What are global warming and climate change and what are they caused by? Let's look at it in a nutshell. Since the first Industrial Revolution, developments in human activity has led to an increase in the emissions of certain gases (known as ‘greenhouse gases’). The greenhouse gases emitted, in turn, remain in the atmosphere in the long-term, so their concentration in the atmosphere increases every year. Finally, the increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases means that the Earth's atmosphere traps more of the energy received from the Sun, thus resulting in rising temperatures and climate change. If the increase in greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity (known technically as ‘anthropogenic’ greenhouse gases) continues in the future at the same pace as in recent decades, the largest scientific community – which has been studying this topic for decades – (the IPCC, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), estimates that it could trigger a major rise in temperature and the climate. This would potentially be harmful to humans and the environment. As a great deal of the increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is due to increased carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of increasing amounts of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas), the issue of combating climate change is closely linked to that of the transition to a new system capable of ensuring economic development and universal access to energy and thus gradually reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero.
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