6: Climate Change
- Page ID
- 81328
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We’ve known about the greenhouse effect for nearly 200 years and about global warming for more than a century, but we’ve had a hard time acting because human brains aren’t a good match for a problem this big.
Question after watching: What do you already know about the science of climate change? What are you ready to learn more about?
- 6.1: Introduction to Climate Change
- All biomes are universally affected by global conditions, such as climate, that ultimately shape each biome’s environment. Scientists who study climate have noted a series of marked changes that have become increasingly evident during the last sixty years. Global climate change is the term used to describe altered global weather patterns, including a worldwide increase in temperature, due largely to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
- 6.2: Anthropogenic Climate Change
- Quantitative evidence supports the relationship between atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and temperature: as carbon dioxide rises global temperature rises. Qualitative evidence of climate change exists as well. The current increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has happened very quickly—in a matter of hundreds of years rather than thousands of years. As more and more of the world's population adopts a resource-intensive lifestyle the climate problem becomes worse.
- 6.3: Current and Future Climate Change Impacts
- Climate change has the potential to render Earth unrecognizable from what any human has ever experienced. These changes will have an immense impact on ecosystem services, global economies, and our own quality of life. Many greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere for long periods of time. As a result, even if emissions stopped increasing today, atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations would remain elevated for hundreds of years, impacting abiotic and biotic systems.
- 6.4: Climate Strategies
- Solving the global climate change crisis requires an international multi-pronged approach that should include ecosystem protection, restoration, and direct species management, reduction of carbon emissions, sustainable planning, and legislative action. While the situation surrounding global climate change is in serious need of our attention, it is important to realize that many scientists, leaders, and concerned citizens are making solutions to climate change part of their life’s work.