Environtmental and Global Health

Posts Tagged ‘carbon dioxide’

1. Carbon Dioxide

One of the impacts of fossil fuels has on the Earth’s environment has been the increased concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. The amount of atmospheric CO2 had remained stable, apparently for centuries, but since 1750 has increased by 30%.

The significance of this change is to cause an increase in temperature of the Earth through the process known as the greenhouse effect. Atmospheric carbon dioxide tends to prevent long-wave radiation escape into space, since it produces more heat and less can escape the Earth’s global temperature increases.

A significant global warming of the atmosphere would have serious effects on the environment. Accelerate the melting of polar ice caps would raise the sea level, climate change regionally and globally, would alter the natural vegetation and affect crops. These changes, in turn, would have an enormous impact on human civilization. In the twentieth century the average global temperature increased 0.6 degrees C, and scientists predict that Earth’s average temperature will rise between 1.4 and 5.8 º C between 1990 and 2100. Read the rest of this entry »