You probably heard of it from the news. Or maybe someone talked about it in school. Climate change is a “large-scale, long-term shift in the planet’s weather patterns and average temperatures,” according to metoffice.gov.uk. But what is it caused by? Believe it or not, the main cause of climate change is human activity. Based on the information given by climatekids.nasa.gov, burning fossil fuels such as coal can make greenhouse gases, which are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons. These gases then go into the atmosphere and warm up the temperature. 

According to iberdrola.com,which is a green energy business in Spain, places like India are currently facing extreme heat, floods, and sandstorms due to climate change. Japan is also facing heavy rains and heat waves. What eighth grade science teacher Ms. Peterson says about climate change is that “it is a really important topic and we need to bring in more attention and resources to educate people about the impact of climate change.” She also adds that “it makes me sad to see the negative impacts on the ecosystem around the world.” But what can we do to help stop climate change? According to nrdc.org, you help out by using less electricity,  fossil fuels, or talk about the current events of climate change. 

Although this topic can be overwhelming for people, there are currently many young activists who are taking action on climate change such as an activist named Greta Thunberg. Greta Thunberg is a 19 year old Swedish environmental activist who is also currently working to solve the climate change crisis.

But there are also some people who have different beliefs about climate change. A meteorologist named Cliff Mass is known as being a climate change denier, yet he says that’s the wrong term to use.   (https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2018/05/why-one-should-never-use-term-climate.html). He believes in climate change but not that it is responsible for all the bad things that are blamed on it now, from record heat to forest fires. For example, according to seattletimes.com, Seattle’s temperature reached up to 108 degrees this summer. Cliff Mass says that climate change did not cause record heat waves that are being blamed on it (“Seattle meteorologist Cliff Mass sparks controversy by diving into heat wave climate change” August 3, 2021).

 “I think it would be accurate to say that people have a range of ideas about climate change,” says history teacher Ms. Garrison. “Some people think it is perfectly natural while others believe it is an emergency we must address right now.  The thing that is important to me, though, as a teacher,  is to acknowledge that even climate change skeptics understand that we humans have engaged in behavior that damages the earth and the natural systems that support living things and/or might help mitigate the worst effect of climate change.”

The other side of the argument is that climate change is responsible for many bad things such as change in temperature. Due to climate change, 2021 has been getting hotter in some countries.  According to Lauren Sommer, a radio reporter that covers climate change for NPR science desk, “two dozen countries, including China, experienced their hottest years on record.” Sommer interviewed John Nielson-Gammon, a state climatologist in Texas. According to him, “the entire month was warm-12 degrees hotter on average . That’s the hottest December recorded in more than a century.”

Pawprints will be covering this topic for the rest of the year so stay tuned for more.