It's a long story, but climate scientists have been warning that the Earth's average atmospheric temperatures have been slowly rising over the past 170 years or so.

Mother nature releases CO2 into the atmosphere through the decay of organic matter. In turn, most of this CO2 is absorbed by the oceans, plants and trees. Through this release and absorption process, nature has maintained a delicate balance in the CO2 concentration at roughly 300 parts-per-million (ppm) for thousands of years.

Electric power plants, cars, trucks, ships, trains, and aircraft are releasing about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere daily. And, to make matters worse, humans have also cut down trillions of trees, so less CO2 is being absorbed. Overall, this human activity has caused the CO2 concentration to increase to about 415 ppm and rising fast.

CO2 is a 'greenhouse' gas, which means it absorbs and retains heat. Methane, and water vapor (humidity) in the air and clouds are also greenhouse gases. Without enough of these greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the ambient air temperature would turn freezing cold at night when the sun goes down.

But, we have just the opposite problem, in fact. There's too much greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and it's increasing rapidly as our populations increase. The worldwide climate is warming, causing changes in the jet stream which in turn leads to extreme and erratic weather events, droughts, farm crop losses, and melting glaciers and polar ice.

The oceans are also warming and acidifying, and this is probably most concerning aspect of the warming climate. For decades, the oceans have been absorbing heat and CO2 from the atmosphere and thereby have slowed down the climate warming.

But now, the oceans are saturated with heat and are warming rapidly and there's no stopping it. The warming oceans are destroying sea life and melting the polar ice caps, and self-reinforcing feedback loops have started, ie the loss of ice leads to more ocean warming, which in turn leads to more ice melting, and so on. In short, climate warming is now accelerating out-of-control.

The old saying, "life is not fair" is a harsh reality when we look at climate change. The less-developed poorer regions of the world contribute relatively little to climate change, but will be hardest hit. The more developed and wealthy regions of North America, Europe, and Asia contribute an overwhelming amount to climate change, but will suffer the least. Within a decade, we will see mass migrations away from drought-stricken regions, famine on a biblical scale, and conflicts over the Earth's remaining resources, all of which are well under way.

Greta Thunberg is a climate activist who is courageously carrying the message about the threat of climate change, and the impending catastrophe if nothing is done to deal with it.