Citizen Brief: The enviornment and climate change
“Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods, It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”
Author: Brent Yarnal, Professor of Geography and Science, Technology, and Society, Department of Geography, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University
We still have a lot to learn about climate change, about why it's happening and what that means. But one thing is clear: It's real, alright. These talks provide a primer on the issue of our times.
Climate change in the 21st century is essentially a human problem. People are causing climate change through their everyday actions and through the socioeconomic forces underlying those actions. At the same time, people are feeling the consequences of climate change through various impacts on things they value and through the responses they are making to address climate change.
“Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”
Climate Change: The State of the Science
Global warming is the rise in the average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans since the late 19th century and its projected continuation. Since the early 20th century, Earth's mean surface temperature has increased by about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F), with about two-thirds of the increase occurring since 1980. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and scientists are more than 90% certain that it is primarily caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases produced by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. These findings are recognized by the national science academies of all major industrialized nations.