By Ava Morollo
A highly anticipated White House report on climate change is “frightening and heart breaking,” according to Nadav Fürgang, the co vice president of the Newton South Environmental Club.
According to the National Climate Assessment, which was created by more than 360 environmental scientists, Americans are already seeing noticeable changes in their own communities.
“So many Americans don’t believe that climate change is a real issue, let alone even occurring. The new evidence should make people care more now that people have more data and statistics to use in conversation,” Furgang said. “People will take greater notice because what’s going on has been affecting them, and is likely to cause more harm in the future.”
The White House released its report on Tuesday, May 6, showing the alarming threats facing our ever-changing environment.
Scientists compared the average temperatures from 1901-1960 to the temperatures from 1991-2012 and found that the average temperatures in most places have risen almost two degrees.
The report also continues by saying that summers will continue to get longer and dryer while winters will “generally be shorter and warmer.”
President Obama said he believes climate change is already affecting sectors of the economy and is not a problem to be dealt with later, but now. According to CNN, the new dangerous effects of Global Warming will threaten different aspects of the agriculture in the United States, which could send grocery store prices through the roof throughout every community in the country.
The New York Times reports that the main issue with climate change is that wet regions are seeing increasing amounts of rainfall, while the dry regions in our country are seeing less rain with every passing year. This environmental imbalance will only worsen in time.
In the Northeast, researchers found that rainfall has increased immensely and will only continue to do so, which will result in more flooding. Rising sea levels threaten highly populated cities, such as Boston and New York, which are located on the coast.
Over the past few years in the New England area, the community has seen an increasing amount of severe weather and a more extreme range of temperatures.
Scientist suggest that the new evidence should be taken seriously and further action should be taken to control climate change before it becomes irreversible.
South Senior Grace Smith, part of the senior sustainability project, believes people should have started coming to terms with global warming sooner.
“If people had accepted it earlier, we may not have had this problem that we do today,” Smith said. “We need to radically change our lifestyle. I don’t think people will though because they just don’t see global warming as a serious threat.”
