Greenhouse gases - major sources of emission and impact

Introduction

Our beloved planet earth is getting warmer with each passing day. No thanks to some human causes, the global rising of earths temperature has wreaked havoc on people living everywhere. If you have been around for quite a while, you must have heard a lot of opinions about the causes and effect of our warmer earth. In the midst of this controversial and often heated discussion, some terms like greenhouse effect and and greenhouse gasses are mentioned. Understanding what these are is crucial to any fights or efforts to bring down the earths temperatures.

In this discussion, we want to talk about important components that contribute to global warming. Then, not only will you understand the discussions around this subject, but it will definitely shape your view and influence your lifestyle choices if you mean well for mother earth.

Greenhouse effect - making the earth feel hotter

Greenhouse effect is a term used to describe the rising temperature of the earth as a result of heat trapped from the earths sunlight. When the sun shines, the rays travel through space and reaches the earth. Some of these rays or heat warms the earth, making its temperature to sustain life. However, not all of the sun rays are emitted back into space. Some gases trap the rays that should have travelled out of space, causing the earth to feel warmer and temperatures to rise.

The transmission of light from the sun is essentially for maintaining a normal temperature for the earth. When they are absorbed by the earth earths atmosphere, it prevents the earths temperature from plummeting. However, when some of the absorbed heat is radiated back into outer space, some gases present in the atmophere traps some of the radiation. As a result, the earths temperature goes up more than it should. That is how global warming happens. What are these gases that trap excess heat from the sun? They are called greenhouse gases. Lets explore a little more about them.

Greenhouse gasses - locking up more heat

The gasses that prevent excess radiation that entered the atmosphere to exit into space are called green house gases. These gases play a good role in keeping the earth warm. However, the existence of a large amount of greenhouse gases mean that more heat than necessary is trapped and remain in the atmosphere. This causes the temperature of the earth to rise beyond what is needed, thereby causing global warming.

There are many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In this discussion however, we will talk just about just one of them and how it came to be abundant in the atmosphere. The chemical formular of this particular gas is Co₂. In future articles we will discuss about other ones.

• Carbon dioxide (Co₂): Carbon dioxide is arguably the largest single cause of global warming. It is the most abundant greenhouse gas, trapping way more heat than the rest. Unfortunately, unsafe human activities continue to cause large-scale emission of Co₂ than ever. In fact, there is more Co₂now in the atmosphere than there use to be. Here is a stat below from Wikipedia:

The current global average concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is 421 ppm as of May 2022 (0.04%). This is an increase of 50% since the start of the Industrial Revolution, up from 280 ppm during the 10,000 years prior to the mid-18th century source

One might begin to wonder what causes such large abundances of Co₂ in the atmosphere. There are some natural process in which carbon dioxide is released into the air. They include the decaying of dead animals. Also respiration by humans and animals are another way Carbon dioxide is released. Humans and animals breath in oxygen and release carbon dioxide. Other natural processes through which carbon ioxide is released includes during volcanic eruptions.

However, natural processes like the ones described above release a relatively smaller amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The real and biggest pollutants often come from human activity on earth. Consider some of them:

1. Combustion of fuel: The single biggest source of carbon dioxide emission is through the burning process of fuel. The processes and events through which this happens is many. Consider the industries. Use of machines in various production factories that consume fossil fuel means that the exhaust produce large volumes of carbon dioxide which is released into the atmosphere. When this is multiplied by the number of industries producing different things around the world, the size of the carbon dioxide produced becomes obvious.

Another big source of carbon dioxide is the exhaust fumes produced by various cars. There are millions of cars on the streets around the world. All of these cars emit gases as they burn fuel in the engine. Of the gases produced, carbon dioxide is the main one. As more cars are produced and released into the streets, the more carbon dioxide emission there are.

2. Bush burning: This is another man-made act which has caused a large-scale release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Most farmers around the globe use bush burning as a regular way to clear the farm and prepare it for the new planting season. While it appears as a harmless practice, it is a huge source of environmental pollution. In the process of clearing a large area of land by burning it, carbon dioxide is released in large amounts into the atmosphere. This in turn causes global warming.

Finally

Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide continue to cause a global warming of the atmosphere. Greenhouse effect on its own has resulted in many other environmental hazards which we will discourse in a future article.

Read more

• Greenhouse effect
• Carbon dioxide