Mitigation and Adaptation – NASA Science

Climate change is one of the most complex issues facing us today. It involves many dimensions – science, economics, society, politics, and moral and ethical questions – and is a global problem, felt on local scales, that will be around for thousands of years. Carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping greenhouse gas that is the primary driver of recent global warming, lingers in the atmosphere for many thousands of years, and the planet (especially the ocean) takes a while to respond to warming. So even if we stopped emitting all greenhouse gases today, global warming and climate change will continue to affect future generations. In this way, humanity is “committed” to some level of climate change.