Watch this video about the challenges we face:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyiNyWQeysI&t=256s
Then read this text:
What are the actual causes of Climate Change?
Humans are increasingly influencing the climate and the
earth's temperature by burning fossil fuels, cutting down forests and farming
livestock.
This adds enormous amounts of greenhouse gases to those
naturally occurring in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect and
global warming.
Greenhouse gases
The main driver of climate change is the greenhouse effect.
Some gases in the Earth's atmosphere act a bit like the glass in a greenhouse,
trapping the sun's heat and stopping it from leaking back into space and
causing global warming.
Many of these greenhouse gases occur naturally, but human
activity is increasing the concentrations of some of them in the atmosphere, in
particular:
- carbon
dioxide (CO2)
- methane
- nitrous
oxide
- fluorinated
gases
CO2 produced by human activities is the largest
contributor to global warming. By 2020, its concentration in the atmosphere had
risen to 48% above its pre-industrial level (before 1750).
Other greenhouse gases are emitted by human activity in
smaller quantities. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, but has
a shorter atmospheric lifetime. Nitrous oxide, like CO2, is a long-lived
greenhouse gas that accumulates in the atmosphere over decades to centuries.
Natural causes, such as changes in solar radiation or
volcanic activity are estimated to have contributed less than plus or minus
0.1°C to total warming between 1890 and 2010.
Causes for rising emissions
- Burning
coal, oil and gas produces carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.
- Cutting
down forests (deforestation). Trees help to regulate the climate
by absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere. When they are cut down, that
beneficial effect is lost and the carbon stored in the trees is released
into the atmosphere, adding to the greenhouse effect.
- Increasing
livestock farming. Cows and sheep produce large amounts of
methane when they digest their food.
- Fertilisers
containing nitrogen produce nitrous oxide emissions.
- Fluorinated
gases are emitted from equipment and products that use these
gases. Such emissions have a very strong warming effect, up to 23 000
times greater than CO2.
Global warming
2011-2020 was the warmest decade recorded, with global
average temperature reaching 1.1°C above pre-industrial levels in 2019.
Human-induced global warming is presently increasing at a rate of 0.2°C per
decade.
An increase of 2°C compared to the temperature in
pre-industrial times is associated with serious negative impacts on to the
natural environment and human health and wellbeing, including a much higher
risk that dangerous and possibly catastrophic changes in the global environment
will occur.
For this reason, the international community has recognised
the need to keep warming well below 2°C and pursue efforts to limit it to
1.5°C.
What can you do to change things?????
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/clima/change/causes_en
