Us, Humans, are Responsible for Climate Change
One very important thing to understand is that the Earth getting hotter, is not a natural thing. The earth is warming because humans are causing it. When we say climate change is caused by humans, we call it anthropogenic climate change.
What is happening to the planet is due to us humans and is not part of the “normal” cycle.
All this warming is largely caused by an increase in sources of greenhouse gas emissions that comes from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil or coal. All of this burning is used for transportation, electricity, making buildings, farming, factories and the domestic and industrial waste sector.
Activities that involve changing the land such as deforestation gives out greenhouse gases. For example, the soil of many forests and the trees themselves absorb and store greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide which is used for photosynthesis. If these ecosystems and forests are destroyed, the carbon they had stored is released.
Keywords:
Climate Change: A long-term shift in weather patterns that determine the Earth’s local, regional and global climate.
Anthropogenic: from the Greek work “anthro” meaning man, human. Anthropogenic describes changes caused or influenced due to human activity.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states: “Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact”
Climate scientists have shown that humans have been responsible for global warming over the last 100 years.
The average temperature of the Earth’s surface is now about 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in the late 1800s and warmer than at anytime in the last 100,000 years. The last decade (2011-2020) was the warmest on record, and each of the last four decades have been warmer than any previous decade since 1850.
Many people think climate change mainly means warmer temperatures. But temperature rise is only the beginning of the story. Because the Earth is a system, where everything is connected, changes in one area can influence changes in all others.
The graph on the right shows that the earth has been slowly warming over the last 200 years because of humans.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): The IPCC is an organization of scientists and researchers from all over the world that study climate change. Every couple of years they release scientific reports which show how much climate change is and will impact the world. And what we have been doing and can do to stop it.
Check out the IPCC here!