Climate Change (I)
Written by Alfonso Elizondo
It could be said that climate change is a direct consequence of global warming because as global warming increases, climate change gradually becomes palpable and visible, first with minor changes and then with major changes in the planetary climate that are severe and irreversible.
Climate change is defined as the set of variations in temperature, humidity, rainfall, cloudiness, etc. at the planetary level for long periods of time that causes the planet to reach a new equilibrium in the very long term.
This means that any climate change involves a disruption of the balance of the Earth’s complex climate system, causing a lot of damage and requiring a lot of time before balance can be restored.
In the context of environmental policy, climate change has become synonymous with ‘anthropogenic’ global warming, which refers to all the global effects resulting from the rise in temperature due to ‘greenhouse-effect’ gas emissions.
In the history of planet Earth there have been several climate changes due to various natural causes before the existence of human beings. However, the current change is anthropogenic and is due to the intensification of the greenhouse effect’ caused by industrial emissions from the burning of ‘fossil fuels’ that are giving rise to climate variations that would not have occurred naturally.
According to the experts, the Industrial Revolution was the turning point when greenhouse gases began to disappear, although before that there were minor revolutions, such as in agriculture, technology, demography, transportation, finance, etc., that led to a new production and consumption model that was surpassed due to population growth worldwide.
Scientists used observation and theoretical models to try to understand past and future climate, compiling records of Earth’s past that are based on geological evidence, such as geotechnical surveys of thermal profiles, ice cores, tree and coral rings, glacial processes, isotopic analysis of layers and sediments, past sea level records, atmospheric temperature records, measurements of atmospheric CO2 and data from orbiting satellites.