Few of Climate Change Causes

What caused it, and what are the dangers it produces?

The natural greenhouse effect ensures that our planet has a climate suited for life. When the Sun’s rays reach the Earth’s surface, they are only partially absorbed, the rest of them being reflected outwards. They would be dispersed into space if the atmosphere did not exist; instead, the majority of them are trapped and redirected back towards the Earth by gasses present in the atmosphere known as greenhouse gasses due to the effect they produce.

Climate Change Causes

Why are we so worried about the greenhouse effect if it is such a beneficial phenomenon? What is the relevance of global warming? And what exactly is climate change?

Climate change has always existed throughout the history of our world. However, the global warming that has been observed during the last 150 years is unusual since it is the effect of human activities. With the industrial revolution, man abruptly began spewing millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the sky, tripling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere compared to the minimum levels of the previous 700,000 years (410-415 parts per million compared with 200-180 parts per million). 

*For almost 15 years, evidence produced by thousands of scientists all over the world, examined and coordinated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has proved that global warming is driven by the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, i.e., human activity. In actuality, the scientific basis for the link between carbon dioxide levels and temperature rises was established in the last century, due to the work of Nobel Prize winner Svante Arrhenius, which was later validated by American scientist David Keeling in the 1960s.

Climate Change’s Consequences

The average global temperature climbed by 0.98 degrees Celsius over the last century, and the trend since 2000 suggests that, unless remedies are implemented, a further rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2030 is likely to happen. Global warming is already having an effect: arctic sea ice has been disappearing by 12.85 percent every decade, while coastal tide logs show that sea levels have been rising by 3.3mm per year since 1870.

The decade 2009-2019 was the hottest ever recorded, with 2020 ranking second only to the record year of 2016. Since 1990, the frequency of extreme weather events such as cyclones and floods has also grown, happening even at unexpected times of the year and at destructive levels of intensity. Plant and animal species are moving in unanticipated ways from one environment to another, causing irreparable damage to biodiversity throughout the planet.

All of this may be defined as climate change, but it does not provide a whole picture of what is going on. We must begin by discussing the climate catastrophe, because the climate has always changed, but never so fast and never in the midst of such inflexible and complicated infrastructure as may be found in industrialized towns and production systems.