Depending on the “literature” you’ve read, yes maybe numbers don’t add up. If you’ve looked instead at peer reviewed articles by climate scientists, (which have been available since the ’70s) there’s really no question as to what is happening. There are three things to know.

First, the Earth is going through an unprecedented fast rate of changes which include overall growing global temperatures. There are people who will say that Earth has been hotter before, which is very true, but then fail to express is that there’s never been as drastic a change in as short a period of time (aside from maybe the mass extinction approximately 65 million years b.p.).

Now if that still doesn’t seem bad enough, remember the acidification of the worlds oceans. As carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere, some of it “sinks” into the seas (among other places, such as permafrost–see below). Soda water is great for an upset stomach, but see how long your goldfish lasts in a glass of it (please, don’t really do that).

Finally, there’s the permafrost feedback loop to consider. As the globe gets hotter, the permafrost across the Arctic will begin to melt, releasing tons of stored methane and other greenhouse gasses directly to the atmosphere, compounding the warming effect.

Obviously, it’s a very complex model to simulate (that seems to be the peg Trump, Pruitt and his gang of climate change deniers seem to currently be hanging their hats on). While it may be impossible to nail down predictions with certainty, the outcomes are basic: we do nothing and either a)end up on a dying world or b)we get lucky and narrowly escape a catastrophic extinction level event; alternatively we could reduce the Earth’s man made carbon emissions and either a) narrowly avoid a catastrophic extinction level event which we accomplished as a species, or b) life goes on as normal, but now we are completely independent of carbon based fuels so we no longer need to debate our energy requirement impact on the environment and the general health of the lands and oceans is improved.

One [or more] of those options should really stand out as something to avoid.