Jacob Haubert Climate Change - Report1

Climate change is long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and gas. Climate change is a collective and systematic problem - dealing not just with individuals but with entire populations and global systems - like energy grids and international trade. In the 1850s, Eunice Foote tested an experiment to see how density and the mixture of gasses in the air affected how much heat the atmosphere could hold onto. She found that the more concentration of carbon dioxide there was in the air caused temperature to rise. When the air is more CO2 concentrated, it causes atmospheric heating, thanks to the greenhouse effect. Even changing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by a few parts per million can lead to temperature fluctuations that can lead to severe weather, melting ice caps, and make life on earth generally more difficult.

The global temperature normally fluctuates, however it has gone up much faster recently. There have been multiple "snowball Earth" periods, mostly known as the ice ages. The opposite is also true, where it would get incredibly hot. The most recent example of this was 56 million years ago, when the dinosaurs ruled. The planet warmed at about a rate of 1°C per 100 years, however in the last 100 years, global temperatures warmed by 0.7°C, about 10x faster! The cause of this change was the industrial revolution. With the industrial revolution, we started burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas. These all release CO2 into the atmosphere when burnt. We know that temperatures have fluctuated dramatically over Earth's long history, but by burning so many fossil fuels and flooding the atmosphere with gasses such as CO2, H2O, CH4, O3, and N2O, we know we're causing temperatures to rise faster than ever. Climate Change can lead to melting ice caps, rising sea levels, shifts in agricultural productivity, more storms, more floods, and more droughts. These will lead to global economic losses, displacement of vulnerable communities, and geopolitical tensions.