People tend to get caught up in their day to day dramas: as individuals and small groups, as affiliates, as nations and races. Each day, concentration on these matters endangers our planet by stealing valuable attention from the real issues facing our world. As people continue to allow personal strife and allegiances to dominate their interactions with others and the rest of the globe, issues that affect us all are swept under the rug and often go un-addressed. This is not good.
The planet is in need of the cooperation of its inhabitants as never before. Global warming could be real — and if it is, there are dire effects awaiting in the near future. Icecaps will melt at faster rates, leading to oceanic temperature changes that could cause the mass extinctions of many species of sea life that contribute to the lowest levels of the food chain. This can cause great calamity when it carries further up the food chain, as many larger organisms and plants that we count on for our nutritional needs become affected. Once those aspects of the circle of life are removed from the equation, it is only a matter of time before humanity is endangered as well.
Oceanic temperature changes, even relatively small ones, can also have a dramatic and dangerous impact on atmospheric conditions contributing to meteorological disturbances. These changes, for instance, can bring on more violent weather patterns, and worse occurrences of existing violent weather events. The frequency and intensity of hurricanes and tropical cyclones my increase, leading to more damage and loss of life than in previous years. Tornadoes become larger and more destructive,a and might occur in places not traditionally associated with tornadic activity. The same would be true of winter weather, such as blizzards and ice storms.
The threat of a sudden, massive climate change has been discussed by scientists and speculators for years, though there is no indication any such thing is imminent. The world, regardless of global warming and changing weather patterns, is unlikely to experiences any sudden catastrophic event associated with the consequences of global temperature increases. Many of the worst results are slow, and only gradually come about.
Getting back to the food chain, we have to look seriously at grains and their production. When the earth’s ability to sustain agriculture is damaged by global warming and developing third world countries cannot produce enough grain to keep their peoples fed, human starvation becomes a stark reality. It can be tough to keep track of all the indicators of a slow and gradual climate change, and records have only started being kept in recent years, but hopefully there will be a “big picture” to look at before long, and we will all have a better idea how serious this climate change might become, and whether global warming as it is marketed is real, or just a big pattern we haven’t noticed before.
