Learn > Climate Change 101

Consensus on Climate Change?
What was once an issue discussed only among groups of anxious scientists and meteorologists has now gained broad consensus. Within the U.S., all major scientific organizations have issued statements confirming that human activity does indeed play a role in climate change. Countless international groups, including the World Bank and the World Health Organization, have decreed global warming a manmade problem in need of immediate action.

Evidence?
It is true that earth’s temperatures and greenhouse gas levels have risen in the past, as the effects of repeating patterns in earth’s orbit every 100,000 years. Nevertheless, scientists worldwide have widely agreed that the recent climate changes are the direct byproducts of human activity. Evidence, from sources ranging from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to NASA, points to rising levels of atmospheric carbon (a 35 percent increase since 1750) and increasing temperatures (between 0.6°C and 0.9°C since 1906).

Why we should care
Although the idea of melting glaciers and extinct vegetation may not appear to have any immediate impact on our day-to-day lives, surging insurance costs and longer, more vicious heat waves might. Unchecked extraction and utilization of exhaustible resources has contributed to a problem whose worldwide damage costs financial institutions have estimated at $150 billion a year, a hefty burden whose weight would be shouldered by rich and poor alike. Climate change, then, is not only an environmental dilemma—the issue that has attracted the greatest attention—but also an economic and technological problem.

Overview   Cosmic Ray Theory   Climate and Wine   The Oil Industry   Alternative Energy