Climate Change
Global warming will have catastrophic effects such as accelerating sea level rise, droughts, floods, storms, and heat waves. A layer of greenhouse gases, primarily water vapor, and including much smaller amounts of carbon dioxide, methane act as a thermal blanket for the Earth, absorbing heat and warming the surface. Climate change is caused by factors that include oceanic processes, variations in solar radiatiom received by Earth, and volcanic eruptions, and human induced alterations of the natural world; these latter effects are currently causing global warming, and "climate change" is often used to describe human specific impacts.