Climate Change: Home

"“Climate change” is the now commonly used term, having replaced “global warming,” for the rapid rise in the average temperature of the Earth's surface, including air and ocean, for the past century or more. The increase is widely attributed to the phenomenon known as “the greenhouse effect,” whereby the atmospheric buildup of excess concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, and nitrous oxide—known as greenhouse gases (GHGs)—prevents infrared energy from escaping and traps heat at the earth's surface. Although there remains a minority of staunch skeptics, climate change is almost universally regarded as a fact in the scientific community and generally linked to human activity, in particular the burning of fossil fuels. In the context of the culture wars, the debate over climate change has centered on the extent of the problem and whether or not a proactive federal response, such as strict but costly regulations and programs that subsidize clean-energy technologies over carbon-based ones, is imminently needed"

Ananth, Mahesh. "Climate Change." Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices, edited by Roger Chapman, and James Ciment, Routledge, 2nd edition, 2013. Credo Reference, http://proxy16.noblenet.org/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/topic/climate_change?institutionId=1208. Accessed 09 Sep. 2019.