Stop Global Warming

Until recently most of us have never heard of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane especially when it is mixed with water vapor. This is the chemical make up of greenhouse gasses. When these gasses are heated by the sun and trapped in the earth’s atmosphere the temperature on earth increases. People, plants and animals that are unable to withstand the higher temperature and change in the atmosphere cannot survive. The basic concept of global warming is that it happens when the temperature of the earth rises.

A certain amount of greenhouse effect is needed to preserve temperature on Planet Earth. The energy the sun gives us is what sustains life as the light from the sun beams down on Earth. However, about thirty percent of that energy from the sun is deflected to the atmosphere and goes back into space. The balance of that sunlight is returned to Earth in a very slow energy called infrared radiation. That infrared radiation is absorbed by the chemicals mentioned above and the escape from the atmosphere is slowed. Only one percent of the Earth’s atmosphere is composed of greenhouse gasses. The greenhouse gasses regulate our climate by holding the heat around the planet by trapping it.

The entire chemical reaction is called the greenhouse effect. If we did not have a certain percentage of the chemistry that makes up the greenhouse effect our temperature here on Earth would be much colder by about fifty four degrees Fahrenheit. This percentage would be too cold to keep up our ecosystem as needed.

The greenhouse effect is required to sustain life on Earth but somewhere along the line this necessary sustenance has become overloaded. The activities of humans have hastened what was happening naturally and have provided more of the greenhouse effect than is necessary to keep and ideal temperature on Earth. In this case there is such a thing as “too much of a good thing.”

It is too late now to stop global warming but we can slow the process down by reversing the activities that we caused to begin with. Some of the things that we can do to stave off global warming are:

• Avoid raising the level of carbon dioxide by burning natural gas, coal, oil and gasoline for our automobiles.
• Certain farming procedures and the changes in land us can make levels of methane and nitrous oxide levels higher.
• Much of the greenhouse effect and global warming that is currently happening is caused by industry. Factories emit industrial gasses that are not a natural cause which is contributory to the greenhouse effect and global warming.
• We have to plant more trees to replenish what was wasted and add more to make forests. Trees and plants use the carbon dioxide that we set out into the atmosphere and return oxygen to us.
• Strange as it may seem but growth in population is also a contributing factor in a kind of long about way. The more people that need to be clothed, warmed and fed the more we are dependent on farming and industry.