BY FRANK DALENE
In September of 2012, National Geographic published an issue with a cover article titled “What’s Up With the Weather?” The article, which itself was titled “Weather Gone Wild,” reported on extreme weather patterns and changes in Earth’s climate.
Since then, the weather has only gotten wilder. A recent Wall Street Journal article about real estate and climate risk reported some startling statistics: “In Miami, sea level is predicted to rise up to 17 inches by 2040 compared with 2000 levels, according to the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact. […] In Charleston Harbor, there were 52 major flood events recorded between 1922 and 2023; 38 of them have occurred since 2015, according to data compiled by the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Charleston. […] In 2024, the Phoenix area saw a record-breaking 113 consecutive days over 100 degrees, according to data compiled by the NWS Weather Forecast Office in Phoenix.”
The article pointed out that “Even places that were long considered safe zones, such as Vermont, which saw catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Beryl in 2024, are seeing more frequent and more ferocious natural disasters such as fires, floods, hurricanes, heat waves, droughts and landslides.” Indeed, the article states, “It is no surprise to anyone that the weather is making huge swaths of the U.S. increasingly inhospitable.”[1]
“Climate change” has become a politically fraught term—but the climate is, objectively, changing. It is observable. It is measurable. It is fact. We have the data. Our planet is changing in measurable ways—and we have measured it. We have measured, and found the amount of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere is rising. The acidity levels in oceans and lakes around the world are rising. The temperature of the ocean is rising, and sea levels will therefore rise from thermal expansion alone, regardless of whether glaciers and ice caps are melting. Wildlife is being decimated. We are seeing massive biodiversity degradation as entire species face endangerment and extinction. Lakes that once flourished with life have become barren wastelands—“dead lakes” that live up to their name. The oases that once dotted the planet’s great deserts, providing sustenance to desert flora and fauna, have shrunk and vanished.
But it is not only wildlife under threat. The human species is in perilous danger as well. And not just some vague future danger; as the statistics in the Wall Street Journal article show, the crisis is already deeply affecting human lives. Storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, and typhoons are all growing bigger, more powerful, and more frequent—as are floods, droughts, and wildfires. The destruction these natural disasters rain down upon the communities they hit is devastating, and the effects reverberate, as the ruination of farmland results in food shortages and famine.
All of these events and changes are measurable. There is no disputing the fact that they are, in fact, occurring. I always say that there’s no such thing as a climate denier, because you cannot deny what is happening around us. There is hard evidence that the climate is changing.
The true debate surrounding climate change is not about whether our environment is changing; rather, it is focused on the cause. When people argue about whether climate change is “real”, what they are truly debating is the cause of these changes. Climate change “deniers” are usually denying not climate change itself, but whether it is caused by human activity. They argue that these changes are occurring naturally. And yes, it is indeed possible that some of the measurable environmental changes we are witnessing can be attributed to the kind of long-term weather patterns that have occurred throughout our planet’s history, the same weather patterns that contributed to the Ice Ages of our prehistoric past.
We can also measure the amount of CO2 and CO2 equivalents— the six types of greenhouse gasses that cause global warming (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydro fluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride)—in our atmosphere, and it has been rising exponentially over the past two centuries. And we can measure the greenhouse gasses that are produced by human activity. These emissions have increased exponentially since the Industrial Revolution, when we started bringing fossil fuels out of the earth on a massive scale and burning them for energy. Given this data, there is no question that human activity is releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
In fact, it may not be an either/or scenario. Both of these explanations may be true and may be compounding each other. But the real truth is this: the debate around the cause of climate change is entirely besides the point. Climate change itself is undeniable. It is not a religion. It does not require belief. It is scientific fact based on the data we have. It is measurable, observable. The climate is changing. We can’t do anything about long term weather patterns, but we can reduce our use of fossil fuels by adopting renewable energy and we must act to stop it—now.
[1] Kris Frieswick, “Why the Megarich Insist on Buying Homes in Extreme Weather Zones,” Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2025, sec. Real Estate, https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/real-estate-climate-risk-wealthy-homeowners-442abec9.