ABSTRACT
STUDY THE NEWS on a given day for stories that are science-related, and it is likely the topic most often reported on is that of global climate change.We read about greenhouse gases, the need to find renewable energy sources, and how habitats are changing.Yet the scientific explanation for climate change may not be something we fully comprehend, and without this understanding we can wonder why there is a push to harvest wind energy with giant wind turbines, why driving our petrol car is affecting the climate but burning wood in a log burner is seen as green,why we should be doing something about our carbon footprint, and fundamentally we wonder why we are being asked to alter our lifestyle. How an understanding of the ways materials behave can lead to an appreciation of global warming is explored in this chapter.
