A lot of news has been brought up lately that the planets temperature has been heating up. Most people call this Global Warming. Although Global Warming is a very controversial subject many people look past the label and agree that we have been hurting our environment. When looked into more in depth people noticed that we are speeding up a natural process, called the greenhouse effect, and we are causing negative effects on our planet.
The greenhouse effect is a natural process that occurs up in the atmosphere. The process is what ensures that the earth has an average temperature. When gasses like water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane are put into the atmosphere they travel up to the top of the atmosphere. When they get to the top they pick up on infrared radiation from the sun. The gasses are then heated up from the infrared and eventually hit an invisible barrier and come back to the earth. The gasses are heated and therefore release the heat while coming back down to earth. The gasses sometimes escape the “invisible barrier” and so the process is regulated for when new gasses come into the atmosphere.
Global warming is something that is almost based around the green house effect. Global warming is a theory a lot of scientists have that states due to our way of life we are causing negative effects on the planet. The thing we are doing most is releasing emissions into the air, like CO2, in mass amounts. By putting more CO2 into the atmosphere we are speeding up the greenhouse effect. With a much higher level of CO2 in the air not enough of the emissions are escaping that invisible barrier and all these gasses are staying in the atmosphere continuing to be heated up and making the planet hotter. Even though this is a natural process it is supposed to occur at a natural speed, and when we influence the speed, it changes the process and is no longer natural and therefore doesn’t have the same effect of maintaining an average temperature, but rapidly raises the temperature.
There is no doubt that the greenhouse effect was occurring over one hundred years ago, but the rate it was occurring was at the natural speed and had a good effect on the planet. Now with the excessive release of gasses like CO2 the effect occurs at a much faster rate and instead increases the temperature of the planet.
The greenhouse effect is something that is happening and is a fact, unlike global warming which is extremely controversial due to all the issues surrounding it. The greenhouse effect has certain effects on the planet, both positive and negative at times, and is definitely something that should be move researched and more closely watched as the effects that it does have on the planet are quite noticeable.
