Source: Earth PD http://bit.ly/1ESoBKp Atmospheric CO2 PD http://bit.ly/1MJIb0q
Hi, I'm Jensen Morgan. We're going to talk about some great concepts in environmental science. Today's topic is causes of climate change. So let's get started.
We're going to talk about human activities and how it affects climate change, how climate change has changed over time, and the various sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Human activities that produce greenhouse gases include fossil fuel use, which produces greenhouse gases directly from burning, urban sprawl, which encourages more vehicle miles traveled and as a result, more tailpipe emissions like carbon dioxide, and agricultural practices like grazing, which produce large quantities of methane. All producers of greenhouse gases are multiplied as population growth demands more fossil fuel consumption, more urban sprawl, and more vehicle miles traveled.
The Industrial Revolution, largely fueled by coal, resulted in a large spike in greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. While other greenhouse gases are potent, CO2 is the most important pollutant to monitor because so much of it is produced from human activities. This graph shows global atmospheric CO2 concentrations since 1880.
As you can see, CO2 has risen approximately 80 parts per million, and global temperatures have gone up around 1 and 1/2 degrees according to this graph. Important to note is that methane has increased in concentration, largely from agriculture, since the Industrial Revolution. And it is 30 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
In addition, deforestation has reduced the amount of CO2 being absorbed in the process of photosynthesis. This graph depicts various sources of greenhouse gas emissions and their percentage of total output. Energy is biggest at 25.9%. Industry is 19.4%, forestry is 17.4%, agriculture is 13.5%, transportation is 13.1%, buildings are 7.9%, and water and wastewater are 2.8%.
Now let's have a recap. We talked about human activities and their relationship with climate change, how climate has changed over time, and which sources are contributing to climate change along with their percentage of impact. Well, that's all for this tutorial. I look forward to next time. Bye.
