There are several activities of human beings seen that clearly leads to the pollution of our natural environment. These pollutions that are easily seen are land pollution, which involves littering and other toxic substances that are put onto the surface. Water pollution is also another seen environmental pollution where water bodies become poisoned by chemicals and kills natural habitats like fishes. These types of pollution are easily seen and therefore people are aware of it causes. One typical kind of pollution that gets the least attention and awareness from the general society is known as the greenhouse effect. This is because the greenhouse effect is part of air pollution and there are so many causes of air pollution that people are not ware of. The greenhouse effect is known as the heating of the Earth by the emission of Greenhouse gases. The name “Greenhouse” is derived from the idea of glass planes that covers and make up an actual greenhouse where plants are kept (Hopwood, Cohen). There is a protective layer over the earth’s atmosphere known as the ozone Layer. Once these gases are released into the ozone layer, they cause a hole through it which allows the sun’s ultraviolet heat to heat the surface of the earth causing global warming. This is part of the main reason why we do not pay much attention to the greenhouse effect because this pollution involves gases which we cannot see with our eyes. There are four of these main greenhouse gases. These gases include the water vapor which has the percentage of between 30 to 70 percent. The second gas is carbon oxide which has the percentage of 20 percent. The rest of the four gases are methane and ozone which have a percentage between 3 to 9 percent. Other contributions to the greenhouse effect are clouds but clouds are considered as non gas contributors.
And another question is what are the activities that us humans engage in that lead to the increase of the greenhouse. Numerous human activities contribute to the greenhouse effect. It could be domestic, commercial, or industrial. For example, cooking, heating of water, creates water vapor which goes on to form clouds in the atmosphere and clouds are very good contributors to the greenhouse effect. Commercial and industrial activities such as burning of fuels, oil, exhaust fumes from vehicles, gas cooking stoves and even smoking, all emit carbon dioxide into the air, which is the second highest cause of the green house effect. A lot of Electrical appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners in buildings and cars, contain these chemicals known as the Chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) which they emit into the atmosphere. These CFC chemicals contain amount of carbon dioxide (Hopwood, Cohen). Human respiration is also a great factor since humans exhale carbon dioxide as a by-product into the atmosphere. Another human activity is deforestation. Deforestation is the cutting down of trees, plants at a natural environment for the purpose of commercial use. When the trees are burnt, more carbon dioxide is released into the air. The use of nitrous Oxide has been also on the rise during the years. In hospitals, this gas chemical (nitrous oxide) is used as an anesthetic for hospital patients because it is a good chemical to kill pain during hospital surgical operations and for this it is known popularly as the laughing gas. It is stated that between 7 to 13 million tons of nitrous oxide is released into the atmosphere every year as a result of the use of fertilizers in farms, human and animal waste, sewages, and exhaust fumes from automobiles as well as burning of fossil fuels in oil companies (Hopwood, Cohen). And if we don’t reduce the amount of nitrous oxide released in the air, the atmosphere will become saturated with it caused dangerous warming in many years to come. Animals also contribute to the greenhouse effect. For example, farm animals such as cows, goats, sheep, and camels produce the methane gas mainly through their digestive waste. The methane gas is a colorless and odorless gas that is formed from natural waste such as decomposed plants or animals under an environment with little or no air. This gives us the knowledge of how much effects that lead to the greenhouse effect. At the same time, it is a kind of pollution that people do not think about very much the causes are mostly involuntary.
But one main issue we have to know is that the more these greenhouse gases are released into he atmosphere, the more the earth begins to heat up more than how it is supposed to due to the depletion of the ozone layer. This is known as the global warming. There are many negative effects that we are experiencing in our natural environment from this greenhouse effect. In the past years during the early 1990, there were reports from meteorologists that water vapor is increasing, and ices around the polar regions of the earth were melting (Rubin, ABC News, 1990). Other effects of the greenhouse effect are the global warming which also causes a lot of flooding around the world. When global warming happens, ice in the north pole begins to melt and then this causes a rise in the sea level and it is stated that if this continues, we might get about 2 feet rise of sea level for the coming years (ABC news).It’s the most reason why we experience a lot of water disasters such as the tsunami. Earthquakes are also a result since they depend on heat inside the earth. Global warming also causes excessive heat waves during the summer seasons in countries such as the United States which leads to a lot of health hazards such as breathing problems for many people. There are more people who suffer heatstroke, heart attacks just from the heat waves alone. It was stated that global warming which is caused by the greenhouse effect, “is likely to have wide ranging and mostly adverse impacts on human health with significant loss of life” (IPCC). As global warming occurs as a result of the greenhouse effect, warming of many parts of the earth may attract insects and other pests to invade. Most of these pests carry with them diseases such as malaria. For example mosquitoes are excellent examples of insects that carry diseases like malaria which is a deadly disease. A tropic continent like Africa is much dangerous because more insects carry diseases like cholera and yellow fever which lead to death of many people at a time.
So what can we do to reduce the greenhouse effect which leads to global warming or the solutions to suppress the activities of humans that produce agents of the greenhouse effect into the atmosphere? This means that there should be alternative ways to reduce greenhouses gases into the atmosphere instead of increasing them. The use of Hydropower is on the use these modern days in a lot of countries. Hydropower or water power is power that is obtained from the energy of large water bodies in order to produce electricity power the community which is known as hydro-electricity. It is also used for other activities such as irrigations for agricultural activities. Water is a compound of Hydrogen and oxygen, which are environmental friendly gases and anti- greenhouse gases. Wind power is another solution to reduce the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere. It is the use of the energy from the natural blowing wind in order to produce electricity. Examples of countries known for using wind power are Denmark and also the Netherlands (ABC News). Most large scale farm areas also need wind turbines to provide power and at the same time as an atmosphere clearance. These wind turbines do not emit green house gases.
Solar power is another solution or alternative solution to many activities that release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It is the use of the energy from direct sunlight to produce electricity, and other equipments that may release carbon materials as exhaust fumes. There are vehicles are being powered by solar energy in order to reduce carbon monoxide in the air. Other form of environmental friendly activities is the use of nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is the use of nuclear reactions to produce power for communities to use. It is becoming one of the biggest uses of energy in the world and it is an anti-greenhouse effect activity.
All these activities are helping out with the reduction of the greenhouse effect as well as the global warming. We hope there will be more solutions to other activities to help the world we live in become a better place.
Works Cited
www.abcnews.com/sections/us/global106.html
"Global Warming." United States Environmental Protection Agency. http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/ (March 8, 1998)
“Greenhouse Gases” Nick Hopwood and Jordan Cohen
www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/greenhouse.htm
www.aloha.net~jhanson/page70.htm
