This one image may change how you think about global warming

Last year, 2014, has been declared the hottest year since temperature records were started in 1880. Although the net temperature increase appears small, the local impacts are significant. Record setting years are also becoming more common, suggesting that the current period of warming is abnormal.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - A week ago, NASA and NOAA scientists announced that 2014 was the hottest year for the planet since 1880. The announcement has been heralded as a shot across the bow of climate skeptics who say that the climate has not warmed significantly for over a decade.

While the scientists and bloggers will argue over their charts and graphs, with one group hyping and the other downplaying, some very real changes have been noted.

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Alaska experienced an exceptionally warm year with permafrost defrosting, and residents looking for ways to keep cool in the summer, despite their latitude. The Western U.S. remains in the grip of an extreme drought, the likes of which have never been recorded since records were kept in that region. Entire communities in California have run out of water, forcing people to rely on trucked water and to forgo bathing. Reservoirs remain critically low. Despite recent rain and snowfall, forecasts suggest California and the Southwest will remain in drought for another year.

Conversely, the Eastern U.S. has experienced a second year of record breaking chills as arctic air dips south, bringing early freezes, white-outs, and all the suffering that comes with record-low temperatures.

In Russia, Siberian communities proclaim they are experiencing unusually warm conditions. The people enjoy these warmer days, but they cannot also shake the feeling that something big, and wrong is happening.

New measurements are also suggesting that the deep oceans are warming and coral reefs are dying.

Interestingly, the record cold in the Eastern U.S. is a product of global warming. Warming air over the north pole reduces the temperature gradient on the northern flank of the jet stream, causing that weather feature to meander much more than normal. Thanks to geography, it tends to dip south over the Eastern U.S. causing the dreaded "polar vortex" phenomenon. Cities in the Eastern U.S. can experience low temperatures that are even below those seen in Alaska and Canada.

Perhaps the biggest alarm isn't the rise in overall temperature, but that it was so warm in a year without a strong El Nino. Normally, warm sea surface temperatures in the South Pacific correlate with record years, but not this time. This has scientists worried that a subsequent El Nino could be far more devastating than any previous such event, when the next one finally occurs.

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Something big is happening. That something is alleged to be human activity. Animals are going extinct at a rate not seen in millions of years, prompting scientists to declare the planet in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event in all time. Other mass extinctions, all linked to climate change, occurred because of natural cataclysms. This time is different, the cataclysm appears preventable.

Part of the problem is that we think we have more air and water than we really have. The fact is, if the earth were the size of a billiard ball, the atmosphere would be as thick as a sheet of paper; there would be even less water. We feel rich, but in reality we have already polluted even the most remote part of our skies and the deepest parts of the ocean. In our greed, we have tainted everything.

The measurements can be minimized, however the trend remains upwards. Sea ice can expand, local anomalies can occur, but the data remains.

We are pumping more CO2 into our atmosphere than the planet can process through natural means. That added CO2 contributes to global warming. The rise may be slow, but it's real and the changes we are seeing are happening too fast for natural selection and adaptation to serve as effective coping mechanisms.

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We are destroying our planet and the longer we argue over the significance of a tenth of a degree, the more time passes without an effective solution.

As Catholics we're looking forward to Pope Francis' new focus on climate change and the environment and its impact on human life and world ecology.

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