Global Warming
1) What is global warming? (History)
Definition:
Global warming is the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of Earth's climate system.
Common sense:Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are drying, and wildlife is scrambling to keep pace. It's becoming clear that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our modern lives. Called greenhouse gases, their levels are higher now than in the last 650,000 years.
We call the result global warming, but it is causing a set of changes to the Earth's climate, or long-term weather patterns, that varies from place to place. As the Earth spins each day, the new heat swirls with it, picking up moisture over the oceans, rising here, settling there. It's changing the rhythms of climate that all living things have come to rely upon. History:Since the early 20th century, the global air and sea surface temperature has increased about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F), with about two-thirds of the increase occurring since 1980.[5]Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth's surface than any preceding decade since 1850.
Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes. This evidence for human influence has grown since AR4. It is extremely likely (95-100%) that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.
2) Historical Political responses
If indeed the effects of climate change are likely to be severe, it is in everyone’s interest to lower theiremissions for the common good. But where no agreement or rules on emissions exist, no individual firm, city, or nation will choose to bear the economic brunt of being the first to reduce its emissions. In this situation, only a strong international
Definition:
Global warming is the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of Earth's climate system.
Common sense:Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are drying, and wildlife is scrambling to keep pace. It's becoming clear that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our modern lives. Called greenhouse gases, their levels are higher now than in the last 650,000 years.
We call the result global warming, but it is causing a set of changes to the Earth's climate, or long-term weather patterns, that varies from place to place. As the Earth spins each day, the new heat swirls with it, picking up moisture over the oceans, rising here, settling there. It's changing the rhythms of climate that all living things have come to rely upon. History:Since the early 20th century, the global air and sea surface temperature has increased about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F), with about two-thirds of the increase occurring since 1980.[5]Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth's surface than any preceding decade since 1850.
Human influence has been detected in warming of the atmosphere and the ocean, in changes in the global water cycle, in reductions in snow and ice, in global mean sea level rise, and in changes in some climate extremes. This evidence for human influence has grown since AR4. It is extremely likely (95-100%) that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.
2) Historical Political responses
If indeed the effects of climate change are likely to be severe, it is in everyone’s interest to lower theiremissions for the common good. But where no agreement or rules on emissions exist, no individual firm, city, or nation will choose to bear the economic brunt of being the first to reduce its emissions. In this situation, only a strong international