NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 3 Climate Change — In-text Questions
Book page 64 Updated on2026-09-05
Q1.
Why does the burning of fossil fuels affect the climate?
Answer
Because it releases greenhouse gases far faster than nature ever did, and those gases trap the Sun's heat.
The greenhouse effect. It is natural and necessary; the problem is that we have thickened the blanket in a few centuries.
In the Earth's natural carbon cycle, carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases are released gradually into the atmosphere and trap heat from the Sun.
This natural ‘greenhouse effect’ warms the Earth enough to support life. Without it our planet would be frozen.
But human activities like industry, transportation and agriculture have released enormous amounts of these greenhouse gases in just a few centuries — chiefly by burning coal, petroleum oil and natural gas.
This sudden increase traps extra heat, causing rapid global warming.
Global warming disrupts the climate patterns that plants, animals and human societies have adapted to over thousands of years.
Why fossil fuels in particular: coal, oil and gas are carbon that plants and animals took out of the air millions of years ago and that then lay locked under soil, rock and sea. Burning them puts all of that ancient carbon back into the air in a couple of centuries. It is not that the carbon is new — it is that the speed is, and living things cannot adapt at that speed.
Check it yourself: the chapter's Indian example — early in 2025 the country's average temperature was 1 to 3°C above normal, so the winter was much shorter and milder than usual, hurting both agricultural production and many small-scale industries.