Climate Change and Global Warming

The climate is changing. The
earth is warming up, and there
is now overwhelming
scientific consensus that it is
happening, and human-
induced. With global warming on the
increase and species and their habitats on
the decrease, chances for ecosystems to
adapt naturally are diminishing.
Many are agreed that climate change may
be one of the greatest threats facing the
planet. Recent years show increasing
temperatures in various regions, and/or
increasing extremities in weather patterns.
This section looks at what causes climate
change, what the impacts are and where
scientific consensus currently is.
Research has shown that air pollutants from
fossil fuel use make clouds reflect more of
the sun ’s rays back into space. This leads to
an effect known as global dimming
whereby less heat and energy reaches the
earth. At first, it sounds like an ironic savior
to climate change problems. However, it is
believed that global dimming caused the
droughts in Ethiopia in the 1970s and 80s
where millions died, because the northern
hemisphere oceans were not warm enough
to allow rain formation. Global dimming is
also hiding the true power of global
warming. By cleaning up global dimming-
causing pollutants without tackling
greenhouse gas emissions, rapid warming
has been observed, and various human
health and ecological disasters have
resulted, as witnessed during the European
heat wave in 2003, which saw thousands
of people die.
UN Framework Convention On Climate
Change
Last updated Saturday, December 25, 2004.
The world mostly agrees that something
needs to be done about global warming and
climate change. The first stumbling block,
however, has been trying to get an
agreement on a framework. In 1988, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) was created by the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) and the
World Meterological Organization (WMO) to
assess the scientific knowledge on global
warming. The IPCC concluded in 1990 that
there was broad international consensus
that climate change was human-induced.
That report led way to an international
convention for climate change, the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC), signed by over 150
countries at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
This section looks at this Convention and
some of the main principles in it.