Climate Change: Opportunities and Risks for the Manufacturing Sector

Climate change is a global environmental challenge with all-encompassing impacts on the atmosphere, land, water, and biodiversity. CO2 is the leading cause of climate change bringing unpredictability in parameters such as temperature, precipitation, snow, ice cover, and other climatic conditions (IPCC, 2002). Changes in the atmospheric abundance of greenhouse gases and aerosols, in solar radiation, and in land surface properties alter the energy balance of the climate system. These changes are expressed in terms of radiative forcing which is used to compare how a range of human and natural factors drive warming or cooling influences on global climate. Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have been reported to have markedly increased as a result of human activities since the industrial revolution and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years. The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are associated to anthropogenic consequences resulting from release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) due primarily to fossil fuel use and land-use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agricultural practices (IPCC, 2001, 2007). It is reported that Earth’s climate has experienced an average warming of approximately 0.8 °C, with an increase of 0.6 °C in the past three decades, and the 1990s being the warmest decade in the observational record (IPCC, 2001).