The Negative Impacts of Climate Change on People and the Environment

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In this extended response I am going to be writing about climate change and the impacts it has on people and the environment. Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. Climate change has internal and external causes. Internal causes are impacts that are within the Earth’s atmosphere that we can control to make them better or worse for people and the environment, whereas, external causes are impacts that are outside the Earth’s atmosphere so we cannot control them. Some of the internal factors are volcanic activity, surface reflection, tectonic activity and changes in atmospheric gas. In contrast, the external factors are solar output and orbital geometry. Another factor contributing to climate change is the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is this: Heat energy from the sun, beams down onto the Earth. Some of it passes through a blanket of gases in our atmosphere. Greenhouse gases form a blanket around the Earth, which traps the heat energy in the atmosphere. Some of the heat energy escapes back into space. The energy, which does not escape into space, is reflected back to earth. The main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. The greenhouse effect changes the climate by the emission of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, as by-products of industry and agriculture is having a global impact on temperature and weather systems. One negative impact of climate change on people is agriculture. An example of this is crop yields. Agricultural land on the edge of deserts becomes unusable, through the process of desertification; therefore crops would not be able to be grown. On the other hand, crops would also be wiped out in low – lying areas that suffer from flooding. With fewer crops available on the world market,

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