How does industry affect climate change

Oddly enough, climate change may actually be good for skiing meccas like Vermont right now. Because more precipitation is falling with the rising temperatures, there will be more snow during the colder months.

In the long run, however, if winters grow shorter and warmer and the precipitation turns to rain, regions that depend on cold-weather tourism will lose a substantial amount of money. By , two-thirds of European ski resorts may be forced to close , according to an estimate made by Daniel Scott, the Canada research chair in global change and tourism at the University of Waterloo.

The production of wine grapes may not be entirely destroyed by climate change, but the geographic landscape of winners and losers in the wine business may change dramatically. Wine grapes require a particular environment in which to grow and are very sensitive to even the most subtle shifts in climate.

As temperatures rise, there may be a two-thirds drop in production in traditional wine areas, such as Burgundy and Tuscany. At the same time, certain regions, including southern England and greater Seattle, could find themselves home to an emergent wine industry. The impacts of climate change on the financial industry are yet to be determined, but Wall Street may find itself literally under water in coming years. This land was generally flooded in the aftermath of 's Hurricane Sandy.

Though Wall Street—one of the oldest streets in the city—was built mostly on old, elevated land, the geography of Lower Manhattan may change drastically in coming years. For the financial services industry, prolonged shutdowns could lead to large losses.

Skip Navigation. How steep will the costs be? VIDEO Remain defensive with no real signs of economic recovery in near term: Societe Generale. Please enable javascript to access the full functionality of this site. Without an atmosphere, all of this energy would be lost to space.

The human-induced build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is known as the 'enhanced' greenhouse effect or 'anthropogenic climate change'. Since the start of the Industrial Revolution in about , human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels, including coal and oil, have dramatically increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. As a result, the rate of heat-loss from the Earth has slowed, creating a warming effect.

More than 85 per cent of the additional heat in our atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans. The enhanced greenhouse effect is expected to change many of the basic weather patterns that make up our climate, including wind and rainfall patterns and the incidence and intensity of storms. Every aspect of our lives is in some way influenced by the climate. For example, we depend on water supplies that exist only under certain climatic conditions, and our agriculture requires particular ranges of temperature and rainfall.

The most important greenhouse gases are water vapour and carbon dioxide CO 2. Both are present at very small concentrations in the atmosphere. Because of this variation, it is difficult to measure globally averaged water vapour concentration. Carbon dioxide has a much longer lifetime and is well mixed throughout the atmosphere.

The current concentration is about 0. Other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere include methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons.

Water vapour accounts for about half the present-day greenhouse effect, but its concentration in the atmosphere is not influenced directly by human activities. For example, as the atmosphere warms it is able to hold more water. Although water vapour absorbs heat, it does not accumulate in the atmosphere in the same way as other greenhouse gases; it tends to act as part of a feedback loop rather than being a direct cause of climate change.

Read more about feedback in Climate systems. A carbon-constrained future is imminent, a fact that many businesses now realize. A further 17 percent expect this before This implies climate legislation will pass Congress even sooner. The question now is not whether legislation will pass, but about its timing and the form it will take. Companies that prepare for this future will be the winners, while the rest will be left playing catch up. Action on emissions Manufacturing operations that are most likely to be affected by climate change regulations are those that result in significant direct greenhouse gas emissions GHG , such as cement, iron and steel production, as well as those that are highly energy intensive, such as paper and chemicals operations.

Climate change rules are likely to result in upward pressure on energy prices, which means that operational efficiency improvements will have greater benefit than in the past as a basis for advantage.

Manufacturers that produce highly efficient consumer products will also gain a competitive advantage over producers of similar, but more energy intensive goods and services. Driven at least partly from a desire to influence the policy debate, a growing number of leading companies across many industries are now openly calling for national GHG limits.

One of the most significant recent developments was the formation earlier this year of the U.