In recent decades, we have been hearing more and more about global warming and the greenhouse effect. Politicians, scientists, and journalists are arguing about what climate change is going to happen soon, where it will lead, and how much man himself is involved. In this post, we will try to understand the causes and consequences of the greenhouse effect.
Why do we talk about the greenhouse effect?
In the 19th century, scientists began to monitor the weather and climate regularly across the planet. But, using different methods, we can determine how the temperature on the planet and in the more distant past changed. And so, in the second half of the 20th century, scientists began to receive alarming data - the global temperature on our planet began to rise. And the closer to the present, the stronger this growth.
Of course, climatic conditions on our planet have changed in the past. There were both global warming and global cooling, but there are some features of the current global warming. First, the available data indicate that over the past 1-2 thousand years the climate on the planet has not undergone dramatic changes, except for short-term anomalies. Secondly, there are many reasons to believe that current warming is not a natural climate change, but a change caused by human activity.
There are many disputes over this issue. Shortly after they started talking about the fact that humans cause global warming, there were many skeptics. They began to doubt that human activity could affect global processes such as climate change around the world. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to argue that it is the human being who is to blame for the current global warming. How did people cause global warming?
In the 19th century, the world entered an industrial age. The emergence of factories and transport required a lot of fuel. People began to extract millions of tons of coal, oil, and gas and burn them in ever-increasing quantities. As a result, huge amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were released into the atmosphere.And as the content of these gases increased, so did global temperatures. But why is the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations leading to warming? Let's try to figure it out.
What is the greenhouse effect?
People have long learned how to grow vegetables in greenhouses where they can harvest without waiting for the warm season. Why is it warm in the greenhouse in spring or even winter? Of course, the greenhouse can be heated on purpose, but it's not just that. Through the glass or film that covers the greenhouse, the sun's rays penetrate freely, heating the ground inside. Heating the earth also emits radiation, giving off heat together with this radiation, but this radiation is not visible, but infrared. But for infrared radiation, glass or film is opaque and traps it. Thus, it is more difficult to give away heat than it is received, and as a result, the temperature inside the greenhouse is higher than in the open air.
A similar phenomenon can be observed on the planet as a whole. The Earth is covered by an atmosphere that easily transmits solar radiation to the surface, but infrared radiation back into space from the heated earth's surface is worse. And the extent to which the atmosphere is held back by infrared radiation depends on its greenhouse gas content. The more greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, the more the atmosphere prevents the planet from cooling down and the warmer the climate becomes.
What are the consequences of the greenhouse effect?
Of course, it is not the greenhouse effect itself, but how strong it is. There has always been a certain amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if they had disappeared from the atmosphere at all, we would not have been happy. After all, with zero greenhouse effect, according to scientists' calculations, the temperature on the planet would fall by 20-30 ° C. The Earth would freeze and be covered with glaciers almost to the equator. However, the intensification of the greenhouse effect will not lead to anything good.
Changes in global temperature by only a few degrees will lead (and according to some observations, already leads) to serious consequences.
What are the consequences?
- Global glacier melting and rising sea levels. The glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica have quite large ice reserves. If this ice melts as a result of global warming, the sea level will rise.
- Weather will get worse. There is a general pattern - the higher the temperature, the more energy is spent on the movement of air masses, and the more unpredictable the weather becomes.
- Harm to the biosphere. Animals and plants already suffer from human activity, but abrupt climatic changes can inflict an even more powerful blow on the biosphere.
What is the result? Humanity seems to have no other choice but to fight the greenhouse effect. To do this, we need to change the predatory attitude towards nature, stop burning fossil fuels uncontrollably and cut down forests.