Lakhasly

Worldwatch focuses on climate change because human energy use drives greenhouse gas emissions, which affect vital life-support systems like forests, soils, and oceans. The greenhouse effect, discussed in Worldwatch's publications, is a key aspect of the climate debate. The Earth's atmosphere, transparent to sunlight but absorbing reflected energy, acts as a regulator of climate. Changes in this atmospheric layer's transparency can alter Earth's reflectivity and ultimately lead to shifts in climate, including average temperature.

Global climate change and the worldwide political and scientific response that it has stimulated are important to the work of Worldwatch because human production and use of energy is the dominant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Changes in climate patterns such as temperature, precipitation, and storms will, in turn, affect key life-supporting systems that are Worldwatch's primary concern: natural forests, cultivable soils, and marine ecosystems. Worldwatch's first important contribution to the public debate on the proper response to these concerns was the inclusion of a discussion on the greenhouse effect in its flagship publication. This issue overview is designed as a teach-in on the entire debate over the greenhouse effect, emphasizing the following key conclusions: - The climate system is one of Earth's major life-support systems, governed in large part by the gases surrounding Earth that are transparent to sunlight as it pours down from the sun, but that absorb a portion of the energy reflected upward from Earth. - Changes in the transparency of this atmospheric gas layer can cause corresponding changes in the reflectivity of Earth's surface and can thus lead to changes in climate, including the average surface temperature