What Is Global WarmingWhat is Global Warming? This is a question that everyone of us should know the answer to, as the problem is really serious indeed. Global warming refers to the observations that the atmosphere near the Earth's surface is warming. This temperature increase is one of the many types of climate changes that our planet is currently going through. But why should we care about a temperature increase of just 0.7°C for one hundred years. Although, this might seem like a small problem, this is not the case. A temperature increase like that is a sign that something is wrong the ecosystem. The earth is a closed system and everything is related. If one thing goes wrong, the entire balance of the system will be destroyed, and unfortunately, that's exactly what's currently happening. Such temperature increases have serious impact on human activities.
The global warming is caused by the so called 'greenhouse effect'. The term greenhouse effect shows how carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere absorb some of the energy that is emitted from the Earth's surface, preventing this energy from being lost to space. As we all know, our planet absorbs energy from the sun and emits a portion of this energy back into space. But if this energy doesn't get completely reflected, it heats the lower atmosphere, which emits some energy back to earth. The formation of ozone holes is also related to the greenhouse gases. Ozone has an important function of acting as a shield protecting us of the harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. Problem is that the ozone is getting destroyed by all the chemical compounds that we produce. 90% of the ozone exists in the stratosphere, but when you combine the air pollution, with the extremely cold temperatures in the temperatures and the solar radiation, a chemical reaction occurs causing holes in the ozone layer. Statistics show that United States is the country which is the largest source of global warming pollution. The USA only produces 25 percent of the carbon dioxide pollution from fossil-fuel burning. There is no other country with a percentage as large as that. The entire continent of Europe is behind, as well as China, India and Japan combined. Obviously, the American government must be seriously concerned and take immediate measures. The auto-manufacturing industry is already seeing the changes as there were new requirements introduced to make all the new cars more fuel efficient. |