The impact of human activities on climate change
Learn about carbon dioxide and its relationship to warming conditions at Earth's surface, as explained by John P. Rafferty, biological and Earth sciences editor of Encyclopædia Britannica.
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Transcript
Climate change is a change in the atmosphere or change in the typical conditions of the atmosphere over time. Climate change has been studied in its modern form since the 1950s and the 1960s. So what we have now is a long-term data set noting the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations. Carbon dioxide has long been known to be a greenhouse gas. The more carbon dioxide that there is in a volume of air the greater the temperature increase. Since this is happening at a global scale, scientists are concerned that we will experience an increase in global average temperature. This is a topic that will need to be continuing study. However, we do have a pretty good idea that something is happening to the atmosphere based on human activities.
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