If 97% of aviation engineers, as well as every single major engineering body in the world, predicted that a flight out of Hartsfield-Jackson would explode in the middle of the ocean, would any passengers still board?

The majority of passengers would take another plane, but somehow 73% of the same people would board the plane when it comes to human-caused climate change. Despite what media outlets say, almost every single climate scientist — from the most famous meteorologists to the most obscure graduate students — agrees that anthropogenic climate change exists. The world faces the largest and most widespread threat in human history: it could destroy agriculture, make millions homeless, make deadly hurricanes commonplace, and kill the vast majority of oceanic life forms. Nevertheless, 32% of Democrats and 83% of Republicans do not even believe in climate change, let alone believe that humans cause it. The plane’s engines exploded, but the passengers still calmly chat about their plans as they hurtle toward a watery death.

The 2016 summer broke every heat record set in human history, just like the summers of 2014 and 2015. In fact, the past half-century can be viewed as a cycle of record breaking, with each year’s heat surpassing the temperatures of the previous year.

Courtesy of NOAA

Climate change deniers point out the natural cycles of warming and cooling that characterize the earth’s climate history, and they do so correctly, but the current state of climate change happens at a historically and scientifically unprecedented rate, unexplainable by the gradual rise in global temperatures. Furthermore, human emissions of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Methane (CH4) add to the warmth.

Of course, I would misrepresent politics and the intelligence of politicians by claiming all skeptics refuse to acknowledge climate change. While the great majority of deniers negate climate change’s existence, a fairly sizeable minority acknowledge it but argue that the world should take no action for fear of economic ruin. Dissidents argue that halting economic growth, especially in poorer nations, would affect humanity to a much greater degree and much quicker than whatever devastation climate change will bring.

These “experts”, while correct in many of their assessments of climate regulation, ignore the harsh realities of global climate change. Within the next century, in the age of the experts’ grandchildren, sea levels will have risen enough to submerge major metropolitan areas. As growing seasons in parts of the planet lengthen, and intrepid entrepreneurs buy “climate change real estate” in anticipation of rising sea levels, most agricultural sites in the world will turn barren, and rising sea levels and droughts will push world infrastructure past its breaking point. The world cannot ignore the threat, for the sake of its children, grandchildren, and the safety of society.