What Are the Primary Activities Leading to Global Warming?
The causes of global warming include both natural and human activities. Humankind cannot do much about natural occurrences that contribute to climate change, such as volcanoes, sunspots and the wobble of the earth's orbit. But human activities, government policies, business practices, and consumer decisions all contribute to human-caused global warming that continues to change our climate and may change the planet's future.
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Global Warming Is Climate Change
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A more accurate term than "global warming" for what is occurring to our climate is "climate change." Regardless of which term is used, they refer to earth's dramatically fluctuating weather, increasing incidence of catastrophic storms, and measurable conditions like rising temperatures, rising sea levels, and a rapidly rising level of greenhouse gases. Understanding what humans are doing to contribute to our rapidly-changing climate may help lead people to slow what is occurring.
Business Activities
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With the dawn of the industrial age in the mid-1900s, human activities shifted to the production of goods and services to meet the needs of a growing population and expanding settlement of the earth's land masses. As new industries were created and factories were built, energy to power them were needed. Enormous increases in the production and burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil have created a massive rise in greenhouse gases, raising the temperature of the earth. The clearing of great forests to make way for human settlement, cities and other agricultural use, has lessened the planet's ability to clear the air. As temperatures continue to climb, the earth's ability to produce enough food to feed the population is threatened.
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Consumer Decisions
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Consumers play a role in global warming. Activities such as driving fossil-burning cars, increasingly energy-dependent homes, and even the amount of garbage people create are changing the earth's climate. Citizens of developed countries, in particular, contribute more than their fair share of greenhouse gases carbon monoxide, methane nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and ozone to the atmosphere. Even building homes and the need for food have resulted in the clearing of vast tracts of forests and fields. Forests act as the earth's "lungs," returning carbon dioxide to clear the atmosphere. If concrete is put in their place, it only adds to the effects of rising temperatures.
Government Policies
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When few nations were industrialized, change was slow. But 21st century increases in fossil fuel use by the world's major Western powers, and growing economies like China and India, are contributing to dramatic increases in greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. There is global pressure to act, but major countries, the U.S., included, have so far not signed the Kyoto Accord. This agreement, endorsed by scientists worldwide, would require governments to begin to limit their greenhouse gas emissions. Not only are there global economic considerations weighing on governments reluctant to sign, but shifting political power may play a role as well.
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References
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