This post was written by Environmental Club member Edward Shingler. What Causes Climate Change? Ever since the Industrial Revolution, humans have continued to grow more and more attached to their machines. Machines produce clothes, machines sort through food, and lately machines have the ability connect us at a moment’s notice. Humans and machines are now inseparable partners. Unfortunately, a troublesome third wheel has been tagging along for quite a while: fossil fuels. Since the industrial revolution, we have relied on fossil fuels (namely coal, oil, and natural gas) for energy. We burn them to release the energy stored inside. This energy we use to create electricity, power factories, and facilitate transportation. When fossil fuels are burned, a gas called carbon dioxide, or CO2, is often released into the atmosphere. We need greenhouse gases, like CO2, to keep our planet warm enough to live on. They trap heat that would have otherwise escaped from Earth. However, our release of CO2 on an extreme scale has caused a major increase in heat. With so much CO2, the extra heat has begun to cause changes in the natural systems that regulate our climate. These effects are collectively known as climate change and make the Earth a less suitable environment to live in. What Are the Effects of Climate Change? The effects of climate change include global temperature increase, sea level rise, warming and acidifying of oceans, less snow cover, shrinking ice sheets, and unusual weather patterns. All of these changes throw off the natural balances that have allowed inhabitats to exist for centuries. Here's an example: The mountain pine beetle, a beetle that munches away at and spends most of its life in pine trees, has generally been contained in the southern pine forests of North America where temperatures are warm and the beetles can survive the winter. However, as global temperatures increase, vast swaths of forest become buffets for these beetles. Affected forests tend to die, furthering the effects of climate change by decreasing CO2 intake from the atmosphere, destroying the dwellings of many forest critters, and creating enormous fire hazards. This is just one of the thousands of examples of how climate change endangers the environment. There are many examples of how climate change affects human life as well. Increasing temperatures and limited rainfall make it more difficult to cultivate crops, leading to shortages of food, higher frequencies of extreme weather events such as hurricanes and floods cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses in a relatively short amount of time, and rising sea levels endanger populations island nations, which are slowly being submerged. So What Now? Climate change is an indisputably grave issue. It is major cause for concern for plants, animals, and humans alike. If climate change isn’t reversed soon it might get out of hand. Fortunately, we know there are ways to stop and potentially reverse climate change. We need to totally change our energy system and rely on new technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines, and hydroelectricity. Look for another article to come that will provide insight into what actions can be taken against climate change. Images via, via, via, via.
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