By: Jose Caceres
Throughout history, Earth’s climate has constantly changed. Before mankind, these changes were the effect of natural causes. It is clear that humanity during its expansion and evolution on the planet left a footprint on the environment and it continues to do so. Accounting mankind as a force that has an effect on the environment makes therefore perfect sense.
The scientific consensus has gathered enough data to claim that the climate is changing, and more specifically the planet is becoming warmer. Then, although it is clear that mankind has an effect on the environment, the question of to which extent are humans responsible for the changes in the climate remains.
Discriminating between what is caused naturally and what is mankind related is the core of the discussion within the scientific community and between the scientific community and the ‘climate change deniers’. The fact that the planet is warmer today than in the pre-industrial age is exactly that, a fact and the controversy there shouldn’t even exists because the proof is there on the historic climate records.
Historic climate records encompass instrumental records which were collected since more than a century ago, as well as records collected from paleo-climate and proxy methods, such as the use of cores from ice-sheets and glaciers as well as sedimentology cores, tree rings, etc. These records provide evidence on what the climate was in the past and also, allow the correlation between natural forces (such as Sun radiation) and climate, as well as correlation between temperature and greenhouse gases, such as CO2.
In order to resolve the question on what is the effect of human activity on global warming it is necessary to clearly differentiate human activity from otherwise natural causes. The industrial age (1760 – until now) had a major impact on both society and the environment, and brought with it the use of fossil fuels as a source of power. However, it wasn’t until only few decades ago (1960’s) that the effects of the industrialization were felt broadly in the planet and that the increase of CO2 rose in a parallel correlation to the massive use of fossil fuels.
The evidence: Burning fossil fuels is indeed a major cause of carbon emissions. Carbon when burnt and released to the atmosphere, makes CO2, a greenhouse gas. Since the burning of fossil fuels is a human activity, then the evidence is compelling. For one we have fossil fuels that would be buried in the ground shouldn’t had been unearthed and then burnt by humans and secondly we have that as a result of this fossil fuel burning the atmosphere acquires CO2 which has the ability to trap heat and therefore enhancing the warmth of the planet. Piecing together all the different scientific clues demonstrate that global warming is happening, but beyond that, the indications clearly point to the fact that human activity has a lot to do with this. In other words, we are not the witnesses of a natural occurrence, but moreover we are the main actors of a not-so-natural episode of the history of our planet.
