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Causes of Climate Change

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Causes of Climate Change
Climate change is a long-term shift in weather conditions identified by changes in temperature, precipitation, winds, and other indicators. Climate change can involve both changes in average conditions and changes in variability, including, for example, extreme events. The earth's climate is naturally variable on all time scales. Factors that cause climate change can be divided into two categories - those related to natural processes and those related to human activity
Natural Causes
The Earth's climate can be affected by natural factors that are external to the climate system, such as changes in volcanic activity, solar output, and the Earth's orbit around the Sun.
Human Causes
Very few people doubt that it is normal for there to be climate change. The rotation of the earth on a tilted axis leads to this, as well many natural events, like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and hurricanes. However, human activities are having a much greater impact on climate change. For example, the jump in earths’ population from 1950 through 1985 more than doubled from 2.5 billion to over 5 billion. (Meyer, 1996: 24) The importance of this growth is a drain on the Earths’ resources causing even more altering. It is not as much the altering of these resources that are causing climate change but the type of human activities which are taking place, and the way in which they are impacting the climate. The earth is naturally surrounded by gases the added human processes cause a phenomenon called the greenhouse effect. This is when these gases change and more heat from the sun is retained than before resulting in planetary temperature rise.

Climate Change is changing our economy, health and community in diverse ways. Scientists warn that if we do not aggressively curb climate change now, the result will likely be disastrous. There are many questions that need to be answered. So that we can make some moves to fix these problems. Carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutions are collecting in the atmosphere like a thickening blanket, trapping the sun’s heat and causing the planet to warm up.

Climate change is a complex phenomenon, and its full-scale impacts are hard to predict far in advance. But each year scientists learn more about how climate change is affecting the planet and our communities, and most agree that carbon consequences are likely to occur if current trends continue. In addition to impacting our water resources, energy supply, transportation, agriculture and ecosystems, the United States global change research program concludes that climate change also poses unique challenges to human health such as: significant increases in the risk of illness and death related to extreme heat and heat waves are very likely.

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