Naomi Girson | opinions editor

If you have to leave your house to go to work, get groceries or just step outside for some fresh air, you are sure to notice the weather. Whether it’s snowing, humid, hailing or raining out there, it’s extreme. And it’s not in your head either.

It’s too late to prevent the most extreme aspects of man-made climate change, but we can still act now before the worst wipes us all out.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the global average temperature, according to data from 2024, has increased 2.63 degrees Fahrenheit from the global average in the pre-industrial era, 1850-1900.

Not only is the Earth warming up, it’s doing so at an exponential rate, with a greater increase in warming over the last 30 years, when compared to decades previous, according to NOAA.

This rise in global heat inevitably leads to more extreme changes in the weather, and the consequences are all around us including hotter, longer heat waves and stronger winds and rain. According to the Environmental Defense Fund, evaporation is boosted by higher temperatures, rising sea levels and more moisture in the atmosphere, therefore flooding becomes more likely.

Hawaii, for example, is facing its most serious flooding since 2004, Gov. Josh Green told AP News. The storm is responsible for $1 billion of damages across the area, from roads to homes, and though no deaths have been reported, 230 people were in peril due to the storm.

These kinds of disasters are happening more often in other areas too. More people are being affected, and a general lack of preparedness seems to be exacerbating the problems the climate is causing.

John Stolz, a professor of environmental engineering and science at Duquesne, said that though he’s glad that people are starting to observe the broader extremes in the weather, it’s not like nobody saw it coming.

“Climate scientists have been saying this was going to happen. And the naysayers said, ‘Oh, you’re making a big deal about it, all you care about is getting grant money to continue to research,’” Stolz said, but maybe the research would have made a difference.

For years in his classes, he has used resources to show his students what kinds of pollution cause the biggest upswings in carbon dioxide emissions. He even referred to Al Gore’s documentary from 2006, “An Inconvenient Truth,” an attempt to raise awareness on the dangers of global warming and act as a call to action, and yet little has changed in the last 20 years.

Efforts in the past few decades have been derailed, mainly by the corporations that contribute the most pollution.

According to NPR, in the early 1990s, many of the largest U.S. corporations teamed up to form the Global Climate Coalition to fight back against the efforts to reduce emissions.

The coalition, along with their hired scientists and pseudo-scientists, started to amplify suspicion, trying to sever the link between fossil fuels and climate change. It brought uncertainty to the media, and therefore the people. It was enough to cause the public to doubt the scientific evidence.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. If your power is out for four days, and it’s cold and windy out, you are going to notice the weather.

A 2025 study conducted by a group of researchers from Dartmouth College, found that the world’s biggest corporations have caused $28 trillion in climate change, with the researchers estimating 1% of greenhouse gas put into the atmosphere would equate to $502 billion in damage from just heat, disregarding other problems, including extreme weather.

We know who’s at fault here, and yet it still feels like nothing is going to change.

Just a couple weeks ago, when strong winds caused outages in much of Pittsburgh, Stolz went to a Giant Eagle. He said they were unable to sell any meat; they had enough generator power to keep the lights on, but not enough to keep the freezers at the proper temperatures.

Waste like this isn’t just happening at the corporate level. Every person’s home that has a fallen tree, or loss of power to deal with is wasting more and more money.

We have reached a point where we are reaping the consequences of not spending enough on the research when we had the opportunity.

“There were these predictions, and they continue to occur today, but folks didn’t listen, right?” Stolz said. “We can try and do things to reverse the trends and at least halt the current warming, but we can also choose not to do anything, and this is where I say that the consequences are going to be dire.”

Stolz gave suggestions of what we can do right now, to help the not-so-distant future of constant natural disasters wiping us all out.

From simple changes like a federally funded program to help people protect their houses with better windows, installation and fuel efficient changes. Starting stricter rules to transition to electric vehicles, and most importantly mandating a carbon tax, or cap on the large corporations that are causing so much damage.

It might have seemed expensive to fund someone’s global warming research 20 years ago, but now the money is being spent to repair the damages of global warming anyway.

“I hope that science will once again be recognized for its importance, that the climate scientists will be recognized as heroes and not villains, and that we will make the transition,” Stolz said.

Naomi Girson can be reached at girsonn@duq.edu