After decades of debate, the world's scientific community has agreed global warming is real and is attributable in great part to mankind. Global warming is caused when green house gases - primarily carbon dioxide - accumulate in the Earth's atmosphere and act as a blanket to hold in heat. While it is natural for carbon dioxide and other gases to warm the surface of the Earth by trapping solar heat, human activities - such as burning coal, gas, and oil and clearing forests - has dramatically increased the amount of carbon dioxide present in the Earth's atmosphere.

There is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now than any time in the past 650,000 years. This increase in the Earth's atmospheric temperature is causing major climactic and geographic changes, ranging from severe storms, rising sea levels, melting glaciers, and scorching droughts.

• The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.
• Malaria has spread to higher altitudes in places like the Colombian Andes, 7,000 feet above sea level.
• The flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland has more than doubled over the past decade.
• At least 279 species of plants and animals are already responding to global warming, moving closer to the poles.

If the warming continues, we can expect catastrophic consequences.

• Deaths from global warming will double in just 25 years - to 30,000 people a year.
• Global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.
• Heat waves will be more frequent and more intense.
• Droughts and wildfires will occur more often.
• The Arctic Ocean could be ice free in summer by 2050.
• More than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by 2050.