The scenarios are hard to imagine: Floodwaters eroding the Manhattan skyline. Siberian winters in London. Island nations swept away with the tide.

These, the scientists tell us, are some examples of what may happen if we don’t do something to slow down a warming trend that could someday wreak havoc on our planet. That’s about all they can tell us for sure. They can’t predict exactly what will happen, when it will happen or how our actions today could change things.

Although there are still some skeptics, many experts agree that manmade greenhouse gases (released by burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars) are, in fact, contributing to climate change. From there, things get complicated. Whether you’re a scientist, a politician or just an average person trying to live responsibly, you have questions.

Can small changes we each make in our daily lives really alter the future?

Who bears the greatest responsibility, governments or individuals? How much do we really know about nature, our planet and the universe? Are we arrogant to believe that our actions are responsible for rising temperatures, and that we have the power to "undo" the damage? Or are we foolish to be wasting time debating the evidence?

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Maybe you heard about the "lost world" discovered in an Indonesian jungle a few months ago.

Scientists were dropped by helicopter into a remote area of the Foja Mountains in New Guinea, where they found new species of butterflies, plants, frogs and a bird, as well as a type of kangaroo that was believed to be near-extinct. Just as important is what they did not find: evidence that humans had been there before them.

I’m not an animal lover or a nature buff, but this story fascinated me. A patch of Earth untouched by humans? How precious this discovery, in our doom-and-gloom world, and how ironic that it be made in a time when we are waging war over natural resources and bickering over the most equitable way to battle climate change. Who knows what other secret ecosystems exist, unbeknownst to us, on the bottom of the ocean, or somewhere in space? After a discovery like this, anything seems possible.

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Is it so farfetched to imagine future generations living in space stations or on other planets? At this moment, the New Horizons spacecraft is hurtling toward the outer region of our solar system. It is scheduled to reach Pluto in 10 years, traveling at a speed of up to 47,000 miles per hour during a 3-billion-mile journey. Besides sending back images of Pluto, it will explore the Kuiper Belt, a region of icy, rocky bodies in the area past Neptune.

Can you imagine where you’ll be in 10 years, when the photos are beamed back to Earth? My third-grader will be a college freshman; my moody toddler will be, well … a moody adolescent. Maybe by then global warming will be a national security issue rather than an environmental one. Maybe by then there will be compelling evidence that we are, in fact, the architects of our own destruction. And maybe there won’t. Does it really matter? While the politicians wrangle and the scientists debate the evidence, we, the people, can take action.

Regardless of whether global warming is a real threat that can be addressed, it just makes sense for us to be good stewards of our planet. Because we respect nature and appreciate the wonders of our world, we should all do our part, in any little way we can, to use our resources wisely. We can buy energy-efficient cars and appliances. We can drive a little less and recycle a little more. We can plant trees and use fluorescent light bulbs.

Meanwhile, we can encourage our children to study science and our leaders to keep pushing the boundaries with space exploration. After all, if the worst of the worst-case scenarios comes to pass, and global warming one day makes the Earth uninhabitable, we need to keep our options open.

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Lisa Miller is a freelance writer who lives in Oneonta. She can be reached at lisamiller44@hotmail.com.