What is climate change?
Climate change refers to the change in the Earth’s temperature that has been occurring over the past 100 years. Since 1900, the average temperature on the planet has increased by nearly 1 degree Celsius. Scientific evidence has now shown that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities (such as burning fossil fuels) are contributing to these climactic changes.
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What are the effects of climate change?
The direct effects of climate change so far include rising temperatures, higher sea levels and more frequent extreme weather, like floods, heat waves and hurricanes. These extremes are expected to become more severe in the future.
These direct effects are also leading to changes in water supplies, crop yields, disease patterns, and other knock on effects such as the migration of people in low-lying areas. They also threaten to provoke conflict over changes in availability of natural resources.
Are there any winners from climate change?
Some parts of the world may see specific gains from climate change, such as fewer winter deaths in cold countries, and an increase in food production in some areas. However, the overall impact of climate change will be negative, and even those areas that do see some direct gains are still likely to be adversely affected by the wider impacts of change elsewhere.
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Will there be new diseases as a result of climate change?
Scientists think it is unlikely that there will be entirely new diseases as a result of climate change, but there are likely to be new strains of existing diseases, as well as new areas affected, and longer periods of risk for infectious diseases.
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Will reducing greenhouse gas emissions solve the problem?
Reducing emissions will slow climate change down and will reduce the severity of its impacts. However, even if emissions were reduced substantially in the near future the earth’s climate will still change substantially, so plans must be made to adapt and reduce its health and social impacts.
Last modified: 13/01/2011
