What Is Climate Change?

Over a series of years climate change has played a major role on the earth. More importantly humans have been the main contributors to climate change. For instance, CO2 levels are higher than they've ever been in the past 550 million years. Since we as humans are causing this drastic change in our environments, we are slowly killing the planet.

What is climate change? First, what is anthropogenic means? Anthropogenic means created by people or caused by human activity. Today most people agree that the climate change or global warming is anthropogenic. However, some of our political figures and general population don't agree with that statement. Since a century ago, many scientists have tried to figure out why and what is causing global warming. They've built up different models trying to explain it. However, the model cannot show us the reason by just creating a single made up model without accurate information. Scientists say that the reason is to contain all the effects of greenhouse gases made by humans. Scientists have discovered that there are different greenhouse gases affecting global warming, and how people produce it in many different ways. The main ways are automobile exhaust gas, factories and electricity production pollutions. Carbon dioxide (CO2) causes global warming. Other causes include methane released from landfills and agriculture, nitrous oxide from fertilizers, gases used for refrigeration and industrial processes. In addition, forests store CO2 and to balance the temperature, but humans are still destroying our forests. "Global warming, along with the cutting and burning of forests and other critical habitats, is causing the loss of living species at a level comparable to the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That event was believed to have been caused by a giant asteroid. This time it is not an asteroid colliding with the Earth and wreaking havoc: it is us." - Al Gore

One thing that the world is noticing is the drastic change in temperature across the entire world. In some areas temperatures have increased massively, in other areas temperatures have dropped. For example, since temperatures are out of whack, so are the seasons. Lately, there have been more warm winters than cold. Since seasons are thrown off, that means that animals "schedules" are off as well, which shows climate change not only affects us, but other living organisms as well. For example, in Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" he grazed over a subject about birds hatching too soon because of an increase in temperature and birds not being able to find food because its not time for them to be available.

Climate change or global warming is something that humans should be aware of. As CO2 levels increase, we are slowly destroying our planet. CO2 levels are already triple what they were 550 million years ago and if they were any higher I could only imagine