Students brainstormed various causes and effects and reflected their undertstanding by sharing their views on Padlet.

Humans are increasingly influencing the climate and the earth's temperature by burning fossil fuels, cutting down rainforests and farming livestock. This adds enormous amounts of greenhouse gases to those naturally occurring in the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect and global warming.

Global warming is caused by the greenhouse effect, a natural process by which the atmosphere retains some of the Sun’s heat, allowing the Earth to maintain the necessary conditions to host life. Without the greenhouse effect, the average temperature of the planet would be -18ºC.

Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nitrogen oxide, HCFCs: caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels in electricity generation, transport, heating, industry and construction. Also caused by livestock, agriculture (mainly rice farming), wastewater treatment and landfills among others.

The oceans are also carbon sinks, absorbing up to 50 % of CO2 The problem is that, when they reach their limit, the ocean acidifies and causes death and disease among marine flora and fauna.

Human population is growing exponentially. Today, barely 250 years later, we are more than 7.7 billion and will continue growing until 2050 by at least another 2 billion. An increasingly numerous population needs more and more resources, which speeds up the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from all production processes.

Deforestation is one of the most important causes of climate change. The forests and rainforests are disappearing at breakneck speed. In the past 10 years, they have destroyed no less than 13 million hectares.