ARTICLE 4 - Climate Change: Causes and Impacts
Extreme weather conditions have been on the rise across the globe for decades. We’re experiencing hotter summers, colder winters, wider temperature swings, rising sea levels, reductions in sea ice levels, shrinking glaciers, increased storm activity, and more. As the weather gets more extreme, so does the polarized debate over climate change.
So, what is climate change? Is the climate actually changing? What’s causing the climate to change? Should we really be worried about the effects of a changing climate? Is there a climate change definition everyone agrees on?
This article will help answer those questions and hopefully help you learn about climate change facts, including its causes, effects, and the role you can play in addressing it.
Climate Change Definition
At Palmetto, we define climate change as follows:
Climate change is the long-term increase in the earth's average surface temperature and the large-scale changes in global, regional, and local weather patterns that result from that increase, caused by a significant increase in the levels of greenhouse gases that are produced by the use of fossil fuels.
We believe that people have a role in causing climate change, but they can also play a role in fixing it. Because of that, combating climate change to create a clean energy future is the driving mission of our company.
However, since climate change is a phenomenon that takes place over decades and even centuries, there are differing definitions for it. Some people believe it's a totally natural occurrence, and one that’s happened before, while others believe it's completely man-made. To complicate matters further, another group in the middle thinks climate change is a combination of both factors, and some people outright reject the existence of climate change completely.
Despite the public controversy surrounding the topic, the scientific community is overwhelmingly in agreement that climate change is real and that we need to address it in a proactive manner. The most common definitions can be boiled down to this concept:
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