Climate+Change

__**KEY TERMS**__ Made by people or resulting from human activities. (Usually used in the context of emissions that are produced as a result of human activities)
 * Anthropogenic**

The most abundant of the greenhouse gases. It is produced as a by-product of oil and gas production, burning fossil fuels and biomass. All animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms also produce CO2. It has a global warming potential of 1.
 * Carbon dioxide (CO2)**

Trapping and build-up of heat in the atmosphere (troposphere) near the Earth’s surface. Some of the heat flowing back toward space from the Earth's surface is absorbed by water vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone, and several other gases in the atmosphere and then reradiated back toward the Earth’s surface. If the atmospheric concentrations of these greenhouse gases rise, the average temperature of the lower atmosphere will gradually increase
 * Greenhouse Effect**

Global warming is an average increase in the temperature of the atmosphere near the Earth's surface and in the troposphere, which can contribute to changes in global climate patterns. Global warming can occur from a variety of causes, both natural and human induced. In common usage, "global warming" often refers to the warming that can occur as a result of increased emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities
 * Global Warming**

A hydrocarbon that is a greenhouse gas with a global warming potential most recently estimated at 23 times that of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). Methane is produced through anaerobic (without oxygen) decomposition of waste in landfills, animal digestion, decomposition of animal wastes, production and distribution of natural gas and petroleum, coal production, and incomplete fossil fuel combustion.
 * Methane (CH 4 )**

__**WHAT IS CLIMATE CHANGE?**__ Throughout the course of time, climate changed significantly. A decade ago, climate change was only a speculation, however, today, it is happening before our eyes. Canada’s Inuit see it because of the disappearing Artic ice and permafrost; Latin Americans and Southern Asians suffer from lethal storms and floods. Europeans, in disappearing glaciers, forest fires and fatal heat waves. All of these characteristics show that the world’s temperature is increasing. Climatologists have reported for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that global warming is caused by human activities and they fear that this situation will only accelerate. Scientists study climate by recording observations and making theoretical models of past climate and hypothesis for the future. Borehole temperature profiles, ice cores, floral and faunal records, glacial processes, stable isotope and other sediment analyses, and sea level records serve to provide a climate record that spans the geologic past. Climate change is only considered when there is a change over long periods of time, meaning that variations over periods shorter than a few decades should not be considered as climate change. There are even those who use the term to refer to changes caused by human activity only. Because of this, the term climate change has become a synonym for anthropogenic pollution. __**CURRENT EVENT**__ [|Popping the Cap on Arctic Methane - NY Times] Researchers reported that the ice that melts in the Arctic due to the increase in temperature is releasing methane. Methane is released already by anthropogenic pollution, so having even more of this dangerous gas being emitted could cause serious impacts.

__**SCIENTIST: Khabibullo Abdusamatov**__ Habibullo Ismailovich Abdussamatov is a Russian astrophysicist.

He is skeptic regarding global warming.

Abdussamatov thinks that "global warming results not from the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but from an unusually high level of solar radiation and a lengthy—almost throughout the last century—growth in its itensity."

This view contradicts the conventional opinion on climate change as well as accepted reconstructions of solar activity. He he also said that "parallel global warmings—observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth—can only be a straightline consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance."

This idea has not been accepted by other scientists, who said "the idea just isn't supported by the theory or by the observations" and that it "doesn't make physical sense."

The Russian scientist also believes that the greenhouse effect doesn`t`exist! He states that "Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away." He has stated that more work is needed to model the effect. However, this effect cannot happen because the mean free path of molecules in the atmosphere is very short, transferring energy by collisions and preventing greenhouse gases from retaining the excess energy they absorb.

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Anthropogenic Pollution

Greenhouse effect