Climate Facts: Felling trees, burning fossil fuels… major causes of global warming

The complexities of climate change and its associated jargon can make it difficult to digest. TheCable’s climate quick facts will help to demystify these climate concepts through easy-to-understand and straight-to-the-point explanations.

Here are some to keep at the tip of your fingers:

1. A significant cause of global warming — increase in global temperature — is through human activities such as burning of fossil fuels, cutting down of trees and similar agricultural activities.

2. The average temperature on earth would be too cold to sustain life if there were no greenhouse gases — gases that trap heat in the atmosphere and warm the planet. But too much of these gases in the atmosphere is warming the earth more than usual.

3. The destruction of forests is a major cause of carbon dioxide release. This is because forests serve as carbon sinks, storing carbon as they grow, but when humans cut down forest trees, they release the carbon trapped in these trees back into the atmosphere, thus increasing global warming.

4. According to the Global Commission on Adaptation, restoring upland forests can help 534 of the world’s largest cities regulate water flows and manage more extreme floods while saving an estimated $890 million each year.

5. Forested watersheds provide an estimated 75 percent of the world’s accessible freshwater resources. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, more than half the earth’s people depend on this source of water for domestic, agricultural, industrial and environmental purposes.