Failing to address climate change will lead to real impacts

Climate change is no fictional tale.

As more and more evidence is released each day showing the truth of our severe influence on our globe, the more and more it seems the oil companies try harder to spread misinformation, confusing the public. Recently, the Alt Right news website Breitbart published an article further pushing the false idea that one of the most dangerous things facing our world today is a hoax, like many times before, but this time they distorted reality even farther.

While addressing climate change, Breitbart used clips of The Weather Channel out of context in an attempt to appear more factual in their lies, but The Weather Channel responded. Kait Parker, a meteorologist who had one of her broadcasts falsely edited by the news site, addressed them directly while on air by shaming them for their disgustingly twisted lies. She then went on to disprove an argument Breitbart had made, as they stated that the earth is actually one degree celsius colder this year, being a record low within the 21st century so far. Parker shows that this statistic was only found by looking at land, not oceans. Our planet is 70 percent water and is also where most of our heat is stored, which is actually at record highs this year. The statement that our land is colder this year is also unreliable, having only one satellite estimation to back it up.

When talking of climate change, it is important to differentiate facts from feelings. When someone asks a climate change denier why the government would develop such an elaborate and pointless lie, usually the denier does not have a reasonable response. When pushed, most of them will bring up the “greedy scientists” wanting all of that wealthy grant money for themselves.

This needs to be stated right now. If you want a lot of money, You. Do. Not. Go. Into. Science.

These scientists (which the overwhelming majority of 84 percent have stated that humans play a major role in our changing climate) go into science because of fascination, not greed. Can anyone guess where one might go to for greed? Oil companies. Isn’t that rather curious? It almost seems like these people are formulating some sort of elaborate lie as a way of making sure they no longer have to worry about their money being trampled on.

Scientists do not receive much money, most of them have just about enough to sustain themselves all in the attempt to move forward in our limited understandings of reality and what illuminates it, but the oil companies have money spilling out of their greedy pockets, wanting to keep every last cent to add to their mountains of green.

Maybe in the end there really is a conspiracy surrounding climate change, but in the opposite direction these people suspect. Wouldn’t it seem much more logical if the people who had money to lose wanted to stop the spreading of information by the ones who only want to educate by telling people the reputation-destroying facts? Wouldn’t they then have something to actually gain in their attempts, rather than the ones who reap no benefits?

It is undeniable that our climate has been rising since the 20th century along with our oceans, and as science properly understands this; it is clearly not natural. The industrial revolution resulted in the use of non renewable resources worldwide, and even though it was one of the most important periods in human progression, we now need to stop this ridiculous denying of science and come together to combat this deadly force we have created.

One cannot help but feel afraid, though, for the future of the globe as President Elect Donald J. Trump states that he will wrench us from the Paris Agreement on day one of his presidency and even recently has stated “nobody really knows” if climate change is true or not. Picking so many climate change deniers into the government is very worrying, seeming as if we are going to be pushed far back in our progress with our environmental efforts.

We are heading into scary times. Climate change is real and dangerous. It needs to be treated as a major threat to the world, and if it’s not, well, some day in the future we may be living in a flooded world of waste and decay.

As we rope ourselves back into the fog that has been consuming our minds for so long, all I can do is hope that someday, someday soon, we will awaken, the human race will open their closed eyes and step into the light, into reality.