Part A. Climate Change and its Causes
Cloud Factories by Dave Sutherland is licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0
Climate Change
A shadowy hand grasps at a teetering globe.
“Climate” is the weather patterns in one place over a long period of time. Different places and times have different climates. For example, India has different weather patterns than Edmonton, and so a different climate.
The usual weather of the Earth now is very different than it was ten thousand, a hundred thousand, or a million years ago. This is because the climate of Earth has changed over the years.
However, right now the climate is changing in a very different way. This is because we, humans, are doing things that are causing the weather patterns of the Earth to shift.
The change we are causing is a global warming of the Earth. This warming will harm both humans and the environment in a number of ways.
When people talk about 'climate change', or when they more specifically discuss 'human-caused climate change' or 'anthropogenic climate change', these are the changes they are talking about. They are talking about changes that are driven by humans, and that are damaging both us and the environment.
Causes of Climate Change
An oil refinery emits gases that help contribute to climate change.
Humans impact weather and the environment in many ways. The most important way we change the climate is by releasing gases into the air. These gases are called greenhouse gases because they trap heat from the sun and keep it on Earth in much the same way a greenhouse roof traps heat inside the greenhouse.
When we release more of these gases, more heat is trapped on Earth and the Earth warms, causing climate change.
Most of these greenhouse gases come from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas in cars and factories like the one in the picture. This means that such cars and factories contribute to climate change.
For more information on how climate change works, and what causes it, please go to https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/climate-change/causes.html
Attribution: “Refinery by Candlelight” by Kurt Bauschardt is licensed under CC-BY-SA-2.0
Sources:
Cambridge English Dictionary. (n.d.). ANTHROPOGENIC: Meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. Retrieved July/August, 2020, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/anthropogenic
Environment and Climate Change Canada. (2019, November 28). Causes and effects of climate change. Retrieved July/August, 2020, from https://www.canada.ca/en/services/environment/weather/climatechange/causes-effects.html