Human impact on nature Plan: Human impact on nature

Climate change[edit]
The primary causes^[152] and the wide-ranging effects^{[153][154][155]} of global warming and resulting climate change. Some effects constitute feedbacks that intensify climate change.^[156]
Main article: Climate change
Further information: Runaway climate change, Climate change and ecosystems, and Effects of climate change
Contemporary climate change is the result of increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, which is caused primarily by combustion of fossil fuel (coal, oil, natural gas), and by deforestation, land use changes, and cement production. Such massive alteration of the global carbon cycle has only been possible because of the availability and deployment of advanced technologies, ranging in application from fossil fuel exploration, extraction, distribution, refining, and combustion in power plants and automobile engines and advanced farming practices. Livestock contributes to climate change both through the production of greenhouse gases and through destruction of carbon sinks such as rain-forests. According to the 2006 United Nations/FAO report, 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions found in the atmosphere are due to livestock. The raising of livestock and the land needed to feed them has resulted in the destruction of millions of acres of rainforest and as global demand for meat rises, so too will the demand for land. Ninety-one percent of all rainforest land deforested since 1970 is now used for livestock.^[157] Potential negative environmental impacts caused by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are rising global air temperatures, altered hydrogeological cycles resulting in more frequent and severe droughts, storms, and floods, as well as sea level rise and ecosystem disruption.^[158]
Acid deposition[edit]
Main article: Acid deposition
Estimated change in seawater pH caused by anthropogenic impact on CO
₂ levels between the 1700s and the 1990s, from the Global Ocean Data Analysis Project (GLODAP) and the World Ocean Atlas
The fossils that are burned by humans for energy usually come back to them in the form of acid rain. Acid rain is a form of precipitation which has high sulfuric and nitric acids which can occur in the form of a fog or snow. Acid rain has numerous ecological impacts on streams, lakes, wetlands and other aquatic environments. It damages forests, robs the soil of its essential nutrients, releases aluminium to the soil, which makes it very hard for trees to absorb water.^[159]
Researchers have discovered that kelp, eelgrass and other vegetation can effectively absorb carbon dioxide and hence reducing ocean acidity. Scientists, therefore, say that growing these plants could help in mitigating the damaging effects of acidification on marine life.