The plan was to write on the worsening climate effects on Pakistan, as was witnessed in recent days, resulting in the loss of so many precious lives and causing extreme agony to all Pakistanis. However, requests were received from respected readers to elaborate upon climate change in a layman’s language since a lot of people do not understand the contours of this emergency. This column will try to explain this phenomenon in the simplest manner.

Climate change predates the formation of Earth as we know it today and has been a constant throughout its history. During the Hadean Aeon, Earth formed around 4.54 billion years ago, with the core, crust, and oceans forming shortly thereafter. After it cooled off, in the Archean Aeon, around 2.5 billion years ago, the evolution of photosynthesis led to the release of oxygen into the atmosphere, gradually changing the atmosphere and enabling the development of life on land. Then, in the Proterozoic Aeon, till 541 million years ago, Climate changes resulted in the formation of life and the formation of the current structure of the Earth. Finally, we entered the current Phanerozoic Aeon, which witnessed the huge explosion of life, but also the end of the dinosaurs, along with approximately 76% of all species going extinct, when an asteroid hit the planet around 66 million years ago.

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Since then, Earth has gone through tremendous natural climate change, ranging from a warm, humid climate, without any polar ice, to a sudden temperature spike with the oceans becoming acidic, to the Ice Age (Pleistocene epoch) around 20000 years ago, in which huge ice sheets covered North America and Eurasia. In the last 11000 years, the climate has transformed from the ice age to being stable and warm, resulting in the........

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