Climate Alteration: The Concept Of Climate Change

For centuries our ancestors have understood that altering our environment would have some form of impact on the world around us. But the world was so large and endless to them that their concept of climate alteration was only understood on a local level. Only during the late 19th and 20th century did climate change really begin to immerge as an idea (Spencer Weart 2015). This theory of “climate change is the idea that humans are having a direct impact on global and regional climate patterns. Today we know that climate change can cause sea level rises due to shrinking ice sheets and glaciers, global temperature, warming of the oceans, extreme weather events, and ocean acidification (NASA, 2014). Around this time people were for the first time emitting large amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere due to the industrial behavior of this period. As early as 1896 climate change pioneer Svante Arrhenius began researching the impact of carbon emissions on the climate. He believed that humanity was facing a “crisis with our relationship with nature” that would lead to “catastrophic result for the sustainability of civilization and even the

Even town planners need to play a role to prevent further climate change. It is possible that a town planner use planning policies and design to mitigate climate change. A great example of this is the recent policy in France that requires every new building to either had a green rooftop or solar panels (J.Richardson, 2015). Green roofing is useful for reducing our impact on the environment as it absorbs part of the rainwater that falls on our roofing and this reduces storm water runoff and lowers amounts of pollution entering our drainage system. It also is useful for absorbing carbon from the atmosphere (T.Matthews, pg.22,