Global Environmental Issues

INTRODUCTION

The global environmental problem is a growing concern, and needs to be attended to immediately. Spreading awareness of environmental problems and responding to them without delay is absolutely necessary to deal with the global problem effectively.

A powerful and complex web of interactions is contributing to unprecedented global trends in environmental degradation. These forces include rapid globalization and urbanization, pervasive poverty, unsustainable consumption patterns and population growth. Often serving to compound the effects and intensity of the environmental problems described in the previous section, global environmental challenges require concerted responses on the part of the international community. Global climate change, the depletion of the ozone layer,

There is a "natural" greenhouse effect that keeps the Earth 's climate warm and habitable. There is also the "man-made" greenhouse effect, which is the enhancement of Earth 's natural greenhouse effect by the addition of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels (mainly petroleum, coal, and natural gas).

The Greenhouse Effect is a natural process that warms the Earth, and, in fact, is quite necessary for our survival. Gases in the atmosphere, like water vapour (clouds), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) act as a natural blanket by preventing the sun’s heat energy from radiating back into space, much like a greenhouse traps the sun’s energy to warm someone’s plants even in the middle of winter. The natural greenhouse effect helps warm the Earth’s surface by as much as 33oC, and without it, our planet would be too cold for humans to survive.

HISTORY

The greenhouse effect was discovered by French mathematician Joseph Fourier in 1824, first reliably experimented on by Irish physicist John Tyndall in 1858, and first reported quantitatively by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius in