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Environmental change is a change or disturbance of the environment most often caused by human influences and natural ecological processes. Environmental changes include various factors, such as natural disasters ,of human interferences, or animal interaction .
Climate change can also be used more broadly to include changes to the climate that have happened throughout Earth's history. [32] Global warming—used as early as 1975 [33] —became the more popular term after NASA climate scientist James Hansen used it in his 1988 testimony in the U.S. Senate. [34] Since the 2000s, climate change has ...
It is defined as any change or disturbance to the environment perceived to be deleterious or undesirable. [74] As indicated by the I=PAT equation, environmental impact (I) or degradation is caused by the combination of an already very large and increasing human population (P), continually increasing economic growth or per capita affluence (A ...
World leaders are meeting in Paris this month in what amounts to a last-ditch effort to avert the worst ravages of climate change. Climatologists now say that the best case scenario — assuming immediate and dramatic emissions curbs — is that planetary surface temperatures will increase by at least 2 degrees Celsius in the coming decades.
Climatic changes due to internal variability sometimes occur in cycles or oscillations. For other types of natural climatic change, we cannot predict when it happens; the change is called random or stochastic. [12] From a climate perspective, the weather can be considered random. [13]
Five years earlier, 23% of U.S. adults considered climate change to be a crisis. [43] As of 2019 [update] , use of crisis terminology in non-binding climate-emergency declarations is regarded as ineffective in making governments "shift into action".
Global change in broad sense refers to planetary-scale changes in the Earth system. It is most commonly used to encompass the variety of changes connected to the rapid increase in human activities which started around mid-20th century, i.e., the Great Acceleration.
While water vapour and clouds are the biggest contributors to the greenhouse effect, they primarily change as a function of temperature. Therefore, they are considered to be feedbacks that change climate sensitivity. On the other hand, gases such as CO 2, tropospheric ozone, [21] CFCs and nitrous oxide are added or removed independently from ...