Answer 1:
Climate is an immensely complicated phenomenon
that we are, perhaps appropriately, only scraping
the very tip of the iceberg in terms of
understanding it. We know (or strongly suspect)
that climate change has happened in the past due
to many, many factors, including:
(1) changes in the positions of landmasses due
to continental drift, altering wind or ocean
circulation patterns;
(2) volcanoes spewing dust, sulfur dioxide, or
other aerosols into the atmosphere;
(3) changes in the energy output of the sun (how
and why the sun does this we don't understand
either, but we know that it does);
(4) changes in the distribution of vegetation,
especially forests, on the Earth's surface,
especially in regards to rainfall;
(5) changes in the Earth's orbit;
(6) debris kicked up by asteroid or comet impacts;
(7) changes in the composition of the atmosphere,
especially in greenhouse gasses, which are in turn
caused by:
(a) volcanoes spewing them out;
(b) releases from peat bogs, oceanic methane
deposits, etc.
(c) destruction of forests (natural or
artificial), releasing stored carbon into the
atmosphere;
(d) evaporation of water from the ocean as
part of normal weather due to the sun and other
factors (this is the big one greenhouse-wise, but
is itself amplified by other climate-changing
effects);
(e) burning of fossil fuels by humans.
Possibility 7-e and its influences on 7-d are the
ones that most environmentalists are most
concerned about for two reasons, first because we
are both causing it and second because it's the
one cause that human policies can actually do
something about directly; all of the others are
mainly if not entirely natural and almost or
completely beyond our control. Debate continues in
the scientific community over which of this
laundry list are most important, but there is
general consensus that all of them do matter to
some extent, including the human-induced effects.
I am not familiar with exactly what the World
Wildlife Fund is doing about climate change at the
moment, but I can tell you that they don't have
the resources to fight climate change directly
except maybe by putting out propaganda in order to
educate people that it's a problem and that we
humans have a hand in causing it. More likely what
they are doing is trying to anticipate the effects
that climate change will have on the wildlife that
they're trying to protect, and planning and
funding reserves that will enable said wildlife to
survive the climate changes that are to come.
Click Here to return to the search form.
|
