What’s Behind Climate Change?
The earth has warmed an average of 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. Understanding the forces behind climate change can guide future decisions.
Climate change describes shifts in long-term climate patterns, including air temperature, precipitation and weather patterns. Climate change is impacted by both human and natural causes. Burning fossil fuels for energy production and converting land from agriculture or natural use to development (housing, buildings) emits greenhouse gases and are the main human causes of climate change. Higher concentration of greenhouse gases, which include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor and halocarbons, decreases the amount of energy that reflects back toward space from the Earth’s surface. Increased energy on the Earth’s surface means increased temperatures Since the industrial age, the carbon stored in fossil fuels has been …
Gerry Szumiak
2:53 pm on Wednesday, February 27, 2013
From PDF E3150 : Do scientists disagree about climate change? Nearly all climate scientists agree that the global climate is changing and its cause is human related. Climate science is a long-established scientific field that is based on the basic laws of physics and chemistry, and over 95% of Earth scientists (including climate scientists) agree that humans contribute to climate change. Most of … more ›