Causes of climate change
Photo: S. Drapeau/IPEV.
The climate of the Earth is constantly changing, in the past it was a result of natural causes, for example the variations of Earth’s orbit or sunlight intensity. Nowadays, to these natural factors of climate change we must add yet another one – humans. There is a strong consensus in the scientific community that the climate on Earth is being more and more affected by human activities and that humans stand behind recent rapid changes in the world’s climate. The climatologists also identified the main reason of this temperature changes: the greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide – CO2, methane – CH4, nitrous oxide – N2O, and others) released into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning.
Moreover, human-driven production of greenhouse gases is accompanied by massive conversion of forests into agricultural land which deprives the Earth of a great amount of natural carbon absorbers. Behind fossil fuels, the ongoing deforestation is thus the second major cause of the atmospheric concentration increase of carbon.
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ESF provides the scientific, administrative and technical secretariat for COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).