The Greenhouse effect – What exactly is it?
When the earth’s atmosphere begins to contain heat energy due to certain gases, this causes the earth surface to become warmer than usual. This effect is called the greenhouse effect. You will not believe that this occurrence has been first documented in scientific journals for over a century already. The average temperature of the earth is about 18 degrees Celsius less then what it is now. Humans have a direct consequence to the greenhouse effect.
Who is really responsible?
There are a number of environment organizations that blame human activity for the increasing gasses that cause the greenhouse effect. However there are scientists that disagree with this fact and to them, the effect of humans is minimal.
Which gasses contribute to the greenhouse effect?
The most common greenhouse gasses are methane, chlorofluorocarbons, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and water vapor.
Activities such as burning wood, oil refineries, rubbish from landfills, coal, and fossil fuels can add up methane, carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide. Gasses have a direct effect to the water vapor and acid rains can result from this which is harmful to the population.
How much greenhouse gasses do we have today?
More and more scientists and environment researchers have become concerned and aware about the effects of too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is one of the gasses that is hard to minimize for 85% of our fuel and energy comes from processing fossil fuel. Since the industrial era, carbon dioxide emissions have increased 35%, nitrous oxide has also increased to 17% and methane has increased to more than double.
What are the long term effects of too much carbon dioxide
What happens to all the carbon dioxide emissions all over the world in the long run? According to NASA, CO2 emissions do not disappear by itself. There’s a total of 23.5 giga tons of CO2 being emitted every year. Our natural atmosphere pretty much absorbs about half of it and the remaining half stays in the atmosphere.
Aside from our atmosphere, the ocean also stores about a quarter of the carbon dioxide gasses each year. Currently, the ocean already holds about more than ten times than the land’s biosphere. Too much carbon dioxide is not exactly safe for the environment because it can become a form of carbonic acid which can cause harmful effects to marine species.
Our natural forests and plants also help diffuse the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. This process is called photosynthesis which converts carbon dioxide gasses to oxygen.
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