Öppnare klimat
While weather refers to short-term changes in the atmosphere, climate refers to atmospheric changes over longer periods of time, usually defined as 30 years or more. This is why it is possible to have an especially cold spell even though, on average, global temperatures are rising. The former is a weather event that takes place over the course. Regardless of the outcome, NRDC will fight for climate action, defend wildlife and wild places, and protect our environment and health.
On the one hand, we have the greenhouse effect to thank for the presence of life on earth; without it, our planet would be cold and unlivable. But beginning in the mid- to lateth century, human activity began pushing the greenhouse effect to new levels. The result? This global warming has, in turn, dramatically altered natural cycles and weather patterns, with impacts that include extreme heat, protracted drought, increased flooding, more intense storms, and rising sea levels.
Taken together, these miserable and sometimes deadly effects are what have come to be known as climate change. And we must honestly address its origins—even though it can sometimes be difficult, or even uncomfortable, to do so. Human civilization has made extraordinary productivity leaps, some of which have led to our currently overheated planet.
The Causes of Climate Change
But by harnessing that same ability to innovate and attaching it to a renewed sense of shared responsibility, we can find ways to cool the planet down, fight climate change , and chart a course toward a more just, equitable, and sustainable future. Some amount of climate change can be attributed to natural phenomena. Chemical manufacturing plants emit fumes along Onondaga Lake in Solvay, New York, in the lateth century.
Over time, industrial development severely polluted the local area.
What Are the Causes of Climate Change?
At the same time, logging and development have led to the widespread destruction of forests, wetlands, and other carbon sinks —natural resources that store carbon dioxide and prevent it from being released into the atmosphere. Some greenhouse gases, like hydrochlorofluorocarbons HFCs , do not even exist in nature. Our ways of generating power for electricity, heat, and transportation, our built environment and industries, our ways of interacting with the land, and our consumption habits together serve as the primary drivers of climate change.
While the percentages of greenhouse gases stemming from each source may fluctuate, the sources themselves remain relatively consistent. The cars, trucks, ships, and planes that we use to transport ourselves and our goods are a major source of global greenhouse gas emissions. In the United States, they actually constitute the single-largest source. Burning petroleum-based fuel in combustion engines releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Passenger cars account for 41 percent of those emissions, with the typical passenger vehicle emitting about 4. And trucks are by far the worst polluters on the road.
They run almost constantly and largely burn diesel fuel, which is why, despite accounting for just 4 percent of U. We can get these numbers down, but we need large-scale investments to get more zero-emission vehicles on the road and increase access to reliable public transit. As of , nearly 60 percent of the electricity used in the United States comes from the burning of coal, natural gas , and other fossil fuels.
That history is undergoing a major change, however: As renewable energy sources like wind and solar become cheaper and easier to develop, utilities are turning to them more frequently. The percentage of clean, renewable energy is growing every year—and with that growth comes a corresponding decrease in pollutants. The factories and facilities that produce our goods are significant sources of greenhouse gases; in , they were responsible for fully 24 percent of U.
Most industrial emissions come from the production of a small set of carbon-intensive products, including basic chemicals, iron and steel, cement and concrete, aluminum, glass, and paper. To manufacture the building blocks of our infrastructure and the vast array of products demanded by consumers, producers must burn through massive amounts of energy. In addition, older facilities in need of efficiency upgrades frequently leak these gases, along with other harmful forms of air pollution.
Hastening the switch from fossil fuels to renewables will also go a long way toward cleaning up this energy-intensive sector. The advent of modern, industrialized agriculture has significantly altered the vital but delicate relationship between soil and the climate—so much so that agriculture accounted for 11 percent of U. This sector is especially notorious for giving off large amounts of nitrous oxide and methane, powerful gases that are highly effective at trapping heat.
The widespread adoption of chemical fertilizers , combined with certain crop-management practices that prioritize high yields over soil health, means that agriculture accounts for nearly three-quarters of the nitrous oxide found in our atmosphere. Meanwhile, large-scale industrialized livestock production continues to be a significant source of atmospheric methane, which is emitted as a function of the digestive processes of cattle and other ruminants.
A decades-old, plugged and abandoned oil well at a cattle ranch in Crane County, Texas, in June , when it was found to be leaking brine water. Fossil fuel development is a major source of methane, which invariably leaks from oil and gas operations : drilling, fracking , transporting, and refining. More than 3 million of these old, defunct wells are spread across the country and were responsible for emitting more than , metric tons of methane in Unsurprisingly, given how much time we spend inside of them, our buildings—both residential and commercial—emit a lot of greenhouse gases.
Heating, cooling, cooking, running appliances, and maintaining other building-wide systems accounted for 13 percent of U. And even worse, some 30 percent of the energy used in U. Every day, great strides are being made in energy efficiency , allowing us to achieve the same or even better results with less energy expended. An aerial view of clearcut sections of boreal forest near Dryden in Northwestern Ontario, Canada, in June