Garrett Tinsley (Edison) Global warming!

Global warming is a major concern by many scientist all over the world.One of the first things scientists learned is that there are several greenhouse gases responsible for warming, and humans emit them in a variety of ways. Most come from the combustion of fossil fuels in cars, factories and electricity production. The gas responsible for the most warming is carbon dioxide, also called CO2. Other sources include methane released from landfills and agriculture, nitrous oxide from fertilizers, gases used for refrigeration and industrial processes, and the loss of forests that would otherwise store CO2.  Different greenhouse gases have very different heat-trapping abilities. Some of them can even trap more heat than CO2. A molecule of methane produces more than 20 times the warming of a molecule of CO2. Nitrous oxide is 300 times more powerful than CO2. Other gases, such as chlorofluorocarbons, have heat-trapping potential thousands of times greater than CO2. But because their concentrations are much lower than CO2, none of these gases adds as much warmth to the atmosphere as CO2 does. In order to understand the effects of all the gases together, scientists tend to talk about all greenhouse gases in terms of the equivalent amount of CO2. Since 1990, yearly emissions have gone up by about 6 billion metric tons of “carbon dioxide equivalent” worldwide, more than a 20% increase.     There are many ways to lower the amounts of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, including improvements to energy efficiency and vehicle fuel economy (so less energy has to be produced), and increases in wind and solar power, hydrogen produced from renewable sources, biofuels (produced from crops), natural gas, and nuclear power.  There is also the potential to capture the carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuels and store it underground,a process called “carbon sequestration.” Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the Earth would still warm by another degree Fahrenheit or more. But what we do from today forward makes a big difference.  Depending on our choices, scientists predict that the Earth could eventually warm by as little as 2.5 degrees or as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit. A common goal amongst scientists is to stabilize GHG concentrations around 450-550 parts per million (ppm), or about twice pre-industrial levels. This is the point at which many believe the most damaging impacts of climate change can be avoided.  Current concentrations are about 380 ppm, which means there isn’t much time to lose.  According to the IPCC, we’d have to reduce GHG emissions by 50% to 80% of what they’re on track to be in the next century to reach this level. 

This entry was posted on 22. April 2009 at 23:12 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.