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What are the causes of climate change, and how does Man's actions cause it?

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What are the causes of climate change, and how does Man's actions cause it?

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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The Greenhouse Effect

Increasing Greenhouses Gases Are Warming the Planet

Scientists attribute the global warming trend observed since the mid-20 th century to the human expansion of the "greenhouse effect" ¹ - warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space.

Life on Earth depends on energy coming from the Sun. About half the light energy reaching Earth's atmosphere passes through the air and clouds to the surface, where it is absorbed and radiated in the form of infrared heat. About 90% of this heat is then absorbed by greenhouse gases and re-radiated, slowing heat loss to space.

Gases that Contribute

The Role of Humans

Human Activity Is the Cause of Increased Greenhouse Gas Concentrations

Over the last century, burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil has increased the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO ₂). This increase happens because the coal or oil burning process combines carbon with oxygen in the air to make CO ₂. To a lesser extent, clearing of land for agriculture, industry, and other human activities has increased concentrations of greenhouse gases.

How do we know what greenhouse gas and temperature levels were in the distant past?

Ice cores are scientists' best source for historical climate data. Other tools for learning about Earth's ancient atmosphere include growth rings in trees, which keep a rough record of each growing season's temperature, moisture and cloudiness going back about 2,000 years. Corals also form growth rings that provide information about temperature and nutrients in the tropical ocean. Other proxies, such as benthic cores, extend our knowledge of past climate back about a billion years.

detailed answer

The industrial activities that our modern civilization depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by nearly 50% since 1750 ². This increase is due to human activities, because scientists can see a distinctive isotopic fingerprint in the atmosphere.

In its Sixth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, composed of scientific experts from countries all over the world, concluded thatit is unequivocal that the increase of CO ₂, methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere over the industrial era is the result of human activities and that human influence is the principal driver of many changes observed across the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere.

"Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact."

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The panel's AR6 Working Group I (WGI) Summary for Policymakers report is online at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/.

Is the Sun to Blame?

Evidence Shows That Current Global Warming Cannot Be Explained by Solar Irradiance

Scientists use a metric called Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) to measure the changes in energy the Earth receives from the Sun. TSI incorporates the 11-year solar cycle and solar flares/storms from the Sun's surface.

Studies show that solar variability has played a role in past climate changes. For example, a decrease in solar activity coupled with increased volcanic activity helped trigger the Little Ice Age.

The above graph compares global surface temperature changes (red line) and the Sun's energy that Earth receives (yellow line) in watts (units of energy) per square meter since 1880. The lighter/thinner lines show the yearly levels while the heavier/thicker lines show the 11-year average trends. Eleven-year averages are used to reduce the year-to-year natural noise in the data, making the underlying trends more obvious.

The amount of solar energy that Earth receives has followed the Sun's natural 11-year cycle of small ups and downs with no net increase since 1880. Over the same period, global temperature has risen markedly. It is therefore extremely unlikely that the Sun has caused the observed global temperature warming trend over the past half-century. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

But several lines of evidence show that current global warming cannot be explained by changes in energy from the Sun:

Since 1750, the average amount of energy from the Sun either remained constant or decreased slightly³.

If a more active Sun caused the warming, scientists would expect warmer temperatures in all layers of the atmosphere. Instead, they have observed a cooling in the upper atmosphere and a warming at the surface and lower parts of the atmosphere. That's because greenhouse gases are slowing heat loss from the lower atmosphere.

Climate models that include solar irradiance changes can't reproduce the observed temperature trend over the past century or more without including a rise in greenhouse gases.
References
References

1. IPCC 6 th Assessment Report, WG1, Summary for Policy Makers, Sections A, " The Current State of the Climate "

IPCC 6 th Assessment Report, WG1, Technical Summary, Sections TS.1.2, TS.2.1 and TS.3.1

2. P. Friedlingstein, et al., 2022: "Global Carbon Budget 2022", Earth System Science Data ( 11 Nov 2022): 4811-4900. https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-4811-2022

3. IPCC 6 th Assessment Report, WG1, Chapter 2, Section 2.2.1, " Solar and Orbital Forcing"

IPCC 6 th Assessment Report, WG1, Chapter 7, Sections 7.3.4.4, 7.3.5.2, Figure 7.6, " Solar"

M. Lockwood and W.T. Ball, Placing limits on long-term variations in quiet-Sun irradiance and their contribution to total solar irradiance and solar radiative forcing of climate," Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 476, issue 2228 (24 June 2020): https://doi 10.1098/rspa.2020.0077

Header image credit: Pixabay/stevepb

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Vital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. What is the "greenhouse effect"? What is causing it? Are humans to blame? What does solar irradiance have to do with it? Answers here.

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What are some negative effects of Man on the environment?

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What are some negative effects of Man on the environment?

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An environmental impact is defined as any change to the environment, whether adverse or beneficial, resulting from a facility's activities, products, or services. In other words it is the effect that people's actions have on the environment. For example, when volatile organic compounds are released into the environment, the effect or impact is pollution in the form of smog, in this case being negative. It can go the other way, as a person picking up litter can have a beneficial impact on the local environment.

Negative Impacts

The primary impacts of concern in an energy dependent society often come as a result of our energy use. Burning hydrocarbons like coal and oil to provide us with useful energy results in the emission of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. Other activities causing harm include improper waste disposal to bodies of water and soil, accidental spills of chemicals, increased demand for resources as populations increase (especially due to consumerism), and much more. The impacts that these have on the environment have become clear and include:

There are many issues in the world that are causing one or more of these effects. The oil sands, for instance, are of great concern to many these days as they essentially contribute to each of the above impacts, see environmental impacts of oil sands.

For information on how the average person may be affecting the environment, visit CO2 footprint and anthropogenic effects.

Assessing Impacts

The environmental impact a specific action may have can be analyzed using a life cycle assessment, which is the process of observing a product from its "cradle to grave" and determining the impacts associated with it at each step. These methods are somewhat subjective and resource intensive.

Emission inventories for example may quantify the emission of pollutants, while risk assessments can analyze the effects these pollutants will have on the health of those within the environment.

Process hazard analysis involves identifying and assessing potential impacts of unplanned hazardous materials. A team may rank the possible hazards and focus on preventing those that can cause the most harm.

For Further Reading

References

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An environmental impact is defined as any change to the environment, whether adverse or beneficial, resulting from a facility's activities, products, or services. In other words it is the effect that people's actions have on the environment.

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Editor's note: From "climate adaptation" to "blue carbon," from "landscape approach" to "ecosystem services," environmental jargon is everywhere these days. Conservation International's blog looks to make sense of it in an occasional explainer series we're calling "What on Earth?" In this installment and video, we explore "reforestation," a practice critical to stopping climate change. What's reforestation?
That's easy: It's helping to bring forest back to an area where it was destroyed.
I have a feeling there's more to it than that.
Well, yes: Reforestation involves indigenous peoples, wildlife, breathable air - even the cocoa powder and palm oil in your favorite breakfast spread. Fundamentally, though, it's a matter of creating the conditions for Earth to continue supporting human life.
How is that?
Forests are the best and most cost-efficient method for removing and storing consequential amounts of climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO ₂).

I've heard about this climate breakdown in the news. But how hot is too hot?

Glad you asked: Unfortunately, we're well on our way to crossing that "too hot" threshold, which countries agreed to cap at 1.5˚C (2.7˚F) above pre-industrial levels in the Paris Agreement. Higher than that and things get ugly.

Oh, and we only have about a decade to stop that from happening.
What does this have to do with trees?
While it's generally understood that fossil fuels are the leading culprit of all that planet-warming carbon, there's a serious under-the-radar offender. In fact: It pollutes so much CO ₂ that if it were a country, its emissions would rank third after China and the US.

It's deforestation.
Really?
Really. Last year, people wiped out enough rainforests to cover Belgium. Unsustainable development and agriculture are two big drivers of deforestation, especially in developing countries.

And you may have heard of something called " imported deforestation," which is when trees are cut down in one place - often a developing nation - to grow products such as cocoa, palm oil and rubber that are then sold somewhere else, say Europe.
Can we back up to the part about global warming? Ending deforestation is required to end global warming?
Simply put: We've got to stop cutting down all the trees if we're going to stop the climate breakdown.

But even if we cut current CO ₂ emissions from every source on the planet, it's still not enough to prevent worst-case warming scenarios.
But you just said ...
It turns out that CO ₂ is cumulative. What humans put into the air adds to what's already there, to what's been there since industrialization introduced carbon-belching smokestacks in the 1880s. And because CO ₂ is cumulative - and because current emissions continue unabated - atmospheric CO ₂ recently reached 415 parts per million, a higher concentration than at any other point in human history.

The last time the concentration was this high, about 3 million years ago, there were trees in Antarctica - no ice caves, ice sheets, ice blocks, penguins. And zero humans.

In short: Cutting current CO ₂ emissions is one requirement for a habitable Earth. Removing and storing CO ₂ is another.
So, our best hope is trees?
Nature's critical role in helping humans survive the climate crisis isn't hope - it's science. A recent study found that growing more forest and restoring damaged ecosystems could remove as much as two-thirds of the CO₂ that humans have been putting in the air since the 1880s.
What are we waiting for? Let's plant all the trees!
It's not that simple.

Nikola Alexandre, a forest restoration fellow at Conservation International, has an important point: "Bringing life back to land isn't always about planting trees," he says. "Nature has a remarkable ability to bounce back from disturbances on its own, especially if it's given even a bit of support."

This could be as simple, he says, as supporting indigenous peoples and local communities to better protect saplings from fires and hungry livestock.
So, just let nature do its thing?
Sort of. In Brazil, for example, 70 million hectares of previously forested area are degraded, 20 million hectares of which could regenerate naturally. And as Alexandre explains, natural tree growth is one of the restoration methods that removes and stores the most carbon from the atmosphere for the long term.

"Encouraging natural regeneration is much, much cheaper than planting trees," he says. "There are certain times when it's important to plant trees, when there is a need to have a very specific mix of species. But planting should really only occur in areas that are not going to naturally regenerate so that restoration investments can be used where they're most vital."
So what's 'restoration'?
Reforestation is an aspect of restoration. Restoration is "rewilding" interconnected systems of living Earth - and despite its name, it's not just letting nature doing its thing. It actually involves complex, intricate science and arranging a mosaic of social and economic pieces to create the conditions by which nature can do its thing.

As Alexandre explains, "The field of restoration is, by design, about weaving people and nature together."
So if we know what we need to do to save the planet, what's the problem?
We're missing some keys to success, mainly political will and alignment - and money. Large-scale restoration - what we need to keep existing forests standing and to help new forests grow - is untenable unless countries, companies and local communities are in agreement. And, ultimately, it's going to take tremendous investment from the private sector.

The best place to start is by giving the Earth a break.

Alexandre compares the current state of the planet to human health: "Sometimes when you're sick, you just need to take it easy, and other times, you need medicine. Thanks to us, the planet is sick right now. If we're able to help it get some rest, a lot of the healing will happen naturally - and we can focus our efforts on healing the wounds that run deeper."
Nikola Alexandre is a Restoration Fellow at Conservation International. Trisha Calvarese is a senior writer at Conservation International. Further reading

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Editor's note: From "climate adaptation" to "blue carbon," from "landscape approach" to "ecosystem services," environmental jargon is everywhere these days. Conservation International's blog looks to make sense of it in an occasional explainer series we're calling "What on Earth?" In this installment and video, we explore "reforestation," a practice critical to stopping climate change.

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Positive effects of Man on the environment.

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Positive effects of Man on the environment.

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Native Americans understood that what affects even the lowest creature on the totem pole of life, affects everyone, which is why they chose to live in harmony with nature, instead of against it. They never stayed in an area long enough to deplete the land and moved with the seasons to not use up all the resources in one location. But a modern human doesn't live that way and has come up with other methods to positively affect and protect ecosystems in threat of extinction.

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

Ways in which people positively affect ecosystems around the world include:

Recycling

Establishing wildlife preserves and parks

Creating green, open space laws

Doing reforestation

Creating environmental regulations

Ecosystems are biological communities and exist all around the globe. They serve as small, interconnected worlds that host multiple forms of plant and animal life. Nature recycles everything: Dead plant and animal matter return to the soil to once again produce more trees and plants. Taking a cue from nature, many people understand that recycling offers a positive contribution to the ecosystems of the world by reusing or remaking old products into new ones without having to take resources from nature.

Wildlife preserves and national parks protect scores of ecosystems around the world. Within these zones, animals and plant life thrive under laws that keep them from harm. People, with the help of governments, established these zones to protect specific ecosystems containing threatened plant and animal life.

In the last few decades, many state and local communities created laws that require developers who build homes and commercial buildings to set aside green, open spaces of land to protect them from development. This includes bridges over highways and freeways that allow deer and other creatures to migrate across the developed area without threat of death-by-vehicle. These protected areas represent positive contributions to ecosystems.

While Richard Nixon was president, he established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 because of the threats to the environment. Environmental laws and management programs have a positive effect on the world's ecosystem when enforced. These laws are in place to keep companies from destroying ecosystems by preventing them from dumping industrial contaminants on the ground, into rivers or streams or other waterways. Environmental laws in some parts of the country also require lumber companies to replant clear-cut forest areas with new plantings. Called reforestation, lumber companies operating in the state of Oregon and others, must replant the area clear cut of trees with new tree growth to replenish the ecosystem within a specific period, generally up to three years after originally clearing the land.

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Positive Effects of Humans on the Ecosystem

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Native Americans understood that what affects even the lowest creature on the totem pole of life, affects everyone, which is why they chose to live in harmony with nature, instead of against it. They never stayed in an area long enough to deplete the land and moved with the seasons to not use up all the resources in one location.

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In your science journal, write down examples of how man alters the living and non-living factors in an ecosystem through the development of science and technology.