowed in October?”

Yeah, fine, global warming is a bit of a misnomer. It accurately describes the overall trend of temperature as steadily and ruthlessly rising, but it neglects an important effect. Global warming, as predicted by leading climatologists, will cause more unpredictable and extreme weather.

Skeptics who cite major snowstorms and frigid temperatures during winter as evidence that global warming is not occurring are actually helping corroborate the theory, as one of the predicted effects of global warming is worse winters.

The winter of 2010 was record setting. Europe, forced to close airports and other major forms of public transportation for weeks at a time, was hit especially hard, and our own Washington D.C. was hit with a whopping 55 inches of snow. Far from being contradictory, these seemingly opposite trends are actually helping to verify the hypotheses that leading climatologists such as James Hansen of NASA are postulating.

I’m sure you’re all well aware of the role that carbon dioxide plays in global warming, and also that humans seem to be able to affect carbon dioxide levels. The burning of fossil fuels leads to the dissemination of CO2 into the air; the CO2 concentration has more than doubled since 1850, when coal burst onto the manufacturing scene as a result of the Industrial Revolution.

Its effects? Glacial melting has sea levels rising so quickly and so unstoppably that the President of the Maldives has actually purchased land in Australia to relocate his people once the sea claims his island nation (picture Obama telling us all to move to Canada because of an imminent asteroid. I don’t know about you, but I’d be pretty sad if a comet destroyed my home).

Oh and by the way: scientists project rising oceans to swallow some of New York and California by around 2050. I scratch my head when I see our own country debating the existence of global warming when world leaders are prepared to spend millions of dollars on measures against or in response to it.

You could make the argument that you don’t care about bright yellow fish, or that you live so far away from the ocean you won’t feel the effects of rising oceans. But you’re definitely going to feel this: shifting rain patterns.

Australia, China, India, many nations in Africa, Argentina, Syria, and our very own United States are experiencing historic droughts as climate patterns shift and farmers are no longer able to rely on rainfall that has been constant since the first Native Americans. As a global community already struggling to feed developing countries, how are we to cope with a decreased food supply and the promise of even less?

Though global warming is anything but simple, let’s try to simplify the sequence: CO2 and other greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, causing increased global temperatures. The higher temperatures facilitate increased melting of the ice caps, causing rising seas and disrupting the natural flow of several ocean currents.

The now altered oceanic currents cause areas to change climate; previously rainy areas may become arid, and vice versa. If you have a taste for drama, global warming caters to that too: higher temperatures also catalyze the formation of larger and more powerful storms.
Dissenters claim that data has been “hockey-sticked”; they say that millions and billions of years ago temperatures and CO2 levels were much higher than they are now.

Harriton’s Mr. Megow, a Biology and Anatomy teacher, says of rising atmospheric CO2 levels, “There is no evidence that rising carbon dioxide levels is going on, or has gone on […]There is evidence that shows that it vacillates. It goes up and down.”

Though there is some truth to this statement, the argument is irrelevant. Yes, CO2 levels have gone above 300 parts per million before (the level is around 390ppm now). Yes, the level has then come back down. And yes, there is, in fact, an observable trend spanning hundreds of thousands of years that clearly shows that atmospheric CO2 levels fluctuate. The main point is not whether this process is cyclic, however; environmentalists are concerned with the myriad of problems that will surface if global warming proceeds unchecked.

Try telling the farmers and the hungry masses of the future that the change in rain patterns and CO2 content is merely a natural cycle, and that they shouldn’t worry—nature will right itself a few thousand years from now. Regardless of whether the process is cyclic or not, regardless of whether the environment will return to its original state, the change, temporary or not, will significantly affect human life.

The obvious question that comes next is, if this is such a huge deal and it could be so disastrous, what are we doing about it? The answer is fairly complicated. Though there are scientists like David Keith of Harvard University working on gadgets and contraptions like carbon scrubbers to remove the CO2 from the air, these are largely conducted on small grants.
Money is at a premium right now, and the US and the world have a growing list of demands placed on a shrinking budget.

Mr. Megow says, “I see it as an absolute travesty that they would waste that kind of money in [these] kind[s] of circumstances, when [we] have so many other things that I’d rather see the money put into. How about agribusiness? Putting it into learning how to grow food?”

I hear you, Mr. Megow. I really do. Opponents of global warming would see money being granted to scientists working on a solution for global warming as burning their tax dollars, especially when there are international economies to fix and wars to fight and developing countries to aid. They can say that if global warming was to have the catastrophic effects that are predicted, then advances in agribusiness will help the world feed itself.

I contend, however, that these new technologies would only be sparingly available to developing nations, much as medical advancements are today. I contend that these poor nations would be stuck, unable to produce the food they need.

I maintain that this would merely be alleviating a symptom, not curing the disease; if developing countries were given access to agribusiness advances, then they would still have to deal with stronger storms, which, especially in Bangladesh and other low-lying tropical countries, would have disastrous results.

No matter what conditions were before the Ice Age, the fact remains that there was no society as vulnerable and as huge as the one humans live in today. Today, we have 7 billion people to feed. There is already not enough arable land, and pretty soon, there won’t be enough water either.

We need to unify as a school, as a country, as a race, and meet this problem before it hangs us out to dry. We need to take this problem seriously, and start putting the human race ahead of other priorities, like getting reelected.