Global Warming is Real and Here's Why

By Nithin Sivakumar

UN sustainable goal 13, climate action, is based on the overwhelming and imminent threat of global warming. Global temperatures are on the rise, leading to increased droughts, wildfires, floods, tropical storms, and other natural disasters. Large areas of previously arable land are quickly becoming unusable for farming, leaving many depending on the land poor, displaced, and hungry.


Scientists around the world are linking global warming to human activities. However, there are many factors that could affect the climate: deforestation, industrialization, transportation,  modern architecture, mass consumption, and more. To narrow it down, let's take a look at a few visualizations relating to the causes and effects of climate change.

https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/nithin.sivakumar/viz/GlobalWarming_16439910739760/Infographic 


The Causes

Two of the most common causes of global warming stem from recent 20th and 21st-century trends. First of which is industrialization. After World War II, many developing countries began to industrialize. Along with industrialization came factories, which required large quantities of natural resources to run. In recent years, countries around the world have been draining the earth’s fossil fuels to power factories and modern innovations. As stated by NASA, "the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil has increased the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide" (1). By burning these fossil fuels for factory machines, industrialization leads to large-scale carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions, slowly destroying the atmosphere as harmful gasses slowly tear through its thin surface.


Secondly, global deforestation has taken a large leap in recent decades furthering global warming and climate change. As trees are cut down for wood and for fuel, many of the earth’s natural carbon dioxide regulators are destroyed. Trees are vital to the carbon dioxide cycle as they absorb CO2 in the air and release oxygen in the process of photosynthesis.


The Effects

Now we know how human activity furthers global warming and increases CO2 emissions worldwide. But how else has it affected the environment? The graphic above also displays one of the most noticeable effects of global warming in recent times: the melting of polar ice caps. Just in two decades, the ice caps have decreased in mass by over two thousand million square kilometers in Antarctica and even more in Greenland. These trends are only getting steeper as time passes showing the contemporary effects of global warming.


What's Next?

As seen by data collected from recent trends, it is a proven fact that global warming is a very dangerous and increasingly upcoming problem. We as humans are abusing the environment by altering its natural state at high levels. Although deforestation and industrialization are furthering humanity in one way by providing more advanced technology and architecture, in the long run, they will slowly destroy the earth we live upon. As a community and species it is important that we put together the resources that we have and funnel them into creating more sustainable solutions that will provide even for the generations to come.


But with all this environmental devastation comes a brighter side. As the problem becomes more relevant, more and more people are learning about global warming and are taking a stand for our planet. Celebrities around the world have sparked movements advocating for clean water, food, and energy. In 2016, Leonardo DiCaprio brought attention to the subject at his speech at the Oscars, widening global knowledge of climate change. Passionate people around the world have formed non profit organizations such as 350.org, Climate Reality Project, ecoAmerica and more. We everyday people can make a difference by supporting groups like these and by limiting our usage of modern technologies. Step by step, we can reverse our negative implications on the environment and return the earth to a healthy state.


"We have a single mission: to protect and hand on the planet to the next generation" - Francois Hollande