Go Greener Tips

Global warming or what scientists popularly call them as climate change has taken its toll. Vice president Al Gore, has expressed his views on the dangers of these natural threat to the living creatures on this planet Earth. It may not be directly felt at this time but the danger may be faced by the next generations to come.

This phenomenon is causing a lot of changes to the globe’s climate, distorted weather patterns which has become unpredictable over the years, increase of vector-borne diseases, and leading to animal extinctions.

The changes in earth’s climate can be best described as the imbalance in the greenhouse effect. Greenhouse effect basically pertains to an occurrence in the Earth’s atmosphere which traps the heat from escaping but in turn maintains the earth’s temperature to provide a certain amount of heat for the living things to thrive- the rest of the heat escapes into space. The danger comes when more of the greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere. When more heat gets trapped, it increases the intensity of the temperature leading to unimaginable disturbance in the natural cycle.

Global warming is both caused by natural cycle of the earth’s activities and human undertakings. Most scientists and researchers believe that the main cause of global warming is due to an increased emission of greenhouse gases from different activities.

Not all greenhouse gases have similar heat-trapping abilities. Some of them can trap more heat than carbon dioxide. A molecule of methane can trap heat 20 times more than a molecule of CO2. Nitrous oxide has 300 times more heat trapping property than CO2. Other gases, such as chlorofluorocarbons, have heat-trapping potential thousands of times greater than CO2. But because the concentrations of these gases are much lower than CO2, not one of them has the potential to add as much warmth to earth’s atmosphere as CO2 does.

It has been noted that the United States is responsible for the highest amount of cumulative CO2 emissions which amounts to about 30% even up to today and continues to increase emitting the greenhouse gas by 20%. China, however, is expected to compete or even overtake the US in the next decades with their increasing industrial activities.

It may take over a decade to allow the carbon dioxide to disappear in the Earth’s atmosphere. But even if carbon dioxide emissions cease immediately overnight, still past irresponsible actions would still affect the planets in years to come, affecting future generations.

Unfortunately, the World Health Organization blames the 150,000 deaths in a certain period of time, to the effects of global warming- the extreme and predictable weather in selected places, longer droughts, extreme heat waves, decreased food production, and spread of malaria, a vector-borne disease.