In the 19th century, scientists realized that gases in the atmosphere cause a "greenhouse effect" which affects the planet's temperature. These scientists were interested chiefly in the possibility that a lower level of carbon dioxide gas might explain the ice ages of the distant past. At the turn of the century, Svante Arrhenius calculated that emissions from human industry might someday bring a global warming. Other scientists dismissed his idea as faulty. In 1938, G.S. Callendar argued that the level of carbon dioxide was climbing and raising global temperature, but most scientists found his arguments implausible. It was almost by chance that a few researchers in the 1950s discovered that global warming truly was possible. In the early 1960s, C.D. Keeling measured the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: it was rising fast. Researchers began to take an interest, struggling to understand how the level of carbon dioxide had changed in the past, and how the level was influenced by chemical and biological forces. They found that the gas plays a crucial role in climate change, so that the rising level could gravely affect our future.
Like many Victorian natural philosophers, John Tyndall was fascinated by a great variety of questions. While he was preparing an important treatise on "Heat as a Mode of Motion" he took time to consider geology. Tyndall had hands-on knowledge of the subject, for he was an ardent Alpinist (in 1861 he made the first ascent of the Weisshorn). Familiar with glaciers, he had been convinced by the evidence — hotly debated among scientists of his day — that tens of thousands of years ago, colossal layers of ice had covered all of northern Europe. How could climate possibly change so radically?
One possible answer was a change in the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. Beginning with work by Joseph Fourier in the 1820s, scientists had understood that gases in the atmosphere might trap the heat received from the Sun. As Fourier put it, energy in the form of visible light from the Sun easily penetrates the atmosphere to reach the surface and heat it up, but heat cannot so easily escape back into space. For the air absorbs invisible heat rays (“infrared radiation”) rising from the surface. The warmed air radiates some of the energy back down to the surface, helping it stay warm. This was the effect that would later be called, by an inaccurate analogy, the "greenhouse effect." The equations and data available to 19th-century scientists were far too poor to allow an accurate calculation. Yet the physics was straightforward enough to show that a bare, airless rock at the Earth's distance from the Sun should be far colder than the Earth actually is.
Tyndall set out to find whether there was in fact any gas in the atmosphere that could trap heat rays. In 1859, his careful laboratory work identified several gases that did just that. The most important was simple water vapor (H2O). Also effective was carbon dioxide (CO2), although in the atmosphere the gas is only a few parts in ten thousand. Just as a sheet of paper will block more light than an entire pool of clear water, so the trace of CO2 altered the balance of heat radiation through the entire atmosphere.
Greenhouse Speculations: Arrhenius and Callendar
The next major scientist to consider the question was another man with broad interests, Svante Arrhenius in Stockholm. He too was attracted by the great riddle of the prehistoric ice ages. In 1896 Arrhenius completed a laborious numerical computation which suggested that cutting the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by half could lower the temperature in Europe some 4-5°C (roughly 7-9°F) — that is, to an ice age level. But this idea could only answer the riddle of the ice ages if such large changes in atmospheric composition really were possible. For that question Arrhenius turned to a colleague, Arvid Högbom. It happened that Högbom had compiled estimates for how carbon dioxide cycles through natural geochemical processes, including emission from volcanoes, uptake by the oceans, and so forth. Along the way he had come up with a strange, almost incredible new idea.
It had occurred to Högbom to calculate the amounts of CO2 emitted by factories and other industrial sources. Surprisingly, he found that human activities were adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a rate roughly comparable to the natural geochemical processes that emitted or absorbed the gas. The added gas was not much compared with the volume of CO2 already in the atmosphere — the CO2 released from the burning of coal in the year 1896 would raise the level by scarcely a thousandth part. But the additions might matter if they continued long enough.(2) (By recent calculations, the total amount of carbon laid up in coal and other fossil deposits that humanity can readily get at and burn is some ten times greater than the total amount in the atmosphere.) So the next CO2 change might not be a cooling decrease, but an increase. Arrhenius made a calculation for doubling the CO2 in the atmosphere, and estimated it would raise the Earth's temperature some 5-6°C.
Arrhenius did not see that as a problem. He figured that if industry continued to burn fuel at the current (1896) rate, it would take perhaps three thousand years for the CO2 level to rise so high. Högbom doubted it would ever rise that much. One thing holding back the rise was the oceans. According to a simple calculation, sea water would absorb 5/6ths of any additional gas. (That is roughly true over a long run of many thousand years, but Högbom and Arrhenius did not realize that if the gas were emitted more rapidly than they expected, the ocean absorption could lag behind.) Anyway temperatures a few degrees higher hardly sounded like a bad idea in chilly Sweden. Another highly respected scientist, Walter Nernst, even fantasized about setting fire to useless coal seams in order to release enough CO2 to deliberately warm the Earth's climate.
Arrhenius brought up about the possibility of future warming in an impressive scientific article and a widely read book. By the time the book was published, 1908, the rate of coal burning was already much higher than in 1896, and Arrhenius suggested warming might appear wihin a few centuries rather than millenia. Yet here as in his first article, the possibility of warming in some distant future was far from his main point. He mentioned it only in passing, during a detailed discussion of what really interested scientists of his time — the cause of the ice ages. Arrhenius had not quite discovered global warming, but only a curious theoretical concept.
An American geologist, T. C. Chamberlin, and a few others took an interest in CO2. How, they wondered, is the gas stored and released as it cycles through the Earth's reservoirs of sea water and minerals, and also through living matter like forests? Chamberlin was emphatic that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere did not necessarily stay the same over the long term. But these scientists too were pursuing the ice ages and other, yet more ancient climate changes — gradual shifts over millions of years. Very different climates, like the balmy age of dinosaurs a hundred million years ago, puzzled geologists but seemed to have nothing to do with changes on a human time scale. Nobody took much interest in the hypothetical future warming caused by human industry.
Experts could dismiss the hypothesis because they found Arrhenius's calculation implausible on many grounds. In the first place, he had grossly oversimplified the climate system. Among other things, he had failed to consider how cloudiness might change if the Earth got a little warmer and more humid.A still weightier objection came from a simple laboratory measurement. A few years after Arrhenius published his hypothesis, another scientist in Sweden, Knut Ångström, asked an assistant to measure the passage of infrared radiation through a tube filled with carbon dioxide. The assistant ("Herr J. Koch," otherwise unrecorded in history) put in rather less of the gas in total than would be found in a column of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere. The assistant reported that the amount of radiation that got through the tube scarcely changed when he cut the quantity of gas back by a third. Apparently it took only a trace of the gas to "saturate" the absorption — that is, in the bands of the spectrum where CO2 blocked radiation, it did it so thoroughly that more gas could make little difference.
Still more persuasive was the fact that water vapor, which is far more abundant in the air than carbon dioxide, also intercepts infrared radiation. In the crude spectrographs of the time, the smeared-out bands of the two gases entirely overlapped one another. More CO2 could not affect radiation in bands of the spectrum that water vapor, as well as CO2 itself, were already blocking entirely.
These measurements and arguments had fatal flaws. Herr Koch had reported to Ångström that the absorption had not been reduced by more than 0.4% when he lowered the pressure, but a modern calculation shows that the absorption would have decreased about 1% — like many a researcher, the assistant was over confident about his degree of precision.But even if he had seen the1% shift, Ångström would have thought this an insignificant perturbation. He failed to understand that the logic of the experiment was altogether false.
The greenhouse effect will in fact operate even if the absorption of radiation were totally saturated in the lower atmosphere. The planet's temperature is regulated by the thin upper layers where radiation does escape easily into space. Adding more greenhouse gas there will change the balance. Moreover, even a 1% change in that delicate balance would make a serious difference in the planet’s surface temperature. The logic is rather simple once it is grasped, but it takes a new way of looking at the atmosphere — not as a single slab, like the gas in Koch's tube (or the glass over a greenhouse), but as a set of interacting layers.
The subtle difference did not occur to anyone for many decades, if only because hardly anyone thought the greenhouse effect was worth their attention. For after Ångström published his conclusions in 1900, the few scientists who had taken an interest in the matter concluded that Arrhenius's hypothesis had been proven wrong. Theoretical work on the question stagnated for decades, and so did measurement of the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
A few scientists dissented from the view that changes of CO2 could have no effect. An American physicist, E.O. Hulburt, pointed out in 1931 that investigators had been mainly interested in pinning down the intricate structure of the absorption bands (which offered fascinating insights into the new theory of quantum mechanics) "and not in getting accurate absorption coefficients." Hulburt's own calculations supported Arrhenius's estimate that doubling or halving CO2 would bring something like a 4°C rise or fall of surface temperature, and thus "the carbon dioxide theory of the ice ages... is a possible theory."Hardly anyone noticed this paper. Hulburt was an obscure worker at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and he published in a journal, the Physical Review, that few meteorologists read. Their general consensus was the one stated in such authoritative works as the American Meteorological Society's 1951 Compendium of Meteorology: the idea that adding CO2 would change the climate "was never widely accepted and was abandoned when it was found that all the long-wave radiation [that would be] absorbed by CO2 is [already] absorbed by water vapor."
Even if people had recognized this was untrue, there were other well-known reasons to deny any greenhouse effect in the foreseeable future. These reasons reflected a nearly universal conviction that the Earth automatically regulated itself in a "balance of nature." Getting to specifics, scientists repeated the plausible argument that the oceans would absorb any excess gases that came into the atmosphere. Fifty times more carbon is dissolved in sea water than in the wispy atmosphere. Thus the oceans would determine the equilibrium concentration of CO2, and it would not easily stray from the present numbers.
If somehow the oceans failed to stabilize the system, organic matter was another good candidate for providing what one scientist called "homeostatic regulation."The amount of carbon in the atmosphere is only a small fraction of what is bound up not only in the oceans but also in trees, peat bogs, and so forth. Just as sea water would absorb more gas if the concentration increased, so would plants grow more lushly in air that was "fertilized" with extra carbon dioxide. Rough calculations seemed to confirm the comfortable belief that biological systems would stabilize the atmosphere by absorbing any surplus. One way or another, then, whatever gases humanity added to the atmosphere would be absorbed — if not at once, then within a century or so — and the equilibrium would automatically restore itself. As one respected expert put it baldly in 1948, "The self-regulating mechanisms of the carbon cycle can cope with the present influx of carbon of fossil origin."
Yet the theory that atmospheric CO2 variations could change the climate was never altogether forgotten. An idea so simple on the face of it, an idea advanced (however briefly) by outstanding figures like Arrhenius and Chamberlin, had to be mentioned in textbooks and review articles if only to refute it. Arrhenius's outmoded hypothesis persisted in a ghostly afterlife.
It found a lone advocate. Around 1938 an English engineer, Guy Stewart Callendar, took up the old idea. An expert on steam technology, Callendar apparently took up meteorology as a hobby to fill his spare time. Many people, looking at weather stories from the past, had been saying that a warming trend was underway. When Callendar compiled measurements of temperatures from the 19th century on, he found they were right. He went on to dig up and evaluate old measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. He concluded that over the past hundred years the concentration of the gas had increased by about 10%. This rise, Callendar asserted , could explain the observed warming. For he understood (perhaps from Hulburt's calculation) that even if the CO2 in the atmosphere did already absorb all the heat radiation passing through, adding more gas would change the height in the atmosphere where the absorption took place. That, he calculated, would make for warming.
As for the future, Callendar estimated, on flimsy grounds, that a doubling of CO2 could gradually bring a 2°C rise in future centuries. He hinted that it might even trigger a shift to a self-sustaining warmer climate (which did not strike him as a bad prospect). But future warming was a side issue for Callendar. Like all his predecessors, he was mainly interested in solving the mystery of the ice ages.
Callendar's publications attracted some attention, and climatology textbooks of the 1940s and 1950s routinely included a brief reference to his studies. But most meteorologists gave Callendar's idea scant credence. In the first place, they doubted that CO2 had increased at all in the atmosphere. The old data were untrustworthy, for measurements could vary with every change of wind that brought emissions from some factory or forest.Already in the nineteenth century scientists had observed that the level of the gas rose, for example, near a flock of sheep busy exhaling the gas, and dropped in London during the inactivity of a bank holiday. If in fact CO2 was rising, that could only be detected by a meticulous program stretching decades into the future.The objections that had been raised against Arrhenius also had to be faced. Wouldn't the immense volume of the oceans absorb all the extra CO2? Callendar countered that the thin layer of ocean surface waters would quickly saturate, and it would take thousands of years for the rest of the oceans to turn over and be fully exposed to the air. But nobody knew the actual turnover rate, and it seemed that the oceans would have time to handle any extra gases. According to a well-known estimate published in 1924, even without ocean absorption it would take 500 years for fuel combustion to double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
There was also the old objection, which most scientists continued to find decisive, that the overlapping absorption bands of CO2 and water vapor already blocked all the radiation that those molecules were capable of blocking. Callendar tried to explain that the laboratory spectral measurements were woefully incomplete.Gathering scattered observational data, he argued that there were parts of the spectrum where the CO2 bands did not overlap others. Some scientists found this convincing, or at least kept an open mind on the question. But it remained the standard view that, as an official U.S. Weather Bureau publication put it, the masking of CO2 absorption by water vapor was a "fatal blow" to the CO2 theory. Therefore, said this authority, "no probable increase in atmospheric CO2 could materially affect" the balance of radiation.
Most damaging of all, Callendar's calculations of the greenhouse effect temperature rise ignored much of the real world's physics. For example, as one critic pointed out immediately, he only calculated how heat would be shuttled through the atmosphere by radiation, ignoring the crucial energy transport by convection as heated air rose from the surface (this deficiency would haunt greenhouse calculations through the next quarter-century). Worse, any rise in temperature would allow the air to hold more moisture, which would probably mean more clouds. Callendar admitted that the actual climate change would depend on interactions involving changes of cloud cover and other processes that no scientist of the time could reliably calculate. Few thought it worthwhile to speculate about such dubious questions, where data were rudimentary and theory was no more than hand-waving. Better to rest with the widespread conviction that the atmosphere was a stable, automatically self-regulated system. The notion that humanity could permanently change global climate was implausible on the face of it, hardly worth a scientist's attention.
The scientists who brushed aside Callendar's claims were reasoning well enough. (Subsequent work has shown that the temperature rise up to 1940 was, as his critics thought, mainly caused by some kind of natural cyclical effect, not by the still relatively low CO2 emissions. And the physics of radiation and climate was indeed too poorly known at that time to show whether adding more gas could make much difference.) Yet if Callendar was mistaken when he insisted he could prove global warming had arrived, it was a fortunate mistake.
Research by definition is done at the frontier of ignorance. Like nearly everyone described in these essays, Callendar had to use intuition as well as logic to draw any conclusions at all from the murky data and theories at his disposal. Like nearly everyone, he argued for conclusions that mingled the true with the false, leaving it to later workers to peel away the bad parts. While he could not prove that global warming was underway, he had given reasons to reconsider the question. We owe much to Callendar's courage. His claims rescued the idea of global warming from obscurity and thrust it into the marketplace of scientific ideas. Not everyone dismissed his claims. Their very uncertainty attracted scientific curiosity.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Causes of Global Warming
“As human-caused biodiversity loss and climate disruption gain ground, we need to keep our sights clear and understand that the measure of a threat is not a matter of whether it is made on purpose, but of how much loss it may cause. It's an ancient habit to go after those we perceive to be evil because they intended to do harm. It's harder, but more effective, to "go after," meaning to more effectively educate and socialize, those vastly larger numbers of our fellow humans who are not evil, but whose behavior may in fact be far more destructive in the long run." (Ed Ayres, editor of Worldwatch magazine, Nov/Dec 2001)
Carbon Dioxide from Power Plants
In 2002 about 40% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions stem from the burning of fossil fuels for the purpose of electricity generation. Coal accounts for 93 percent of the emissions from the electric utility industry. US Emissions Inventory 2004 Executive Summary p. 10
Coal emits around 1.7 times as much carbon per unit of energy when burned as does natural gas and 1.25 times as much as oil. Natural gas gives off 50% of the carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, released by coal and 25% less carbon dioxide than oil, for the same amount of energy produced. Coal contains about 80 percent more carbon per unit of energy than gas does, and oil contains about 40 percent more. For the typical U.S. household, a metric ton of carbon equals about 10,000 miles of driving at 25 miles per gallon of gasoline or about one year of home heating using a natural gas-fired furnace or about four months of electricity from coal-fired generation.
Carbon Dioxide Emitted from Cars
About 33% of U.S carbon dioxide emissions comes from the burning of gasoline in internal-combustion engines of cars and light trucks (minivans, sport utility vehicles, pick-up trucks, and jeeps).US Emissions Inventory 2006 page 8 Vehicles with poor gas mileage contribute the most to global warming. For example, according to the E.P.A's 2000 Fuel Economy Guide, a new Dodge Durango sports utility vehicle (with a 5.9 liter engine) that gets 12 miles per gallon in the city will emit an estimated 800 pounds of carbon dioxide over a distance of 500 city miles. In other words for each gallon of gas a vehicle consumes, 19.6 pounds of carbon dioxide are emitted into the air. [21] A new Honda Insight that gets 61 miles to the gallon will only emit about 161 pounds of carbon dioxide over the same distance of 500 city miles. Sports utility vehicles were built for rough terrain, off road driving in mountains and deserts. When they are used for city driving, they are so much overkill to the environment. If one has to have a large vehicle for their family, station wagons are an intelligent choice for city driving, especially since their price is about half that of a sports utility. Inasmuch as SUV's have a narrow wheel base in respect to their higher silhouette, they are four times as likely as cars to rollover in an accident. [33]
The United States is the largest consumer of oil, using 20.4 million barrels per day. In his debate with former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, during the 2000 Presidential campaign, Senator Joseph Lieberman said, "If we can get 3 miles more per gallon from our cars, we'll save 1 million barrels of oil a day, which is exactly what the (Arctic National Wildlife) Refuge at its best in Alaska would produce."
If car manufacturers were to increase their fleets' average gas mileage about 3 miles per gallon, this country could save a million barrels of oil every day, while US drivers would save $25 billion in fuel costs annually.
Carbon Dioxide from Airplanes
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that aviation causes 3.5 percent of global warming, and that the figure could rise to 15 percent by 2050.
Carbon Dioxide from Buildings
Buildings structure account for about 12% of carbon dioxide emissions.
Methane
While carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas, methane is second most important. According to the IPCC, Methane is more than 20 times aseffective as CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere. US Emissions Inventory 2004 Levels of atmospheric methane have risen 145% in the last 100 years. [18] Methane is derived from sources such as rice paddies, bovine flatulence, bacteria in bogs and fossil fuel production. Most of the world’s rice, and all of the rice in the United States, is grown on flooded fields. When fields are flooded, anaerobic conditions develop and the organic matter in the soil decomposes, releasing CH4 to the atmosphere, primarily through the rice plants. US Emissions Inventory 2004
Water Vapor in the Atmosphere Increasing
Water vapor is the most prevalent and most poweful greenhouse gas on the planet, but its increasing presence is the result of warming caused by carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. (See NOAA's National Climate Data Center (NCDC) FAQ page) Water vapor holds onto two-thirds of the heat trapped by all the greenhouse gases.[129] As the Earth heats up relative humidity is able to increase, allowing the planet's atmosphere to hold more water vapor, causing even more warming, thus a positive feedback scenario. Because the air is warmer, the relative humidity can be higher (in essence, the air is able to 'hold' more water when its warmer), leading to more water vapor in the atmosphere, says the NCDC. There is much scientific uncertainty as to the degree this feedback loop causes increased warming, inasmuch as the water vapor also causes increased cloud formation, which in turn reflects heat back out into space.
Nitrous oxide
Another greenhouse gas is Nitrous oxide (N2O), a colourless, non-flammable gas with a sweetish odour, commonly known as "laughing gas", and sometimes used as an anaesthetic. Nitrous oxide is naturally produced by oceans and rainforests. Man-made sources of nitrous oxide include nylon and nitric acid production, the use of fertilisers in agriculture, cars with catalytic converters and the burning of organic matter. Nitrous oxide is broken down in the atmosphere by chemical reactions that involve sunlight.
Deforestation
After carbon emissions caused by humans, deforestation is the second principle cause of atmospheric carbn dioxide. (NASA Web Site) Deforestation is responsible for 20-25% of all carbon emissions entering the atmosphere, by the burning and cutting of about 34 million acres of trees each year. We are losing millions of acres of rainforests each year, the equivalent in area to the size of Italy. [22] The destroying of tropical forests alone is throwing hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. We are also losing temperate forests. The temperate forests of the world account for an absorption rate of 2 billion tons of carbon annually. [3] In the temperate forests of Siberia alone, the earth is losing 10 million acres per year.
City Gridlock
In 1996 according to an annual study by traffic engineers [as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle December 10, 1996] from Texas A and M University, it was found that drivers in Los Angeles and New York City alone wasted 600 million gallons of gas annually while just sitting in traffic. The 600 million gallons of gas translates to about 7.5 million tons of carbon dioxide in just those two cities. <>Carbon in Atmosphere and Ocean The atmosphere contains about 750 billion tons of carbon, while 1020 billion tons are dissolved in the surface layers of the world's ocean.
Permafrost
Permafrost is a solid structure of frozen soil, extending to depths of 2.200 feet in some areas of the arctic and subarctic regions, containing grasses, roots, sticks, much of it dating back to 30,000 years. About 25% of the land areas of the Northern Hemisphere hold permafrost, which is defined as soil whose temperature has been 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) for a period of at least 2 years. Permafrost is under 85% of Alaska land surface and much of Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia and holds about 14 per cent of the world's carbon. The hard permafrost on which is built homes and other buildings, can, with rising temperatures, turn into a soft material causing subsidence and damage to buildings, electric generating stations, pipelines and other structures. Ground instability would cause erosion, affect terrain, slopes, roads, foundations and more. [121]
Svein Tveitdal, Managing Director of the Global Resource Information Database (GRID) in Arendal, Norway, a UNEP environmental information center monitoring the thawing of permafrost, told a meeting at the 21st session of the United Nation's Governing Council in Nairobi, Kenya on February 7, 2001: "Permafrost has acted as a carbon sink, locking away carbon and other greenhouse gases like methane, for thousands of year. But there is now evidence that this is no longer the case, and the permafrost in some areas is starting to give back its carbon. This could accelerate the greenhouse effect." (83)
In a December, 2005 study climate models at National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) show that climate change may thaw the permafrost located in the top 10 feet of permafrost, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. "People have used models to study permafrost before, but not within a fully interactive climate system model," says NCAR's David Lawrence, the lead author. The coauthor is Andrew Slater of the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center. "Thawing permafrost could send considerable amounts of water to the oceans," says Slater, who notes that runoff to the Arctic has increased about 7 percent since the 1930s. According to the NCAR press release (December 19, 2005) permafrost may contain 30% of all the carbon found in soil worldwide. In areas to a depth of 11.2 feet climate models (assuming business as usual scenarios) show permafrost presently in an area of 4,000,000 square miles shrinking to 1,000,000 square miles by 2050 and 400,000 square miles by 2100. With a scenario of low emissions (assuming a high degree use of alternative energy sources and conservation) permafrost is still expected to shrink to 1.5 million miles by 2100.........In a USA Today (December 26, 2005) interview David Lawrence says, "If that much near-surface permafrost thaws, it could release considerable amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and that could amplify global warming," ….."We could be underestimating the rate of global temperature increase." In a study reported in the journal Science June 16, 2006 (see San Francisco Chronicle article) researchers say that thawing permafrost may add to the buildup in atmospheric greenhouse gases significantly, stating that present climate models do not include releases of Siberian carbon dioxide from permafrost. Dr. Ted Schuur of the University of Florida traveled to Siberia and secured samples of permafrost soil up to 10 feet in length, maintaining it in a frozen state until arriving back in his laboratory, where the thawing soil was attacked by microbes, releasing carbon dioxide in the process. The frightening scenario that scientists, Sergey A. Zimov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ted Schuur and Stuart Chapin III of the University of Alaska, paint is one of hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse gases entering an already destabilized atmosphere this century, spurring yet more warming in a positive feedback syndrome. Extend this scenario to Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia, where permafrost underlies much of these regions and there's no other way to describe it. We'rTe in trouble.<>
Tundra
A name very suited to the environs of the arctic and subarctic, tundra means 'treeless plain' in Finnish. The tundra is a biome (a major segment of a particular region having distinctive vegetation, animals and microorganisms adapted to a unique climate), home to about 1700 kinds of plants, including shrubs, mosses, grasses, lichens and 400 kinds of flowers. About 50 billion tons of carbon are estimated to be held in a frozen state in the tundra, and now the tundra is beginning to become a source of carbon dioxide. In the 1970's University of California biologist Walter Oechel studied carbon dioxide emissions in the tundra, which until this time had been thought of as a carbon sink. Doing further tests in the 1980's, Oechel discovered that this was no longer the case, that warming temperatures had changed the tundra to a net emitter of carbon dioxide. Says Oechel, " We found to our great surprise that the tundra was already losing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. So that by the start of these experiments, which was in 1982, the tundra had already warmed and dried enough, that its historic role as a carbon sink had reversed and changed. It was now losing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That was totally unexpected."
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Nuclear Energy
Nuclear power for you - nuclear waste for the others?
The need for electricity has constantly risen world-wide over the last years. This is not only true for the so-called developing countries but also and in particular for all well-developed countries. In order to fulfil the demand, obviously additional power plants have to be built.
Which technology is best for generating electricity? This question certainly has to be answered on a case by case base. But it is very concerning that nuclear power plants more and more seem to be chosen as "the" technology of the future.
After the reactor accident in Chernobyl 1986, almost nobody could imagine to agree to build further nuclear power plants - the risks involved definitely seemed to be too high. On one hand that accident is years ago and most people's memory is quite bad and on the other hand the global warming problem mainly due to the excessive emission of CO2, has revived nuclear energy. All the sudden the former risky nuclear power seems to be the best answer to solve the CO2 emission problem!
Where is the problem with nuclear power plants? Cons and pros of nuclear power
The security of nuclear power plants is still and will always be problematic because of the consequences of an accident. Just very recently a reactor catastrophe similar to Chernobyl could only be avoided with luck in Sweden. Nothing can be made 100% secure no matter how many security systems are built in. We have to live with a (small) probability of failure. Therefore the more nuclear power plants exist, the more likely are accidents. This is not pessimism but pure probabilistic mathematics.If a car crashes, a few people are involved. If a train crashes, a few hundred people may get involved. However if a nuclear power plant crashes, millions of people and at the end the whole planet earth with all its inhabitants will get involved - that is the big difference.
Not less problematic for nuclear power plants is the nuclear waste. The only way to get rid of the dangerous radiating waste is to put it into thick shielded containers and dispose them in cavern in the earth or (even worse) in the sea. There it has to be shielded away for several hundred thousand years.
What gives us the right to produce dangerous waste now, which afterwards has to be surveyed several hundred thousand years? How can we be sure that those places where we bury the dangerous waste will remain stable and calm for so many years? Didn't people believe exactly the same only 20 years ago, when dangerous waste from the chemical industry was "safely" put into garbage dumps? Dumps, which are now already being dug out and repaired.
Many people (and many governments) now praise nuclear power plants as inevitable for our well-being. The background is on one hand the increasing demand for electricity and on the other hand the fact that nuclear energy does not directly generate CO2. It is quite clever from the nuclear power lobby to sell this technology as solution to the problem of global warming.
However we should not forget that nuclear power generates waste with a harming potential even higher than that of CO2. This is not at all to de-emphasize the problem of global warming - but please don't replace something bad with something even worse!
Stop wasting energy - increase the efficiency
It is important to realize that the energy problems on the earth can only be solved when we stop to waste energy, when we start to use the energy much more efficiently. The technology for a more efficient use of energy does not have to be invented first. Such technology already exists! We as consumers only have to ask for it and to use it.
Almost without any reduction of the personal comfort and well-being, it is already now possible to reduce the personal need for energy by a factor of 3 or 4. Sounds impossible, doesn't it?
Here we can see our personal responsibility: We cannot on one hand consume more and more electrical energy year after year and on the other hand ban dangerous technologies. If we generate a demand on the market and if we have the money to pay for the electricity, someone will sooner or later produce electricity and sell it to us. Unfortunately there is no larger organization or group which makes money on saving energy. However there are lot's of organizations, which can make money on producing and trading electrical energy. For all of them, the more energy we need, the better.
It is therefore left to our own free will to safe energy and to apply energy-efficient technologies.
How you can save energy
In the following, please find some concrete suggestions:
a) Get rid of standby losses
An average household has between 10 and 30 electrical appliances, which are normally not completely switched off but instead on standby mode. This includes TV, entertainment systems, toasters, computers, printers, wireless lans, telephones, coffee machines, set-top cable boxes, rechargers, etc. Recent studies in the USA found out that between 10% and 30% of the electrical power consumption of an average household is for such standby or "leaking" electricity.
Germany currently operates 17 nuclear power plants. Alone 2 of them are needed to produce the energy for the useless standby power of electrical appliances in Germany! In the European community, it was suggested that 12 large nuclear power plants were in operation just for the above mentioned standby losses. This was found out for the year 2000, most likely it will even be worse nowadays due to the ever increasing number of electrical appliances. Outside of Europe, most likely the situation is even worse, due to the even higher electrical power consumption per household (see graph below).
The need for electricity has constantly risen world-wide over the last years. This is not only true for the so-called developing countries but also and in particular for all well-developed countries. In order to fulfil the demand, obviously additional power plants have to be built.
Which technology is best for generating electricity? This question certainly has to be answered on a case by case base. But it is very concerning that nuclear power plants more and more seem to be chosen as "the" technology of the future.
After the reactor accident in Chernobyl 1986, almost nobody could imagine to agree to build further nuclear power plants - the risks involved definitely seemed to be too high. On one hand that accident is years ago and most people's memory is quite bad and on the other hand the global warming problem mainly due to the excessive emission of CO2, has revived nuclear energy. All the sudden the former risky nuclear power seems to be the best answer to solve the CO2 emission problem!
Where is the problem with nuclear power plants? Cons and pros of nuclear power
The security of nuclear power plants is still and will always be problematic because of the consequences of an accident. Just very recently a reactor catastrophe similar to Chernobyl could only be avoided with luck in Sweden. Nothing can be made 100% secure no matter how many security systems are built in. We have to live with a (small) probability of failure. Therefore the more nuclear power plants exist, the more likely are accidents. This is not pessimism but pure probabilistic mathematics.If a car crashes, a few people are involved. If a train crashes, a few hundred people may get involved. However if a nuclear power plant crashes, millions of people and at the end the whole planet earth with all its inhabitants will get involved - that is the big difference.
Not less problematic for nuclear power plants is the nuclear waste. The only way to get rid of the dangerous radiating waste is to put it into thick shielded containers and dispose them in cavern in the earth or (even worse) in the sea. There it has to be shielded away for several hundred thousand years.
What gives us the right to produce dangerous waste now, which afterwards has to be surveyed several hundred thousand years? How can we be sure that those places where we bury the dangerous waste will remain stable and calm for so many years? Didn't people believe exactly the same only 20 years ago, when dangerous waste from the chemical industry was "safely" put into garbage dumps? Dumps, which are now already being dug out and repaired.
Many people (and many governments) now praise nuclear power plants as inevitable for our well-being. The background is on one hand the increasing demand for electricity and on the other hand the fact that nuclear energy does not directly generate CO2. It is quite clever from the nuclear power lobby to sell this technology as solution to the problem of global warming.
However we should not forget that nuclear power generates waste with a harming potential even higher than that of CO2. This is not at all to de-emphasize the problem of global warming - but please don't replace something bad with something even worse!
Stop wasting energy - increase the efficiency
It is important to realize that the energy problems on the earth can only be solved when we stop to waste energy, when we start to use the energy much more efficiently. The technology for a more efficient use of energy does not have to be invented first. Such technology already exists! We as consumers only have to ask for it and to use it.
Almost without any reduction of the personal comfort and well-being, it is already now possible to reduce the personal need for energy by a factor of 3 or 4. Sounds impossible, doesn't it?
Here we can see our personal responsibility: We cannot on one hand consume more and more electrical energy year after year and on the other hand ban dangerous technologies. If we generate a demand on the market and if we have the money to pay for the electricity, someone will sooner or later produce electricity and sell it to us. Unfortunately there is no larger organization or group which makes money on saving energy. However there are lot's of organizations, which can make money on producing and trading electrical energy. For all of them, the more energy we need, the better.
It is therefore left to our own free will to safe energy and to apply energy-efficient technologies.
How you can save energy
In the following, please find some concrete suggestions:
a) Get rid of standby losses
An average household has between 10 and 30 electrical appliances, which are normally not completely switched off but instead on standby mode. This includes TV, entertainment systems, toasters, computers, printers, wireless lans, telephones, coffee machines, set-top cable boxes, rechargers, etc. Recent studies in the USA found out that between 10% and 30% of the electrical power consumption of an average household is for such standby or "leaking" electricity.
Germany currently operates 17 nuclear power plants. Alone 2 of them are needed to produce the energy for the useless standby power of electrical appliances in Germany! In the European community, it was suggested that 12 large nuclear power plants were in operation just for the above mentioned standby losses. This was found out for the year 2000, most likely it will even be worse nowadays due to the ever increasing number of electrical appliances. Outside of Europe, most likely the situation is even worse, due to the even higher electrical power consumption per household (see graph below).
For already existing appliances the easiest solution is to unplug them when not in use. An alternative is to group appliances on one power strip so that all can be turned off at once. This works well for entertainment systems or for a computer and its associated printers, scanners and other peripheral devices. If you buy new electrical devices make sure their standby power consumption is less than 1 Watt.
b) Use efficient lightning
Replace incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents (CFLs) in all lamps, which are turned on for more than 30 minutes a day. An excerpt taken from the above mentioned site:
"...Compact fluorescents use four times less energy, and last eight times longer (8,000h instead of 1,000h) than incandescent light bulbs. For example, a typical 75W incandescent bulb will be replaced by an 18W compact fluorescent. The compact fluorescent will be more expensive to buy, but you will need to replace it eight times less often and it will use less electricity, which often makes it the biggest electricity saver in your house. ...."
c) Buy efficient electric appliances.
They use two to 10 times less electricity for the same functionality and are mostly higher quality products that last longer than the less efficient ones. In short, efficient appliances save you lots of energy and money. Take a look at the 4th bar with the label "High-efficient" in the above chart - this gives an idea how much reduction of the energy consumptions in households is possible with todays technologies.
Take a look at your appliances in use and find out whether it would make sense to replace them with more efficient ones. For new devices, make sure you buy only the best in class as far as efficiency is concerned.
In many countries, efficiency rating labels are mandatory on most appliances. In the EU, models are labelled A++ for the most efficient, then A+, A, B, C, D for subsequently less efficient models. Look for the A++ or A+ models. In the US, the Energy Star label is used.
d) Use solar energy to heat or cool your house and to heat water
If you own a house or a flat, take into consideration to use solar energy for heating, cooling and for producing warm water. This is most efficient use of renewable energy.
Is it worth the effort?
Do you think your contribution can only be very little? Might well be, but let's look at the mass effects. Assume you switch off your electronic devices instead of leaving them in the standby mode. This way you might easily save 100 W in your household. This leads to 880 kWh per year. In terms of money this might be some 88 € or 115 $ per year. If you look at an average nuclear power plant with a yearly production of 10 Milliard kWh, you could switch off an average sized nuclear power plant if 11.4 Mio households do the same. Be one of those who make it happen!
So what is this all about for yourself? Instead to resign or to write articles about saving electricity, you should immediately start to realize the most important measures according to the above list in your personal live. It is of little help if 100 Mio. people scream out what "one" should do but don't do it in their very own life.
Take responsibility
Please remember, that you are responsible for everything in your life you do or do not do - and not for that what others do or don't do. How you behave in this life will finally influence and shape your future and your life in future incarnations.
He who wants to growth his awareness can do this only in taking responsibility for his personal behavior. Our behavior in our daily life decides whether we will come closer to our goal of great inner joy and calmness - of perpetual harmony.
We have to remember that mankind is only a small part of nature. Respect and humility of the great wonder of the nature are indispensable for personal development. He who truly loves nature cannot seriously think about waste natural resources and dig harmful nuclear waste for thousand of years in the lap of nature.
However, he who for these reasons is against nuclear power plants must first start at himself and reduce his personal electrical energy consumption. This doesn't even mean to give up something - it simply means to use electrical energy in a much more efficient way.
Shouldn't this actually go without saying? Please do start now. It is time for change!
Solar Panels
The term solar panel is best applied to a flat solar thermal collector, such as a solar hot water or air panel used to heat water, air, or otherwise collect solar thermal energy. But 'solar panel' may also refer to a photovoltaic module which is an assembly of solar cells used to generate electricity. In all cases, the panels are typically flat, and are available in various heights and widths.
An array is an assembly of solar-thermal panels or photovoltaic (PV) modules; the panels can be connected either in parallel or series depending upon the design objective. Solar panels typically find use in residential, commercial, institutional, and light industrial applications.
Solar-thermal panels saw widespread use in Florida and California until the 1920's when tank-type water heaters replaced them. A thriving manufacturing business died seemingly overnight. However, solar-thermal panels are still in production, and are common in portions of the world where energy costs, and solar energy availability, are high.
Recently there has been a surge toward large scale production of PV modules. In parts of the world with significantly high insolation levels, PV output and their economics are enhanced. PV modules are the primary component of most small-scale solar-electric power generating facilities. Larger facilities, such as solar power plants typically contain an array of reflectors (concentrators), a receiver, and a thermodynamic power cycle, and thus use solar-thermal rather than PV.
The largest solar panel in the world is under construction in the south of Portugal. A 52,000 photovoltaic module, 11-megawatt facility covering a 60-hectare south-facing hillside in the southern Alentejo region and it will produce electricity for 21,000 households.
An array is an assembly of solar-thermal panels or photovoltaic (PV) modules; the panels can be connected either in parallel or series depending upon the design objective. Solar panels typically find use in residential, commercial, institutional, and light industrial applications.
Solar-thermal panels saw widespread use in Florida and California until the 1920's when tank-type water heaters replaced them. A thriving manufacturing business died seemingly overnight. However, solar-thermal panels are still in production, and are common in portions of the world where energy costs, and solar energy availability, are high.
Recently there has been a surge toward large scale production of PV modules. In parts of the world with significantly high insolation levels, PV output and their economics are enhanced. PV modules are the primary component of most small-scale solar-electric power generating facilities. Larger facilities, such as solar power plants typically contain an array of reflectors (concentrators), a receiver, and a thermodynamic power cycle, and thus use solar-thermal rather than PV.
The largest solar panel in the world is under construction in the south of Portugal. A 52,000 photovoltaic module, 11-megawatt facility covering a 60-hectare south-facing hillside in the southern Alentejo region and it will produce electricity for 21,000 households.
Top 10 steps to Create Global Warming Awareness
1. Use less produce able Carbon Dioxide bulbs or lightings
Don’t use fluorescent bulbs as it takes high ratio of energy to output large amount of lights. So replace it with less energy consumable light bulbs. Scientist has discovered that if we use CFL bulb than we can lower down nearly 700 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the air over the bulb's lifetime. It use only a quarter of the energy consumed by conventional bulbs.
2. Efficient usage of Home Appliances
In home we are using energy more than required and it resulting wastage of energy. As we get energy by power plants, which burn fossil fuel to power our electric products. Making it burn outputs air pollution and contributes to smog, acid rain and global warming. If we use less energy definitely we will be saving money as well as energy.The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy estimates that if each of us increases the energy-efficiency in our major appliances by 10 - 30%, we'll release the demand for electricity by the equivalent of 25 large power plants!
3. Buy power saving Appliances
While you go for shopping for any electric appliances don’t buy appliances which use power above than average use specially appliances such as Refrigerator, Stove, Washer/Dryer, Air Conditioners, Water Heater, Computers and Home Office Equipment. Buy which has highest energy efficiency rating specified by any experts or sources.By using appliances marked with Energy Star Logo can help us to save 15 percent of energy than the federal requirement.Energy Star is the symbol for energy efficiency. It's a label created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy to help consumers save money and minimize air pollution.
4. Mineralize the energy needed for heating
USA Scientist concluded that heating and cooling systems in the U.S.A. emit into the atmosphere more than millions of tons of carbon dioxide each year, which increasing the % of Global Warming rates. By decreasing the usage appliances we can save lots of energy which emits heat.
5. Save your fuel while driving
You can’t image that you can manage to save your fuel 30% by simple vehicle maintenance and attention to your style of driving in an appropriate way. You should take care of for saving fuel by: Don’t drive aggressively, Drive steadily at posted speed limits, Avoid idling your vehicle, Make sure your tires are properly inflated, Select the right gear, Service your vehicle regularly and much more.
6. Drive less and Use public transports more
If you try to drive less and walk more than it would be great contribution towards saving energy and creating global warming awareness. You should try travel by taking the bus, riding a bike, or walking. Try consolidating trips to the mall or longer routine drives. Encourage car-pooling.
7. Paint your Home according to Seasons
Paint your home a light color if you live in a warm climate, or a dark color in a cold climate. This can contribute saving up to 5000 pounds of carbon dioxide per year.
8. Recycle every material
Try not to use products and materials which are not recyclable. Recycling saves energy, landfill space and natural resources. Increase usage of recycled materials such as paper & cardboard, plastic, glass, aluminum, steel & copper. Visit your local recycling center and find out what materials they accept for recycling. For your convenience use plastic bags or totes to store materials for recycling.
9. Eat more vegetarian meals than non-vegetarians
Avoid eating non-vegetarian food as it is not good for human health as well as to the planet. Try to this meal to increase your contribution towards Global Warming Awareness: Nutburgers, Irish Colcannon, Tofu Tamale Pie, Tofu Loaf, Grilled Polenta with Portabello Mushrooms, Vegetable Fajitas and many more.
10. Choose clean Energy Options
If you can choose your electricity supplier, pick a company that generates at least half its power from wind, solar energy and other renewable sources.
Don’t use fluorescent bulbs as it takes high ratio of energy to output large amount of lights. So replace it with less energy consumable light bulbs. Scientist has discovered that if we use CFL bulb than we can lower down nearly 700 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the air over the bulb's lifetime. It use only a quarter of the energy consumed by conventional bulbs.
2. Efficient usage of Home Appliances
In home we are using energy more than required and it resulting wastage of energy. As we get energy by power plants, which burn fossil fuel to power our electric products. Making it burn outputs air pollution and contributes to smog, acid rain and global warming. If we use less energy definitely we will be saving money as well as energy.The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy estimates that if each of us increases the energy-efficiency in our major appliances by 10 - 30%, we'll release the demand for electricity by the equivalent of 25 large power plants!
3. Buy power saving Appliances
While you go for shopping for any electric appliances don’t buy appliances which use power above than average use specially appliances such as Refrigerator, Stove, Washer/Dryer, Air Conditioners, Water Heater, Computers and Home Office Equipment. Buy which has highest energy efficiency rating specified by any experts or sources.By using appliances marked with Energy Star Logo can help us to save 15 percent of energy than the federal requirement.Energy Star is the symbol for energy efficiency. It's a label created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy to help consumers save money and minimize air pollution.
4. Mineralize the energy needed for heating
USA Scientist concluded that heating and cooling systems in the U.S.A. emit into the atmosphere more than millions of tons of carbon dioxide each year, which increasing the % of Global Warming rates. By decreasing the usage appliances we can save lots of energy which emits heat.
5. Save your fuel while driving
You can’t image that you can manage to save your fuel 30% by simple vehicle maintenance and attention to your style of driving in an appropriate way. You should take care of for saving fuel by: Don’t drive aggressively, Drive steadily at posted speed limits, Avoid idling your vehicle, Make sure your tires are properly inflated, Select the right gear, Service your vehicle regularly and much more.
6. Drive less and Use public transports more
If you try to drive less and walk more than it would be great contribution towards saving energy and creating global warming awareness. You should try travel by taking the bus, riding a bike, or walking. Try consolidating trips to the mall or longer routine drives. Encourage car-pooling.
7. Paint your Home according to Seasons
Paint your home a light color if you live in a warm climate, or a dark color in a cold climate. This can contribute saving up to 5000 pounds of carbon dioxide per year.
8. Recycle every material
Try not to use products and materials which are not recyclable. Recycling saves energy, landfill space and natural resources. Increase usage of recycled materials such as paper & cardboard, plastic, glass, aluminum, steel & copper. Visit your local recycling center and find out what materials they accept for recycling. For your convenience use plastic bags or totes to store materials for recycling.
9. Eat more vegetarian meals than non-vegetarians
Avoid eating non-vegetarian food as it is not good for human health as well as to the planet. Try to this meal to increase your contribution towards Global Warming Awareness: Nutburgers, Irish Colcannon, Tofu Tamale Pie, Tofu Loaf, Grilled Polenta with Portabello Mushrooms, Vegetable Fajitas and many more.
10. Choose clean Energy Options
If you can choose your electricity supplier, pick a company that generates at least half its power from wind, solar energy and other renewable sources.
Global Warming Facts
Global warming is caused by green house gases, which trap in the sun’s infrared rays in the earth’s atmosphere, which in turn heat up the earth’s atmosphere. These green house effect warming is called as global warming. The effects of green house effect are visible more prominently in the recent years, with number of natural calamities on the rise in the whole world.
The global warming has happened in the past few years and is evident from the rise in mean temperature of the earth’s atmosphere. The main causes for the global warming are attributed to release of green house gases by human activities. The main gases contributing to green house effect are carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane and nitrous oxide. The largest producers of these gases are the thermal power plants, which burn the fossil fuels and produce these gases in large quantities. The second biggest sources of these green house gases are the road vehicles and industries.
The global warming has led to increase in mean earth surface temperature and thus melting of polar ice. There are frequent melt down of glaciers that result in floods and other natural calamities. The melting of ice at the poles had led the mean sea level. And further increase in temperature may further melt the ice and lead to further increase in mean sea level, which will engulf low lying countries.
The effect of global warming is very evident on the animal kingdom also. Some animals have become extinct due to loss of their natural habitat or their inability to evolve to the rapid changes in the climate. Also there is a change in their life style because of the changes in the seasons. The migrating birds have changed their time of travel and also their place of migration.
The effect of global warming can be felt on seasons too. There is shift in season cycle, as the summers are getting longer than the winters. This has affected the animals and made them to change their lifestyle accordingly, and those who failed to do so have perished or on the verge of extinction.
The global warming is also responsible for the introduction of some new diseases. The bacteria are more effective and multiply much faster in warmer temperatures compared to cold temperatures. The increase in temperature has led to increase in the microbes that cause diseases.
Global warming is also effecting the crop production, as the crops are getting destroyed by the sudden change in temperatures or sudden on set of rains. Also the flash floods and other natural calamities affect the crop.
As a matter of fact, because of global warming, the earth’s atmosphere is getting more unpredictable with heavy rains in the areas, which have scanty rainfall or drought in the areas, which received good annual rainfall. The months of rainfall has also getting affected.
But there are some people on the other side of the wall also, they believe that the global warming is a natural process and cannot disturb our ecosystem. The earth’s surface mean temperature was even higher a long time ago, and the ecosystem has evolved from that temperature to this. So it can evolve further. But the changes that are happening now are rather fast compared to earlier times.
The global warming has happened in the past few years and is evident from the rise in mean temperature of the earth’s atmosphere. The main causes for the global warming are attributed to release of green house gases by human activities. The main gases contributing to green house effect are carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane and nitrous oxide. The largest producers of these gases are the thermal power plants, which burn the fossil fuels and produce these gases in large quantities. The second biggest sources of these green house gases are the road vehicles and industries.
The global warming has led to increase in mean earth surface temperature and thus melting of polar ice. There are frequent melt down of glaciers that result in floods and other natural calamities. The melting of ice at the poles had led the mean sea level. And further increase in temperature may further melt the ice and lead to further increase in mean sea level, which will engulf low lying countries.
The effect of global warming is very evident on the animal kingdom also. Some animals have become extinct due to loss of their natural habitat or their inability to evolve to the rapid changes in the climate. Also there is a change in their life style because of the changes in the seasons. The migrating birds have changed their time of travel and also their place of migration.
The effect of global warming can be felt on seasons too. There is shift in season cycle, as the summers are getting longer than the winters. This has affected the animals and made them to change their lifestyle accordingly, and those who failed to do so have perished or on the verge of extinction.
The global warming is also responsible for the introduction of some new diseases. The bacteria are more effective and multiply much faster in warmer temperatures compared to cold temperatures. The increase in temperature has led to increase in the microbes that cause diseases.
Global warming is also effecting the crop production, as the crops are getting destroyed by the sudden change in temperatures or sudden on set of rains. Also the flash floods and other natural calamities affect the crop.
As a matter of fact, because of global warming, the earth’s atmosphere is getting more unpredictable with heavy rains in the areas, which have scanty rainfall or drought in the areas, which received good annual rainfall. The months of rainfall has also getting affected.
But there are some people on the other side of the wall also, they believe that the global warming is a natural process and cannot disturb our ecosystem. The earth’s surface mean temperature was even higher a long time ago, and the ecosystem has evolved from that temperature to this. So it can evolve further. But the changes that are happening now are rather fast compared to earlier times.
Definition for global warming - what is global warming?
The question about the definition for global warming or in other words "what is global warming" is relatively easy to answer. We hereby lean at the definitions and explanations given in Wikipedia:
Global warming is the observed and projected increases in the average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans. The Earth's average temperature rose about 0.6° Celsius (1.1° Fahrenheit) in the 20th century, see temperature graphs below.
Global warming is the observed and projected increases in the average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans. The Earth's average temperature rose about 0.6° Celsius (1.1° Fahrenheit) in the 20th century, see temperature graphs below.
Prediction for future temperature increase (global warming predictions)
According to different assumption about the future behaviour of mankind, a projection of current trends as represented by a number of different scenarios gives temperature increases of about 3° to 5° C (5° to 9° Fahrenheit) by the year 2100 or soon afterwards. A 3°C or 5° Fahrenheit rise would likely raise sea levels by about 25 meters (about 82 feet).
Friday, September 26, 2008
Cause and effect for global warming
Cause of global warming
Almost 100% of the observed temperature increase over the last 50 years has been due to the increase in the atmosphere of greenhouse gas concentrations like water vapour, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and ozone. Greenhouse gases are those gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect (see below). The largest contributing source of greenhouse gas is the burning of fossil fuels leading to the emission of carbon dioxide.
The greenhouse effect
Global warming causes by greenhouse effect
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (see above) act like a mirror and reflect back to the Earth a part of the heat radiation, which would otherwise be lost to space. The higher the concentration of green house gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the more heat energy is being reflected back to the Earth. The emission of carbon dioxide into the environment mainly from burning of fossil fuels (oil, gas, petrol, kerosene, etc.) has been increased dramatically over the past 50 years, see graph below.
The increase of greenhouse gas concentration (mainly carbon dioxide) led to a substantial warming of the earth and the sea, called global warming. In other words: The increase in the man-made emission of greenhouse gases is the cause for global warming. For the effects of global warming see below.
Effects of global warming
There are two major effects of global warming:
1.) Increase of temperature on the earth by about 3° to 5° C (34° to 41° Fahrenheit) by the year 2100.
2.) Rise of sea levels by at least 25 meters (82 feet) by the year 2100.
More details about the effects of global warming :
Increasing global temperatures are causing a broad range of changes. Sea levels are rising due to thermal expansion of the ocean, in addition to melting of land ice. Amounts and patterns of precipitation are changing. The total annual power of hurricanes has already increased markedly since 1975 because their average intensity and average duration have increased (in addition, there has been a high correlation of hurricane power with tropical sea-surface temperature).
Changes in temperature and precipitation patterns increase the frequency, duration, and intensity of other extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, and tornadoes. Other effects of global warming include higher or lower agricultural yields, further glacial retreat, reduced summer stream flows, species extinctions. As a further effect of global warming, diseases like malaria are returning into areas where they have been extinguished earlier.
Although global warming is affecting the number and magnitude of these events, it is difficult to connect specific events to global warming. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming is expected to continue past then because carbon dioxide (chemical symbol CO2) has an estimated atmospheric lifetime of 50 to 200 years.
Almost 100% of the observed temperature increase over the last 50 years has been due to the increase in the atmosphere of greenhouse gas concentrations like water vapour, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and ozone. Greenhouse gases are those gases that contribute to the greenhouse effect (see below). The largest contributing source of greenhouse gas is the burning of fossil fuels leading to the emission of carbon dioxide.
The greenhouse effect
When sunlight reaches Earth's surface some is absorbed and warms the earth and most of the rest is radiated back to the atmosphere at a longer wavelength than the sun light. Some of these longer wavelengths are absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere before they are lost to space. The absorption of this longwave radiant energy warms the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases act like a mirror and reflect back to the Earth some of the heat energy which would otherwise be lost to space. The reflecting back of heat energy by the atmosphere is called the "greenhouse effect".
The major natural greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36-70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth (not including clouds); carbon dioxide CO2, which causes 9-26%; methane, which causes 4-9%, and ozone, which causes 3-7%. It is not possible to state that a certain gas causes a certain percentage of the greenhouse effect, because the influences of the various gases are not additive. Other greenhouse gases include, but are not limited to, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and chlorofluorocarbons.Global warming causes by greenhouse effect
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (see above) act like a mirror and reflect back to the Earth a part of the heat radiation, which would otherwise be lost to space. The higher the concentration of green house gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the more heat energy is being reflected back to the Earth. The emission of carbon dioxide into the environment mainly from burning of fossil fuels (oil, gas, petrol, kerosene, etc.) has been increased dramatically over the past 50 years, see graph below.
The increase of greenhouse gas concentration (mainly carbon dioxide) led to a substantial warming of the earth and the sea, called global warming. In other words: The increase in the man-made emission of greenhouse gases is the cause for global warming. For the effects of global warming see below.
Effects of global warming
There are two major effects of global warming:
1.) Increase of temperature on the earth by about 3° to 5° C (34° to 41° Fahrenheit) by the year 2100.
2.) Rise of sea levels by at least 25 meters (82 feet) by the year 2100.
More details about the effects of global warming :
Increasing global temperatures are causing a broad range of changes. Sea levels are rising due to thermal expansion of the ocean, in addition to melting of land ice. Amounts and patterns of precipitation are changing. The total annual power of hurricanes has already increased markedly since 1975 because their average intensity and average duration have increased (in addition, there has been a high correlation of hurricane power with tropical sea-surface temperature).
Changes in temperature and precipitation patterns increase the frequency, duration, and intensity of other extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, and tornadoes. Other effects of global warming include higher or lower agricultural yields, further glacial retreat, reduced summer stream flows, species extinctions. As a further effect of global warming, diseases like malaria are returning into areas where they have been extinguished earlier.
Although global warming is affecting the number and magnitude of these events, it is difficult to connect specific events to global warming. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming is expected to continue past then because carbon dioxide (chemical symbol CO2) has an estimated atmospheric lifetime of 50 to 200 years.
Global Warming Fast Facts
Global warming, or climate change, is a subject that shows no sign of cooling down.
Here's the lowdown on why it's happening, what's causing it, and how it might change the planet.
Is It Happening?
Yes. Earth is already showing many signs of worldwide climate change.
• Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
• The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850.
• The Arctic is feeling the effects the most. Average temperatures in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia have risen at twice the global average, according to the multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report compiled between 2000 and 2004.
• Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completely ice-free summer by 2040 or earlier. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice loss.
• Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting—for example, Montana's Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. In the Northern Hemisphere, thaws also come a week earlier in spring and freezes begin a week later.
• Coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to small changes in water temperature, suffered the worst bleaching—or die-off in response to stress—ever recorded in 1998, with some areas seeing bleach rates of 70 percent. Experts expect these sorts of events to increase in frequency and intensity in the next 50 years as sea temperatures rise.
• An upsurge in the amount of extreme weather events, such as wildfires, heat waves, and strong tropical storms, is also attributed in part to climate change by some experts.
Are Humans Causing It?
• Industrialization, deforestation, and pollution have greatly increased atmospheric concentrations of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, all greenhouse gases that help trap heat near Earth's surface. (See an interactive feature on how global warming works.)
• Humans are pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than plants and oceans can absorb it.
• These gases persist in the atmosphere for years, meaning that even if such emissions were eliminated today, it would not immediately stop global warming.
• Some experts point out that natural cycles in Earth's orbit can alter the planet's exposure to sunlight, which may explain the current trend. Earth has indeed experienced warming and cooling cycles roughly every hundred thousand years due to these orbital shifts, but such changes have occurred over the span of several centuries. Today's changes have taken place over the past hundred years or less.
• Other recent research has suggested that the effects of variations in the sun's output are "negligible" as a factor in warming, but other, more complicated solar mechanisms could possibly play a role.
What's Going to Happen?
A follow-up report by the IPCC released in April 2007 warned that global warming could lead to large-scale food and water shortages and have catastrophic effects on wildlife.
• Sea level could rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 to 59 centimeters) by century's end, the IPCC's February 2007 report projects. Rises of just 4 inches (10 centimeters) could flood many South Seas islands and swamp large parts of Southeast Asia.
• Some hundred million people live within 3 feet (1 meter) of mean sea level, and much of the world's population is concentrated in vulnerable coastal cities. In the U.S., Louisiana and Florida are especially at risk.
• Glaciers around the world could melt, causing sea levels to rise while creating water shortages in regions dependent on runoff for fresh water.
• Strong hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and other natural disasters may become commonplace in many parts of the world. The growth of deserts may also cause food shortages in many places.
• More than a million species face extinction from disappearing habitat, changing ecosystems, and acidifying oceans.
• The ocean's circulation system, known as the ocean conveyor belt, could be permanently altered, causing a mini-ice age in Western Europe and other rapid changes.
• At some point in the future, warming could become uncontrollable by creating a so-called positive feedback effect. Rising temperatures could release additional greenhouse gases by unlocking methane in permafrost and undersea deposits, freeing carbon trapped in sea ice, and causing increased evaporation of water.
Here's the lowdown on why it's happening, what's causing it, and how it might change the planet.
Is It Happening?
Yes. Earth is already showing many signs of worldwide climate change.
• Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
• The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850.
• The Arctic is feeling the effects the most. Average temperatures in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia have risen at twice the global average, according to the multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report compiled between 2000 and 2004.
• Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completely ice-free summer by 2040 or earlier. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice loss.
• Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting—for example, Montana's Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. In the Northern Hemisphere, thaws also come a week earlier in spring and freezes begin a week later.
• Coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to small changes in water temperature, suffered the worst bleaching—or die-off in response to stress—ever recorded in 1998, with some areas seeing bleach rates of 70 percent. Experts expect these sorts of events to increase in frequency and intensity in the next 50 years as sea temperatures rise.
• An upsurge in the amount of extreme weather events, such as wildfires, heat waves, and strong tropical storms, is also attributed in part to climate change by some experts.
Are Humans Causing It?
• Industrialization, deforestation, and pollution have greatly increased atmospheric concentrations of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, all greenhouse gases that help trap heat near Earth's surface. (See an interactive feature on how global warming works.)
• Humans are pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than plants and oceans can absorb it.
• These gases persist in the atmosphere for years, meaning that even if such emissions were eliminated today, it would not immediately stop global warming.
• Some experts point out that natural cycles in Earth's orbit can alter the planet's exposure to sunlight, which may explain the current trend. Earth has indeed experienced warming and cooling cycles roughly every hundred thousand years due to these orbital shifts, but such changes have occurred over the span of several centuries. Today's changes have taken place over the past hundred years or less.
• Other recent research has suggested that the effects of variations in the sun's output are "negligible" as a factor in warming, but other, more complicated solar mechanisms could possibly play a role.
What's Going to Happen?
A follow-up report by the IPCC released in April 2007 warned that global warming could lead to large-scale food and water shortages and have catastrophic effects on wildlife.
• Sea level could rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 to 59 centimeters) by century's end, the IPCC's February 2007 report projects. Rises of just 4 inches (10 centimeters) could flood many South Seas islands and swamp large parts of Southeast Asia.
• Some hundred million people live within 3 feet (1 meter) of mean sea level, and much of the world's population is concentrated in vulnerable coastal cities. In the U.S., Louisiana and Florida are especially at risk.
• Glaciers around the world could melt, causing sea levels to rise while creating water shortages in regions dependent on runoff for fresh water.
• Strong hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and other natural disasters may become commonplace in many parts of the world. The growth of deserts may also cause food shortages in many places.
• More than a million species face extinction from disappearing habitat, changing ecosystems, and acidifying oceans.
• The ocean's circulation system, known as the ocean conveyor belt, could be permanently altered, causing a mini-ice age in Western Europe and other rapid changes.
• At some point in the future, warming could become uncontrollable by creating a so-called positive feedback effect. Rising temperatures could release additional greenhouse gases by unlocking methane in permafrost and undersea deposits, freeing carbon trapped in sea ice, and causing increased evaporation of water.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Top Green Lighting Tips
1. CFL: The better bulb
Compact florescent bulbs (CFLs) are those swirley little guys that look like soft-serve ice cream cones. Actually, they come in a myriad of different shapes, sizes, and colors of light. Economically speaking, they’re a great deal, too. CFLs cost a bit more than an incandescent, but use about a quarter as much energy and last many times longer (usually around 10,000 hours). It is estimated that a CFL pays for its higher price after about 500 hours of use. After that, it’s money in your pocket. Also, because CFLs release less heat, not only are they safer, but your cooling load is less in the summer. CFLs aren’t hard to find anymore, and many cities will give them away for free. Wal-Mart has plans to sell 100 million of them.
2. Get the LEDs out
LEDs are a definite TreeHugger favorite. LEDs, or light emitting diodes, are a technology that allows for extremely energy efficient and extremely long-lasting light bulbs. LEDs are just starting to hit the consumer market in a big (read affordable) way and still cost quite a bit more than even CFLs, but use even less energy and last even longer. An LED light bulb can reduce energy consumption by 80-90% and last around 100,000 hours. They even light up faster than regular bulbs (which could save your life it there are LEDs in the brake lights of your car). They are almost always more expensive presently, but we have seen the cost go down steadily. It’s no coincidence that the Millennium Technology Prize went to the inventor of the LED.
Most LED lamps on the market have the bulbs built into them, so you buy the whole unit. For screw-in bulbs, check out Ledtronics, Mule, and Enlux. For desk lamps, check out a few affordable ones from Sylvania and Koncept. For more designer models, look at LEDs from Herman Miller and Knoll. Vessel rechargeable accent lamps represent some of the interesting new things LEDs can do as well.
3. Materials
Light isn’t all about the bulbs, though. Having eco-friendly lamps and light fixtures is key to greening your lighting. When scouting for new gear, keep your eyes out for lamps made with natural, recycled, or reused materials. Lights made from recycled materials include metal, glass, or plastic, and natural materials can include felt, cloth or wood. Interesting lamps that use reclaimed materials include these made from traffic signal lenses, and these made from wine bottles. Also, don’t be shy about borrowing ideas for reuse in your own projects (see DIY).
4. Disposabulb
Fluorescents last a long time, but when they’re dead, they have to be properly disposed of. CFLs, like all florescent bulbs, do contain a small amount of mercury, which means they definitely can’t be thrown in the trash. Every city has different services for recycling, so you’ll need to see what’s offered in your area. LEDs, to our knowledge, do not contain mercury, but the jury may still be out on how to best recycle them.
5. Wall warts
Power adaptors, or “wall warts” as they’re affectionately called, are those clunky things you find on many electrical cords, including those attached to lamps and some light fixtures. You’ll notice that they stay warm even when their device is turned off. This is because they in fact draw energy from the wall all the time. One way to green your lighting is to unplug their wall warts when not in use, attached lights to a power strip and turn off the whole switch when not in use, or get your hands on a “smart” power strip that knows when the devise is off.
6. DaylightingBy far, the best source of light we know is (yes, you guessed it) the sun, which gives off free, full-spectrum light all day. Make the most of daylight by keeping your blinds open (sounds obvious but you might be surprised). If you want to go a little farther, put in some skylights, or, of you are designing a home or doing a renovation, put as many windows on the south-facing side of the house as possible (or north-facing if you live in the southern hemisphere). To take it even further, sunlight can be “piped” inside via fiber optics and other light channeling technologies.
How to Go Green: Lighting
How we light up the places we live and work makes a big impact on how we feel. It also makes a big impact on the environment. The kind of bulbs, the kind of fixtures, the kind of power, and the habits we keep can all add up to a very significant greening. Start with the fact that a conventional incandescent bulb turns only around five to ten percent of its consumed energy into light, the rest goes out as heat. From there, there's no limit to how green your lighting can be.
Easy Ways to Recycle and Reduce Waste:
- Buy paper products made with at least partially recycled paper
Look for home and office products that are made with recycled paper. You can purchase computer printer paper, notebooks, paper towels, toilet paper, and many other products that are made from 100% recycled paper. - Drop off plastic bags at participating grocery stores to be recycled
Many grocery stores have drop-off boxes at the entrances of their stores where you can easily recycle your old grocery bags. - Stop getting "junk mail"
Don't let paper be wasted on mail that you do not want anyway. Just call the customer service number printed on the catalog or advertisement and ask to be removed from the mailing list.
Things to Do at Home
1.Look around your kitchen to find some packaged products. What types of packaging are used most? Why do you think so many different kinds of packaging are used?
2.Design a label for the packaging of a new product. Remember to include information about the contents, quantity, ingredients and any other important details – make it attractive, so people will want to buy it!
3.Packaging is becoming lighter and lighter as people develop new ways to make stronger containers with less materials. Collect some different packages and weigh them on a set of kitchen scales. Why do some types of packaging have to be heavier than others?
2.Design a label for the packaging of a new product. Remember to include information about the contents, quantity, ingredients and any other important details – make it attractive, so people will want to buy it!
3.Packaging is becoming lighter and lighter as people develop new ways to make stronger containers with less materials. Collect some different packages and weigh them on a set of kitchen scales. Why do some types of packaging have to be heavier than others?
Facts and Figures
- The first types of packaging were made from natural materials – dried animal skins were used to contain water, and reeds or wicker were weaved into simple baskets.
- Every pound spent on packaging protects at least £9 worth of food and goods.
- Over 60% of all packaging is for food.
How Do We Reduce Packaging?
Packaging stops goods from going to waste, but it also ends up as waste itself. We need to try to reduce the amount of packaging we throw away by:
1.Looking for packaging that is made from recycled materials.This way, you know that the packaging was made using the least amount of natural resources and energy possible.
2.Looking for packaging that can be recycled.This way, you can continue the recycling loop.
3.Choosing products carefully and make sure that things are packaged in the way that best suits how we are going to use them.This way, we don't use more packaging than necessary.
1.Looking for packaging that is made from recycled materials.This way, you know that the packaging was made using the least amount of natural resources and energy possible.
2.Looking for packaging that can be recycled.This way, you can continue the recycling loop.
3.Choosing products carefully and make sure that things are packaged in the way that best suits how we are going to use them.This way, we don't use more packaging than necessary.
What do we use Packaging For?
Packaging is the name given to the containers in which products are bought, sold and transported. It is an important part of everything we buy. Most foods and drinks come in some type of packaging – imagine what would happen if this wasn't the case! Packaging is made from a variety of different materials, including paper and board, glass, steel, plastics and aluminium.
There are four main reasons for packaging:
1.To preserve food
2.To contain objects so that they can be transported safely
3.To describe and identify the contents, so that customers can find out the contents, weight and purpose of a product.
4.To protect the contents so that goods arrive without damage or spoilage.
There are four main reasons for packaging:
1.To preserve food
2.To contain objects so that they can be transported safely
3.To describe and identify the contents, so that customers can find out the contents, weight and purpose of a product.
4.To protect the contents so that goods arrive without damage or spoilage.
Things To Do
- Put a clear plastic bag in your garbage bin at home, so you can see what types of waste your family throws out. Over a week, note down the most common types of waste produced in your house.
- If we don't reduce our waste, soon we will start running out of places to put it! Write a story about having to live in a "World of Garbage".
- Do you think the amount and types of waste we produce today is different to that produced fifty years ago, or even a hundred years ago? Write down some differences you might expect.
Facts and Figures
- 3,500 dustbins full of rubbish are thrown away in Europe every minute
- If you collected all the waste you make in one year, it would weigh 10 times as much as you do!
How Can I Reduce Waste at Home?
Here are some ideas to help you and your family reduce the amount of waste that you produce at home:
1.Make more foods at home instead of buying takeaway or convenience foods.
2.Make gifts or cards for family and friends, instead of buying them.
3.Grow your own vegetables and flowers.
4.Buy second-hand books instead of new ones
5.Repair clothes, toys, and appliances rather than replacing them with new ones.
6.Hire, share and borrow things, rather than buying new ones, where possible.
7.Shop more carefully:
- use a shopping list
– only buy the things you really need- avoid goods that have too much packaging
- don't buy too many disposable products, such as tissues and nappies
- buy products that are strong, and will last you a long time
- take your own shopping bags to the supermarket
1.Make more foods at home instead of buying takeaway or convenience foods.
2.Make gifts or cards for family and friends, instead of buying them.
3.Grow your own vegetables and flowers.
4.Buy second-hand books instead of new ones
5.Repair clothes, toys, and appliances rather than replacing them with new ones.
6.Hire, share and borrow things, rather than buying new ones, where possible.
7.Shop more carefully:
- use a shopping list
– only buy the things you really need- avoid goods that have too much packaging
- don't buy too many disposable products, such as tissues and nappies
- buy products that are strong, and will last you a long time
- take your own shopping bags to the supermarket
What is Waste?
Waste is the name given to everything that we throw away. After it is collected from your rubbish bin, some waste is burned, but most of it is buried in big holes in the ground called landfill sites. This causes problems because both burning and burying release chemicals which are bad for the environment. We are also running out of places to bury rubbish!
Reducing the amount of waste we produce has many benefits:
1.It conserves valuable resources, including forests, minerals, petroleum, and energy.
2.It saves money.
3.It helps the environment, because it reduces the amount of pollution, greenhouse gases, and disturbance of nature.
Reducing the amount of waste we produce has many benefits:
1.It conserves valuable resources, including forests, minerals, petroleum, and energy.
2.It saves money.
3.It helps the environment, because it reduces the amount of pollution, greenhouse gases, and disturbance of nature.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
What you can do to reduce air pollution
1.Encourage your family to walk to the neighbourhood market.
2.Whenever possible take your bicycle.
3.As far as possible use public forms of transport.
4.Don’t let your father drop you to school, take the school bus.
5.Encourage your family to form a car pool to office and back.
6.Reduce the use of aerosols in the household.
7.Look after the trees in your neighbourhood.
8.Begin a tree-watch group to ensure that they are well tended and cared for.
9.Switch-off all the lights and fans when not required.
10.If possible share your room with others when the airconditioner, cooler or fan is on.
11.Do not burn leaves in your garden, put them in a compost pit.
12.Make sure that the pollution check for your family car is done at regular intervals
13.Cars should, as far as possible, be fitted with catalytic converters.
14.Use only unleaded petrol.
2.Whenever possible take your bicycle.
3.As far as possible use public forms of transport.
4.Don’t let your father drop you to school, take the school bus.
5.Encourage your family to form a car pool to office and back.
6.Reduce the use of aerosols in the household.
7.Look after the trees in your neighbourhood.
8.Begin a tree-watch group to ensure that they are well tended and cared for.
9.Switch-off all the lights and fans when not required.
10.If possible share your room with others when the airconditioner, cooler or fan is on.
11.Do not burn leaves in your garden, put them in a compost pit.
12.Make sure that the pollution check for your family car is done at regular intervals
13.Cars should, as far as possible, be fitted with catalytic converters.
14.Use only unleaded petrol.
Indoor air pollution
It refers to the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of air in the indoor environment within a home, building, or an institution or commercial facility. Indoor air pollution is a concern in the developed countries, where energy efficiency improvements sometimes make houses relatively airtight, reducing ventilation and raising pollutant levels. Indoor air problems can be subtle and do not always produce easily recognized impacts on health. Different conditions are responsible for indoor air pollution in the rural areas and the urban areas.
In the developing countries, it is the rural areas that face the greatest threat from indoor pollution, where some 3.5 billion people continue to rely on traditional fuels such as firewood, charcoal, and cowdung for cooking and heating. Concentrations of indoor pollutants in households that burn traditional fuels are alarming. Burning such fuels produces large amount of smoke and other air pollutants in the confined space of the home, resulting in high exposure. Women and children are the groups most vulnerable as they spend more time indoors and are exposed to the smoke. In 1992, the World Bank designated indoor air pollution in the developing countries as one of the four most critical global environmental problems. Daily averages of pollutant level emitted indoors often exceed current WHO guidelines and acceptable levels. Although many hundreds of separate chemical agents have been identified in the smoke from biofuels, the four most serious pollutants are particulates, carbon monoxide, polycyclic organic matter, and formaldehyde. Unfortunately, little monitoring has been done in rural and poor urban indoor environments in a manner that is statistically rigorous.
In urban areas, exposure to indoor air pollution has increased due to a variety of reasons, including the construction of more tightly sealed buildings, reduced ventilation, the use of synthetic materials for building and furnishing and the use of chemical products, pesticides, and household care products. Indoor air pollution can begin within the building or be drawn in from outdoors. Other than nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and lead, there are a number of other pollutants that affect the air quality in an enclosed space.
Volatile organic compounds originate mainly from solvents and chemicals. The main indoor sources are perfumes, hair sprays, furniture polish, glues, air fresheners, moth repellents, wood preservatives, and many other products used in the house. The main health effect is the imitation of the eye, nose and throat. In more severe cases there may be headaches, nausea and loss of coordination. In the long term, some of the pollutants are suspected to damage to the liver and other parts of the body.
Tobacco smoke generates a wide range of harmful chemicals and is known to cause cancer. It is well known that passive smoking causes a wide range of problems to the passive smoker (the person who is in the same room with a smoker and is not himself/herself a smoker) ranging from burning eyes, nose, and throat irritation to cancer, bronchitis, severe asthma, and a decrease in lung function.
Pesticides , if used carefully and the manufacturers, instructions followed carefully they do not cause too much harm to the indoor air.
Biological pollutants include pollen from plants, mite, hair from pets, fungi, parasites, and some bacteria. Most of them are allergens and can cause asthma, hay fever, and other allergic diseases.
Formaldehyde is a gas that comes mainly from carpets, particle boards, and insulation foam. It causes irritation to the eyes and nose and may cause allergies in some people.
Asbestos is mainly a concern because it is suspected to cause cancer.
Radon is a gas that is emitted naturally by the soil. Due to modern houses having poor ventilation, it is confined inside the house causing harm to the dwellers.
In the developing countries, it is the rural areas that face the greatest threat from indoor pollution, where some 3.5 billion people continue to rely on traditional fuels such as firewood, charcoal, and cowdung for cooking and heating. Concentrations of indoor pollutants in households that burn traditional fuels are alarming. Burning such fuels produces large amount of smoke and other air pollutants in the confined space of the home, resulting in high exposure. Women and children are the groups most vulnerable as they spend more time indoors and are exposed to the smoke. In 1992, the World Bank designated indoor air pollution in the developing countries as one of the four most critical global environmental problems. Daily averages of pollutant level emitted indoors often exceed current WHO guidelines and acceptable levels. Although many hundreds of separate chemical agents have been identified in the smoke from biofuels, the four most serious pollutants are particulates, carbon monoxide, polycyclic organic matter, and formaldehyde. Unfortunately, little monitoring has been done in rural and poor urban indoor environments in a manner that is statistically rigorous.
In urban areas, exposure to indoor air pollution has increased due to a variety of reasons, including the construction of more tightly sealed buildings, reduced ventilation, the use of synthetic materials for building and furnishing and the use of chemical products, pesticides, and household care products. Indoor air pollution can begin within the building or be drawn in from outdoors. Other than nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and lead, there are a number of other pollutants that affect the air quality in an enclosed space.
Volatile organic compounds originate mainly from solvents and chemicals. The main indoor sources are perfumes, hair sprays, furniture polish, glues, air fresheners, moth repellents, wood preservatives, and many other products used in the house. The main health effect is the imitation of the eye, nose and throat. In more severe cases there may be headaches, nausea and loss of coordination. In the long term, some of the pollutants are suspected to damage to the liver and other parts of the body.
Tobacco smoke generates a wide range of harmful chemicals and is known to cause cancer. It is well known that passive smoking causes a wide range of problems to the passive smoker (the person who is in the same room with a smoker and is not himself/herself a smoker) ranging from burning eyes, nose, and throat irritation to cancer, bronchitis, severe asthma, and a decrease in lung function.
Pesticides , if used carefully and the manufacturers, instructions followed carefully they do not cause too much harm to the indoor air.
Biological pollutants include pollen from plants, mite, hair from pets, fungi, parasites, and some bacteria. Most of them are allergens and can cause asthma, hay fever, and other allergic diseases.
Formaldehyde is a gas that comes mainly from carpets, particle boards, and insulation foam. It causes irritation to the eyes and nose and may cause allergies in some people.
Asbestos is mainly a concern because it is suspected to cause cancer.
Radon is a gas that is emitted naturally by the soil. Due to modern houses having poor ventilation, it is confined inside the house causing harm to the dwellers.
Flyash
With the boom in population and industrial growth, the need for power has increased manifold. Nearly 73% of India’s total installed power generation capacity is thermal, of which 90% is coal-based generation, with diesel, wind, gas, and steam making up the rest. Thermal power generation through coal combustion produces minute particles of ash that causes serious environmental problems.
Commonly known as fly ash, these ash particles consist of silica, alumina, oxides of iron, calcium, and magnesium and toxic heavy metals like lead, arsenic, cobalt, and copper.
The 80-odd utility thermal power stations in India use bituminous coal and produce large quantities of fly ash. According to one estimate, up to 150 million tonnes of fly ash will be produced in India in the year 2000, primarily by thermal power plants and, to a lesser extent, by cement and steel plants and railways. This poses problems in the form of land use, health hazards, and environmental dangers. Both in disposal and in utilization utmost care has to be taken to safeguard the interest of human life, wild life, and such other considerations.
The prevalent practice is to dump fly ash on wastelands, and this has lain to waste thousands of hectares all over the country. To prevent the fly ash from getting airborne, the dumping sites have to be constantly kept wet by sprinkling water over the area. The coal industry in USA spends millions of dollars on lining fly ash dumping grounds. But in India, these sites are not lined and it leads to seepage, contaminating groundwater and soil. It lowers soil fertility and contaminates surface and ground water as it can leach into the subsoil. When fly ash gets into the natural draining system, it results in siltation and clogs the system. It also reduces the pH balance and portability of water. Fly ash interferes with the process of photosynthesis of aquatic plants and thus disturbs the food chain. Besides, fly ash corrodes exposed metallic structures in its vicinity.
In Delhi, the problem of fly ash is particularly severe as three power stations are located here. Being very minute, fly ash tends to remain airborne for a very long period leading to serious health problems as the airborne ash can enter the body. It causes irritation to eyes, skin, and nose, throat, and respiratory tract. Repeated inhalation of fly ash dust containing crystalline silica can cause bronchitis and lung cancer.
Tackling the problem of fly ash
Fly ash management has taken considerable strides over the past few years. Researches have been attempting to convert this waste into wealth by exploring viable avenues for fly ash management. Fly ash is oxide-rich and can be used as the raw material for different industries.
Today, fly ash bricks can be used as a building material. The American Embassy in India has used fly ash bricks in some of its recent construction. Use of fly ash as a part replacement of cement in mortar and concrete has started with the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi taking the lead. Use of fly ash in the construction of roads and embankments has been successfully demonstrated in the country and it is gaining acceptance. The NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation) is setting up two fly ash brick manufacturing plants at Badarpur and Dadri near Delhi.
At TERI, researchers have proven that fly ash dumps can be reclaimed by suitable addition of organic matter and symbiotic fungi, making it commercially viable for activities like floriculture and silviculture. TERI researchers have successfully reclaimed a part of an ash pond at the Badarpur Thermal Power Station by introducing a mycorrhizal fungi-based organic bio-fertilizer. As the fungus germinates, it sustains on the partner plant and quickly spreads to the roots and beyond. It improves the plant's water and nutrient uptake, helps in the development of roots and soil-binding, stores carbohydrates and oils for use when needed, protects the plants from soil-borne diseases, and detoxifies contaminated soils. This helps in keeping both air and water pollution under control. It also helps revive wastelands and saves millions of litres of precious water from going down the fly ash slurries. Marigold, tuberose, gladiolus, carnation, sunflower, poplar, sheesham, and eucalyptus now grow at the demonstration site of the power station.
Use of fly ash in agricultural applications has been well demonstrated and has been accepted by a large number of farmers.
The National Capital Power Station of the NTPC has come up with an innovative technology for commercial utilization of this by-product. Known as the dry ash technology, it is considered environment-friendly. Under the dry ash technology, the fly ash is collected in huge mounds with a filter bed provided at the bottom of the mound. Grass is planted on the slopes of the fly ash mounds and polymer layering is also done to prevent the ash from being blown by the wind. Fly ash treated by this method develops certain physical properties that make it more suitable for commercial purposes.
Commonly known as fly ash, these ash particles consist of silica, alumina, oxides of iron, calcium, and magnesium and toxic heavy metals like lead, arsenic, cobalt, and copper.
The 80-odd utility thermal power stations in India use bituminous coal and produce large quantities of fly ash. According to one estimate, up to 150 million tonnes of fly ash will be produced in India in the year 2000, primarily by thermal power plants and, to a lesser extent, by cement and steel plants and railways. This poses problems in the form of land use, health hazards, and environmental dangers. Both in disposal and in utilization utmost care has to be taken to safeguard the interest of human life, wild life, and such other considerations.
The prevalent practice is to dump fly ash on wastelands, and this has lain to waste thousands of hectares all over the country. To prevent the fly ash from getting airborne, the dumping sites have to be constantly kept wet by sprinkling water over the area. The coal industry in USA spends millions of dollars on lining fly ash dumping grounds. But in India, these sites are not lined and it leads to seepage, contaminating groundwater and soil. It lowers soil fertility and contaminates surface and ground water as it can leach into the subsoil. When fly ash gets into the natural draining system, it results in siltation and clogs the system. It also reduces the pH balance and portability of water. Fly ash interferes with the process of photosynthesis of aquatic plants and thus disturbs the food chain. Besides, fly ash corrodes exposed metallic structures in its vicinity.
In Delhi, the problem of fly ash is particularly severe as three power stations are located here. Being very minute, fly ash tends to remain airborne for a very long period leading to serious health problems as the airborne ash can enter the body. It causes irritation to eyes, skin, and nose, throat, and respiratory tract. Repeated inhalation of fly ash dust containing crystalline silica can cause bronchitis and lung cancer.
Tackling the problem of fly ash
Fly ash management has taken considerable strides over the past few years. Researches have been attempting to convert this waste into wealth by exploring viable avenues for fly ash management. Fly ash is oxide-rich and can be used as the raw material for different industries.
Today, fly ash bricks can be used as a building material. The American Embassy in India has used fly ash bricks in some of its recent construction. Use of fly ash as a part replacement of cement in mortar and concrete has started with the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi taking the lead. Use of fly ash in the construction of roads and embankments has been successfully demonstrated in the country and it is gaining acceptance. The NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation) is setting up two fly ash brick manufacturing plants at Badarpur and Dadri near Delhi.
At TERI, researchers have proven that fly ash dumps can be reclaimed by suitable addition of organic matter and symbiotic fungi, making it commercially viable for activities like floriculture and silviculture. TERI researchers have successfully reclaimed a part of an ash pond at the Badarpur Thermal Power Station by introducing a mycorrhizal fungi-based organic bio-fertilizer. As the fungus germinates, it sustains on the partner plant and quickly spreads to the roots and beyond. It improves the plant's water and nutrient uptake, helps in the development of roots and soil-binding, stores carbohydrates and oils for use when needed, protects the plants from soil-borne diseases, and detoxifies contaminated soils. This helps in keeping both air and water pollution under control. It also helps revive wastelands and saves millions of litres of precious water from going down the fly ash slurries. Marigold, tuberose, gladiolus, carnation, sunflower, poplar, sheesham, and eucalyptus now grow at the demonstration site of the power station.
Use of fly ash in agricultural applications has been well demonstrated and has been accepted by a large number of farmers.
The National Capital Power Station of the NTPC has come up with an innovative technology for commercial utilization of this by-product. Known as the dry ash technology, it is considered environment-friendly. Under the dry ash technology, the fly ash is collected in huge mounds with a filter bed provided at the bottom of the mound. Grass is planted on the slopes of the fly ash mounds and polymer layering is also done to prevent the ash from being blown by the wind. Fly ash treated by this method develops certain physical properties that make it more suitable for commercial purposes.
Acid rain
Another effect of air pollution is acid rain. The phenomenon occurs when sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from the burning of fossil fuels such as, petrol, diesel, and coal combine with water vapour in the atmosphere and fall as rain, snow or fog. These gases can also be emitted from natural sources like volcanoes. Acid rain causes extensive damage to water, forest, soil resources and even human health. Many lakes and streams have been contaminated and this has led to the disappearance of some species of fish in Europe, USA and Canada as also extensive damage to forests and other forms of life. It is said that it can corrode buildings and be hazardous to human health. Because the contaminants are carried long distances, the sources of acid rain are difficult to pinpoint and hence difficult to control. For example, the acid rain that may have damaged some forest in Canada could have originated in the industrial areas of USA. In fact, this has created disagreements between Canada and the United States and among European countries over the causes of and solutions to the problem of acid rain. The international scope of the problem has led to the signing of international agreements on the limitation of sulphur and nitrogen oxide emissions.
Smog
The term smog was first used in 1905 by Dr H A Des Voeux to describe the conditions of fog that had soot or smoke in it. Smog is a combination of various gases with water vapour and dust. A large part of the gases that form smog is produced when fuels are burnt. Smog forms when heat and sunlight react with these gases and fine particles in the air. Smog can affect outlying suburbs and rural areas as well as big cities. Its occurrences are often linked to heavy traffic, high temperatures, and calm winds. During the winter, wind speeds are low and cause the smoke and fog to stagnate; hence pollution levels can increase near ground level. This keeps the pollution close to the ground, right where people are breathing. It hampers visibility and harms the environment. Heavy smog is greatly decreases ultraviolet radiation. In fact, in the early part of the 20th century, heavy smog in some parts of Europe resulted in a decrease in the production of natural vitamin D leading to a rise in the cases of rickets. Smog causes a misty haze similar to fog, but very different in composition. In fact the word smog has been coined from a combination of the words fog and smoke. Smog refers to hazy air that causes difficult breathing conditions.
The most harmful components of smog are ground-level ozone and fine airborne particles. Ground-level ozone forms when pollutants released from gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles and oil-based solvents react with heat and sunlight. It is harmful to humans, animals, and plants.
The industrial revolution in the 19th century saw the beginning of air pollution in Europe on a large scale and the presence of smog mainly in Britain. The industries and the households relied heavily on coal for heating and cooking. Due to the burning of coal for heat during the winter months, emissions of smoke and sulphur dioxide were much greater in urban areas than they were during the summer months. Smoke particles trapped in the fog gave it a yellow/black colour and this smog often settled over cities for many days.
The effects of smog on human health were evident, particularly when smog persisted for several days. Many people suffered respiratory problems and increased deaths were recorded, notably those relating to bronchial causes. A haze of dense harmful smog would often cover the city of London. The first smog-related deaths were recorded in London in 1873, when it killed 500 people. In 1880, the toll was 2000. London had one of its worst experiences with smog in December 1892. It lasted for three days and resulted in about 1000 deaths. London became quite notorious for its smog. By the end of the 19th century, many people visited London to see the fog. Despite gradual improvements in air quality during the 20th century, another major smog occurred in London in December 1952. The Great London Smog lasted for five days and resulted in about 4000 more deaths than usual. In response to the Great London Smog, the government passed its first Clean Air Act in 1956, which aimed to control domestic sources of smoke pollution by introducing smokeless zones. In addition, the introduction of cleaner coals led to a reduction in sulphur dioxide pollution. In the 1940s, severe smog began covering the city of Los Angeles in the USA.
Relatively little was done to control any type of pollution or to promote environmental protection until the middle of the 20th century. Today, smoke and sulphur dioxide pollution in cities is much lower than in the past, as a result of legislation to control pollution emissions and cleaner emission technology.
The most harmful components of smog are ground-level ozone and fine airborne particles. Ground-level ozone forms when pollutants released from gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles and oil-based solvents react with heat and sunlight. It is harmful to humans, animals, and plants.
The industrial revolution in the 19th century saw the beginning of air pollution in Europe on a large scale and the presence of smog mainly in Britain. The industries and the households relied heavily on coal for heating and cooking. Due to the burning of coal for heat during the winter months, emissions of smoke and sulphur dioxide were much greater in urban areas than they were during the summer months. Smoke particles trapped in the fog gave it a yellow/black colour and this smog often settled over cities for many days.
The effects of smog on human health were evident, particularly when smog persisted for several days. Many people suffered respiratory problems and increased deaths were recorded, notably those relating to bronchial causes. A haze of dense harmful smog would often cover the city of London. The first smog-related deaths were recorded in London in 1873, when it killed 500 people. In 1880, the toll was 2000. London had one of its worst experiences with smog in December 1892. It lasted for three days and resulted in about 1000 deaths. London became quite notorious for its smog. By the end of the 19th century, many people visited London to see the fog. Despite gradual improvements in air quality during the 20th century, another major smog occurred in London in December 1952. The Great London Smog lasted for five days and resulted in about 4000 more deaths than usual. In response to the Great London Smog, the government passed its first Clean Air Act in 1956, which aimed to control domestic sources of smoke pollution by introducing smokeless zones. In addition, the introduction of cleaner coals led to a reduction in sulphur dioxide pollution. In the 1940s, severe smog began covering the city of Los Angeles in the USA.
Relatively little was done to control any type of pollution or to promote environmental protection until the middle of the 20th century. Today, smoke and sulphur dioxide pollution in cities is much lower than in the past, as a result of legislation to control pollution emissions and cleaner emission technology.
What is air pollution?
‘I’ll go out for a breath of fresh air’ is an often-heard phrase. But how many of us realize that this has become irrelevant in today’s world, because the quality of air in our cities is anything but fresh.
The moment you step out of the house and are on the road you can actually see the air getting polluted; a cloud of smoke from the exhaust of a bus, car, or a scooter; smoke billowing from a factory chimney, flyash generated by thermal power plants, and speeding cars causing dust to rise from the roads. Natural phenomena such as the eruption of a volcano and even someone smoking a cigarette can also cause air pollution.
Air pollution is aggravated because of four developments: increasing traffic, growing cities, rapid economic development, and industrialization. The Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 19th century saw the beginning of air pollution as we know it today, which has gradually become a global problem.
Some links:-
The moment you step out of the house and are on the road you can actually see the air getting polluted; a cloud of smoke from the exhaust of a bus, car, or a scooter; smoke billowing from a factory chimney, flyash generated by thermal power plants, and speeding cars causing dust to rise from the roads. Natural phenomena such as the eruption of a volcano and even someone smoking a cigarette can also cause air pollution.
Air pollution is aggravated because of four developments: increasing traffic, growing cities, rapid economic development, and industrialization. The Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 19th century saw the beginning of air pollution as we know it today, which has gradually become a global problem.
Some links:-
Did you know?
The Industrial Revolution in Europe in the19th Century first saw the beginning of air pollution, which gradually became a major global problem.
The major air-polluting industries are iron, steel and, cement.
Of the 35-40 million tonnes of flyash generated annually by thermal power plants in India, only 2-3 percent is productively utilized.
The worst industrial disaster in India, occurred in 1984 in Bhopal the capital of Madhya Pradesh. A deadly chemical, methly isocyanate leaked out of the Union Carbide factory killing more than 2500 and leaving thousands sick. In fact the effects of this gas tragedy is being felt even today.
Every year some 50million cars are added to the world’s roads. Car making is now the largest manufacturing industry in the world.
In India the number of motorized vehicles have increased from 0.2 million in 1947 to 36.3 million in 1997.
The number of registered vehicles in Delhi is more than the sum total of registered vehicles in Mumbai, Calcutta, and Chennai.
Major contributor to Delhi's air pollution are vehicles.
Nearly three-fourths of India's population, which is rural, bears 84% of the burden of exposure to air pollution.
Growing population, poverty, and inadequate access to clean fuels in rural areas have perpetuated the use of biomass, thereby condemning more than 90% of rural households and more than 35% of urban hoseholds to high levels of indoor air pollution.
One of the most important measure to counter pollution is planting trees. With neem and peepal being the largest emitters of oxygen, planting them in the gardens purifies the surrounding air and helps in maintaining hygienic conditions. While champa, mogra and chameli have better chances of surviving pollution in summer, bulbous varieties do better in winter.
The major air-polluting industries are iron, steel and, cement.
Of the 35-40 million tonnes of flyash generated annually by thermal power plants in India, only 2-3 percent is productively utilized.
The worst industrial disaster in India, occurred in 1984 in Bhopal the capital of Madhya Pradesh. A deadly chemical, methly isocyanate leaked out of the Union Carbide factory killing more than 2500 and leaving thousands sick. In fact the effects of this gas tragedy is being felt even today.
Every year some 50million cars are added to the world’s roads. Car making is now the largest manufacturing industry in the world.
In India the number of motorized vehicles have increased from 0.2 million in 1947 to 36.3 million in 1997.
The number of registered vehicles in Delhi is more than the sum total of registered vehicles in Mumbai, Calcutta, and Chennai.
Major contributor to Delhi's air pollution are vehicles.
Nearly three-fourths of India's population, which is rural, bears 84% of the burden of exposure to air pollution.
Growing population, poverty, and inadequate access to clean fuels in rural areas have perpetuated the use of biomass, thereby condemning more than 90% of rural households and more than 35% of urban hoseholds to high levels of indoor air pollution.
One of the most important measure to counter pollution is planting trees. With neem and peepal being the largest emitters of oxygen, planting them in the gardens purifies the surrounding air and helps in maintaining hygienic conditions. While champa, mogra and chameli have better chances of surviving pollution in summer, bulbous varieties do better in winter.
THE BIGGEST SINGLE STEP
The United States Can Take to Curb Global
Warming and Save Oil is to Raise the Fuel
Economy of Our Cars and Light Trucks.
By making our cars,pickup trucks,and SUVs go farther on a gallon of gas,Americans can
save billions of dollars, curb global warming pollution, and slash our dependence on oil
— making our nation safer and more secure.
In 1975, Congress enacted Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, doubling the fuel economy of new vehicles. By enacting these standards, the US saves approximately 3 million barrels of oil per day,
making it the most successful energy-saving measure ever adopted. However, despite breakthroughs in gas-saving technology, the government has allowed fuel economy standards to stagnate and auto companies have hawked inefficient SUVs and other trucks for nearly 20 years. As a result, the fuel economy of today’s new vehicles has fallen to the lowest level in over two decades. It doesn’t have to be this way. By using innovative and
cost-effective technology to increase our fuel economy,we can protect the environment,create jobs, and make America safer and more secure.
Cars and light trucks account for 40% of U.S. oil consumption and emit 20% of the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution, the heat-trapping gas that causes global warming. Because each gallon of gasoline burned pumps 28 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere, the average car emits about 63 tons of CO2 over its lifetime — and the average SUV or pickup emits around 82 tons. In comparison:America’s automobiles produce more global warming pollution than all the vehicles, power plants, and factories in Great Britain combined.
If all of the vehicles in the U.S. averaged 40 miles per gallon (mpg) we would save over 3 million barrels of oil each day; that is more oil than the United States currently imports from the Persian Gulf and could ever extract from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, combined.Getting 40 mpg would cut global warming pollution by 600 million tons a year and save consumers more than $45 billion each year at the gas pump. The U.S. is the
world’s largest global warming polluter — we must take the lead in reducing this pollution.
Warming and Save Oil is to Raise the Fuel
Economy of Our Cars and Light Trucks.
By making our cars,pickup trucks,and SUVs go farther on a gallon of gas,Americans can
save billions of dollars, curb global warming pollution, and slash our dependence on oil
— making our nation safer and more secure.
In 1975, Congress enacted Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, doubling the fuel economy of new vehicles. By enacting these standards, the US saves approximately 3 million barrels of oil per day,
making it the most successful energy-saving measure ever adopted. However, despite breakthroughs in gas-saving technology, the government has allowed fuel economy standards to stagnate and auto companies have hawked inefficient SUVs and other trucks for nearly 20 years. As a result, the fuel economy of today’s new vehicles has fallen to the lowest level in over two decades. It doesn’t have to be this way. By using innovative and
cost-effective technology to increase our fuel economy,we can protect the environment,create jobs, and make America safer and more secure.
Cars and light trucks account for 40% of U.S. oil consumption and emit 20% of the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution, the heat-trapping gas that causes global warming. Because each gallon of gasoline burned pumps 28 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere, the average car emits about 63 tons of CO2 over its lifetime — and the average SUV or pickup emits around 82 tons. In comparison:America’s automobiles produce more global warming pollution than all the vehicles, power plants, and factories in Great Britain combined.
If all of the vehicles in the U.S. averaged 40 miles per gallon (mpg) we would save over 3 million barrels of oil each day; that is more oil than the United States currently imports from the Persian Gulf and could ever extract from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, combined.Getting 40 mpg would cut global warming pollution by 600 million tons a year and save consumers more than $45 billion each year at the gas pump. The U.S. is the
world’s largest global warming polluter — we must take the lead in reducing this pollution.
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