Friday, August 19, 2011

In What Way Does the Greenhouse Effect Occur?

By Barry Hamilton


Since the industrial revolution in the 1800's humans have sought to make our time on this planet more easy, comfortable and abundant. Everything from factories, retail shops and homes have turned up at phenomenal and sometimes shocking - rates. In our lust to build more and more, we are also pioneering and researching the least expensive possible ways to achieve this. Aside from the resources needed to build these structures, each one of them creates a certain quantity of heat that is dissipated into the atmosphere.

An ideal example of this is the plain fact (and it is a fact) that average temperatures in cities are higher than they are in small town areas. From the energy and warmth that an air conditioning unit puts out (ironically to keep us cool) to the smokestacks of factories that emit not only heat but frequently toxins that are harmful to our world. As our population grows and we continue our "progress" throughout the world this effect is soon to be more and more clear, particularly as the third world starts to introduce comforts like air conditioning.

The heat dissipation from buildings is a part of planetary warming and it's undeniable it is contributing to the rising temperatures and surprising weather patterns. Just being alive on this planet, we as people are also radiating a certain amount of heat. Certainly you have crawled into a cold bed and made the connection the heat of your body warmed the bed up to a nice toasty warm temperature that you did not want to get out of in the morning.

That is 1 bit of the problem and that leads us to the next part of global warming. As I am sure you know our Earth has a protective atmosphere that filters out the cosmic rays, reflects heat and supports life on this planet. The atmosphere is a fragile thing as as we pump out more carbon (and since virtually all our energy involves the creation of carbon in some way or another, that's a lot) it 'traps ' the heat entering the atmosphere and doesn't permit it to leave thus the world becomes warmer.

In the example above, we talked about getting into a cold bed and the heat of our bodies warming it up. That happens because there are blankets that are holding that heat in instead of letting it out to escape into the room. That is on a tiny scale but it's a similar thing that's happening in our planet. Our atmosphere is holding in all of the heat that we're making with our automobile exhausts, smokestacks on factories, heaters running in our houses. The atmosphere is holding that in and the more and more activity we create in the world the more heat that we create.

Now I'm not saying that we must change our lives seriously or stop having heat in the winter time. We do however need to start being mindful of things that we can do to help reduce the rate that all of this is being done. The ones who can make the biggest impact are the ones that are in control, those being the officeholders and big business owners. They are those who can impact the changes that have to be made on the large scale and effect the most change. That does not imply that you can not do what you can to help also.




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