How To Understand Climate Change

Environmental advocates have been struggling for decades to convince people that climate change will greatly affect us negatively in the near future. Unfortunately, that "near future" is now. If not for the film 'An Inconvenient Truth', people would still be blind to the facts about climate change. The ignorance of people about global warming is highly evident with some people's confusion on climate change, global warming, greenhouse gasses, and climate warming.

Academically defined, climate change is any change in the usual pattern of the earth's weather. This phenomenon is natural, according to scientists. But the extent of climate change in our time is unbelievably shocking. Instead of experiencing only a little twist from our normal climate, the earth is experiencing a capital climate change. Due to this the term "climate change" has become synonymous to global warming or climate warming.

But in its strictest sense, global warming is the raising of the earth's temperature due to the increasing amount of CO2 or greenhouse gases. Actually, greenhouse gases are important in keeping the earth at a tolerable temperature. However, its increase will make the earth hotter and hotter until everything becomes unbalanced.

If you have watched 'An Inconvenient Truth', you will surely understand what global warming is.

You may want to know more important facts about climate change. These are most commonly confused facts about global warming:

1. The thinning ozone layer is different from the global warming problem. Compared with global warming, formation of ozone holes is caused by the contact of dangerous man-made chemicals to the ozone layer. Since the ozone layer protects us from the ultraviolet rays, chances are that more UV rays will pass through and will reach the earth as this protection becomes thinner.
2. Climate and weather are two different things. Most people believe that the weather is similar to climate since both tell if it will rain or not. But weather is the daily status of our environment while climate pertains to the overall weather status of a certain part of the earth within a specified period of time.
3. Some ice regions of the earth are shrinking, though not all. So don't get confused if your area's ice is growing instead of shrinking. You can check a study about the dramatically shrinking ice of Greenland.
4. In some countries, winter still feels like winter. But around most of the world, winter is now warmer.
5. Humans from previous periods of climate change have survived its effects but that does not mean we should be complacent about our safety. There were many societies that disappeared because of the capital change in the climate then.
6. Man-made pollution causes the greenhouse effect. This is the reason why we have abnormal climate change.
7. Global warming has some benefits, too, like reduction of deaths in relation to cold. But all of its benefits are little compared to it disadvantages.  

Be more informed through reading news articles especially about the effects of global warming. There are many on this topic. Countries are now changing their climate policy to adhere to nature's call. Although we are already experiencing the greenhouse effect, there are still some ways to survive this. Changing the climate policy is good but changing our perspective is the best.