What is climate change?
Climate change is a global phenomenon which is causing the world to warm. It is driven largely by the emissions of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, from burning fossil fuels (natural gas, oil and coal). Greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere. Almost all our actions, from boiling a kettle to driving to the shops, cause greenhouse gases to be emitted because we live in a society which is created around the ready availability of energy from fossil fuels. Some further explanation from my book is given in the panel opposite.
The consequences of climate change range from extreme weather events in the form of floods (the main impact on the UK), storms, droughts, wild fires and heat waves to rising sea level. Almost everywhere is experiencing some impact of climate change. We can all do something to reduce, or even eliminate, our contribution to the emissions of greenhouse gases, some more than others, as explored elsewhere in this site. |
"For millions of years the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases has stayed within limits determined by natural processes. The global climate has been more or less in an equilibrium state with a balance between the natural emissions of greenhouse gases, from volcanoes, wildfires, rotting vegetation and so on and their uptake by the natural sinks of the atmosphere, the ocean and living vegetation. Changes in global temperature have taken place only slowly. On the other hand, mostly since the start of the industrial revolution in the mid-18th century, humanity has inadvertently acted to upset this equilibrium. Fossil fuels, first in the form of coal, and then as oil and natural gas, have been burnt in huge quantities and by doing so have added to the CO2 in the atmosphere. Similarly there have been significant changes in land use, for example the planting of rice paddies to feed a growing population, and the rearing of huge numbers of cattle, both of which generate the powerful greenhouse gas methane, and the destruction of peat bogs and forests that normally store carbon, which also leads to the generation of CO2."
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