Zmena klímy – možný dopad (nielen) na obyvateľstvo - Prohuman

eference to climate history of the last 100, 1,000 or 100,000 years, a basic question
must be asked: what will happen to climate? Will we experience the warm
Mediterranean climate in our zone or quite the opposite, subarctic or polar? Will
there be thermopiles, like palm trees, in our cities, or maybe they will turn into
polar deserts?
Fig. 1. Mean
[annual] air
temperature in
winter in Krakow
(1792–2011)
Fig. 2. Annual anomalies of global
average land-surface air temperature
(°C) 1861 to 2011, relative to
1961 to 1990 values, according to
data by Climate Research Unit,
University of East Anglia and Hadley
Centre, UK
Before we make an attempt to answer those questions let us first look at the
crucial factors that cause climate changes. Although there is no consistency in determining
what those causes are, they are divided into two major groups, namely
anthropogenic and natural. The former normally refer to the strengthening of
the greenhouse effect caused by the emission of the greenhouse gases, particularly
CO2, the concentration of which has reached almost 390 ppm at the present
time. The supporters of the statement that the increasing concentration of the
greenhouse gases lead to global warming point to the fast growth of carbon dioxide
concentration in the 20th century. However, climate reconstructions provide
evidence that there were greater concentrations of this gas even before first human
appeared on Earth. Therefore, many climatologists regard human activities
as a having little impact on the climate, limiting it only to a local scale: cities and
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