(NAS Colloquium) Carbon Dioxide and Climate Change (1997)

Summary: Human consumption of energy has accelerated rapidly because of increasing human population coupled with increasing per capita energy consumption. Is it possible that accelerating human activity has already caused globally significant environmental change, or is about to do so? One aspect of this question relates to possible human alteration of the Earth's climate. Climatic change is caused by exchanges of energy, momentum, and chemicals between the atmosphere, the oceans, and land surfaces. These processes are mainly natural, but some, at least, are susceptible to human influence. Processes that involve the so-called greenhouse gases are probably the most critical candidates. Carbon dioxide deserves attention as a greenhouse gas because it is indisputably rising in concentration. To understand what controls its abundance in the atmosphere, and hence its influence on the greenhouse effect, we must address all the processes that affect, and are affected by, its concentration in the atmosphere.