Explain a human cause of climate change and its impacts.

There are numerous actions by humans catalysing climate change. The first is burning fossil fuels. This releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Fossil fuels - natural gas, coal and oil - are needed for numerous things in society such as running cars and generating electricity. The pollution emitted from these activities gets trapped in the earth's atmosphere, absorbing the sun's radiation and therefore heating the earth. As a result, global temperatures are rising creating huge impacts around the world. One of which is glacial retreat and therefore sea level rise from the melting ice. The catastrophic effects of this can be seen in low lying land such as in Bangladesh where coasts are being eroded away, forcing people to flee their homes and become environmental refugees. A secondary impact of this is the rise of town populations such as in Dhaka, straining infrastructure and resources in these areas. Another effect is more extreme weather conditions. As seen already, weather patterns are frequently changing. Winters are becoming colder in areas whilst summers get hotter. This does not only impact humans; animals and plants are also suffering leading to the possibility of thousands of species going extinct. This reduces biodiversity and will interrupt food chains, having much wider consequences.