The Dangers Of Climate Change

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Climate change has been nothing, but controversial in the last fifty years. Climate change is a change in the average weather of a region or city. Scientists have opted to use the term "climate change" instead of global warming because as the Earth's average temperature changes, winds and ocean currents move heat around the globe in ways that can cool some areas, as well as warm others. There is an ongoing dispute about the effects of humans on the global climate and about what policies should be implemented to avoid possible undesirable effects of climate change. Ninety-seven percent of published scientific research concluded that climate change is real, problematic for the planet, and has been exacerbated by human activity. But what about the three percent that contradicts that? …show more content…

They believe that humans have caused most of the past century’s warming by releasing greenhouse gases; their levels are higher now than in the last six hundred fifty thousand years. Greenhouse gases happen when sunlight shines onto the Earth's surface, where it is absorbed and then radiated back into the atmosphere as heat. In the atmosphere, “greenhouse” gases trap some of this heat, and the rest escapes into space. Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change. CO2 is absorbed and emitted naturally as part of the carbon cycle, through plant and animal respiration, volcanic eruptions, and ocean-atmosphere exchange. Human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use, release large amounts of CO2, causing concentrations in the atmosphere to rise. The rapid rise in greenhouse gases is presenting two major problems: extreme weather and melting of ice sheets. In addition, our sea levels could potentially rise too high, possibly flooding

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