What causes climate change?
As it turns out – lots of things.
In fact, many of the causes for climate change are natural, and this is why our climate has been changing ever since the earth came into being some 4.5 billion years back, long, long before the remotest signs of human beings emerged!
So, we humans had nothing to do with the climate change of the past. To a very large extent, climate changes prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s can be explained by these natural causes:
- Changes in solar energy received
- Continental drift
- Earth’s tilt
- Changes in earth’s orbit
- Ocean currents
- Volcanic eruptions
- Natural vegetation coverage, and
- Natural changes in greenhouse gas concentrations.
Let’s fast forward to now.
Aren’t the same causes listed above the key ones causing climate change now too? Sure, they continue contributing their bit to climate change.
Significant changes to climate in recent times, however, cannot be explained by these natural causes alone.
Let’s take one of the key components of climate change – global warming. Extensive research and analyses indicate that natural causes alone cannot explain most of the observed global warming, especially warming since the mid-20th century. Rather, it is extremely likely that human activities have been the dominant cause of this warming.
Specifically, the increasing amounts of greenhouse gases emitted from the use of fossil fuels and other human/industrial activities are almost surely responsible for a large part of the current global warming, and consequently enhanced climate change.
So, essentially, it means that while natural causes continue contributing to changes in climate, you and I are most likely responsible for a large portion of the climate change patterns that happened in the past 100 years.
