Climate Change

Global warming is one of the most
serious challenges facing us today. To
protect the health and economic well-
being of current and future
generations, we must reduce our
emissions of heat-trapping gases by
using the technology, know-how, and
practical solutions already at our
disposal.
-A warmer world could be a more
explosive one. Global warming is
having a much more profound effect
than just melting ice caps -- it is
melting magma too.

-Understanding climate change

Global warming is shorthand
for "climate change," and the term is
correct if you realize that it's
referring to the average temperature
of the Earth over years and decades;
not to the temperatures at particular
times and places.

"Climate change" is a much better term
because much more than warming is
involved, although the changes first
begin with the globe's average
warming. This average warming can
cause changes in patterns of rainfall.
It can lead to more snow piling up in
places such as Antarctica and
Greenland, and it can even include
some parts of the Earth growing colder.

Scientists have managed to figure out
a general, fairly detailed picture of
the Earth's climate going back more
than 100,000 years, before the
beginning of the last ice age.

This history shows that temperatures
of different parts of the Earth, and
even the Earth's average temperature,
have swung widely in the past into and
out of ice ages, long before humans
could have affected the climate.

-THE CAUSE: Global warming is "very
likely" caused by man, the strongest
conclusion to date.

THE OUTLOOK: Now that the world has
begun to warm, hotter temperatures and
rises in sea level "would continue for
centuries" no matter how much humans
control their pollution.

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