Climate change leads to severe weather conditions, impacts

posted in: Opinion | 0

In recent years, we’ve seen an uptick in natural disasters. It’s hard not to notice this trend; forest fires have been increasing in both severity and damage, and we anticipate hurricane season every year, praying that it won’t be worse than the previous.

Just recently we followed the burning of the Amazon rainforest on social media. People on Twitter and other platforms went into a frenzy, reblogging, retweeting and posting a multitude of things about the rainforest and the inevitable doom of the human species.

According to the Center for Research of Epidemiology and Disease, the amount of flood and storm catastrophes have risen by 7.4% annually in recent decades. The number of geographical disasters such as earthquakes and volcano eruptions have stayed relatively the same since the 1970s, but the number of climate-related catastrophes has vastly increased.

Where is the news coverage on this? People raved about the Amazon being on fire, but went silent after a couple weeks. According to ABC News, the fire is still burning. Where did all of these so called “activists” go? People dropped the subject and moved on with their lives.

In 2008, a United States government report was issued, stating that the impacts of climate change, including wildfires, droughts and storms, are worsening, according to VOA News. The report was written through the collaboration of a dozen different government agencies and departments, and contradicts many of the statements made about the environment by President Donald Trump.

The National Climate Assessment warned of more powerful and longer lasting weather disasters that were influenced in some way by climate change. These weather disasters will become more common around the globe, and unless we step up and do something about it, they could become even worse.

When people are unaware of these facts and these reports, it makes it easy to pass along the issue of climate change to someone higher up in the bureaucratic chain. In order for this to change, we need to put a spotlight onto all of these natural disasters, focus on the gritty details — because not that many people know the ugly parts — and come up with a plan of action.

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