Geography Climate Change

Climate Change Before the Industrial Revolution, climate change was caused by mainly by four fundamental factors: variations in the earth's orbital characteristics; variations in the earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide levels; volcanic eruptions; and variations in solar output. However, due to the amount and types of chemicals emitted by humans into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, it is highly likely that human beings are becoming a fifth major factor causing climate change on Earth.

It might be impossible to track long-term trends yet, however, since human beings have only been industrialized for about a century. Nevertheless, the evidence for a human-caused climate change is strong. Similarly, the greenhouse effect occurs naturally in the earth's atmosphere: a protective layer of gases insulates the Earth and keeps its temperature regulated and far warmer than it would be without the greenhouse effect. However, due to large-scale agricultural and farm animal production, the greenhouse effect is being exacerbated by human beings.

For one, high levels of methane are being released into the Earth's atmosphere. Such high levels of methane would not be released naturally. The same is true for other greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide. However, by far the most notorious greenhouse gas that might be causing the earth to become consistently warmer over time is carbon dioxide, which is released into the atmosphere by factories as well as automobiles.

The combination of these human factors with the natural factors mentioned above, including variations in the Earth's orbit, could be causing more rapid and more severe.