Don’t Believe in Global Warming? I am Living Through the Side Effects

By NJ

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So, global warming. The ever present member of the “We are here to end humanity” squad that has been around for decades. Yet there seems to be an alarmingly large number of people who believe it’s a myth. It’s not their fault. The subject of global warming is one that everyone talks about. From politicians during their campaigning to Philanthropists writing books; but shockingly little has been done to combat it. We talk, write and complain about it but it's extremely difficult to fight against it. This is due to the fact that in order to combat global warming, we need to make changes. Not little changes. We would have to make massive changes. Changes to our daily lifestyle. And this is a daunting task. Particularly since these changes would also have to be done in all aspects of humanity. There would be economic and social changes that would have to be made and we are running out of time. To quote directly from climate.nasa.gov - “In the absence of major action to reduce emissions, global temperature is on track to rise by 2.5°C to 4.5°C (4.5°F to 8°F) by 2100, according to the latest estimates.”. 

Now, 2100 may seem decades away (and you aren’t wrong), the fact is the changes we make won’t stop global warming in its tracks. It isn’t something we can switch on and off. The changes we make now might take years to come into fruition, but ultimately prevention is always better than the cure. We have failed at the former. So it's time to find a cure. While I won’t be going over any of the cures here (I am not an environmental scientist), I want to use an example, a personal example, to show people global warming is very real and very dangerous. I hope these will perhaps change the opinion of some of the people who might be on the fence about the severity of global warming.

I live in India and we border two major water bodies. The bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. Now, the bay of Bengal has always been a hotbed for cyclones and storms. Infact, the bay is perfect for the formation of a cyclonic storm. However, the arabian sea is largely considered the calmer of the two. Until recently, that is. The temperature has risen in the Arabian sea and scientists directly blame climate change for it, and this has resulted in more and more cyclones emerging out of the region. I have lived a relatively short life, just 16 years, but the changes have been large enough for me to notice. The amount of storms and cyclones have gone up since 2018 (infact, where I live, flooding is now a real danger, something we didn’t experience on a large scale, as storms bring in torrents of rain that cause extreme damage, sometimes submerging entire houses). In the last 4 years, I have seen around 3 to 4 significant cyclonic storms. In the first 12 years of my life, I can’t remember experiencing any. Many of these severe cyclonic storms left dozens and sometimes hundreds of people dead or missing and caused billions of dollars worth of property damage.

To give a few specific examples-

• Cyclone Amphan - 128 dead (98 Indians, 26 Bangladeshis and 4 Sri Lankans). In total (ie, all affected countries together) 13.7 billion USD were the reported damages.
• Cyclone Tauktae - 174 dead, 81 missing (India and Pakistan). It caused 2.1 billion USD worth of damage.
• Cyclone Okhi - 381 dead, 141 missing [Affected areas - Sri Lanka, India (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Lakshadeep)]. Total of around 518 million dollars of damage was sustained in total (I couldn’t find a record of damages in Sri Lanka so this estimate doesn’t include that.)

*The name of the countries and states are arranged in order of severity of damages/fatalities sustained.

I remember Cyclone Okhi. Everything was normal until it wasn’t. What ensued after that was months of flooding, heavy rain with thousands of people displaced or affected by the rain and flooding.

And Tauktae was of course very recent so I remember it well. The flooding was intense in many parts of India with hundreds dead.

The fact remains that these events are devastating and climate change is responsible for it. While it is true that India experiences a large amount of cyclones from the bay of Bengal, now the Arabian sea is also adding to it. And that is due to the rising temperatures which is caused by climate changes.

These articles give more specifics to what I have detailed above -

• Tauktae: How Arabian Sea has become a hotbed of cyclones - India News (indiatoday.in)
  
• Number of Cyclones Over North Indian Ocean Increased by 32% in Past Five Years | The Weather Channel - Articles from The Weather Channel | weather.com

                               
Even as I sit here writing this article now, there is a cyclone brewing in the Bay of Bengal. That's 2 cyclones in the span of 2 weeks.

And this isn’t limited to just the Indian Subcontinent and its surrounding areas. Similar changes have happened around the globe and we need to start acting on it. It won’t be easy. But nothing worth doing ever is.