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Kim, Gyuntae: Global Warming & Your Carbon Footprint

  • Page ID
    95450
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    Global Warming and Emission of CO2.

    The GHGs which are mostly CO2, CH4, N2O and SF6 absorbed lots of infrared radiation which is emitted by earth, so this process influences the earth’s climates. However, the result of increasing the temperatures of earth by increasing concentrations of GHGs is called Enhanced Greenhouse Effect. Especially, the CO2 which has carbon is major factor of Greenhouse Effect even it just occupies small portion in atmosphere because the speed of increasing CO2 in atmosphere is significantly increasing past 200 years because the development of industry spent lots of fossil fuel and emitted tons of CO2 in atmosphere. These speed is more fast than other gases speed. Therefore, humans are responsible for the increasing CO2 gas in atmosphere. Now almost 400ppm of CO2 gas in atmosphere. We can measure the rate of CO2 in atmosphere, so people founded CO2 gas is increasing until now. Before 200 years ago, CO2 gas in atmosphere was almost 280 ppm, and before hundreds of thousands of years was almost between 200~300 ppm.

    The carbon which is related to CO2 is not only existed in atmosphere but also move around many different natural condition such as atmosphere, ocean, and fossil fuel. We can call it as Carbon Cycle. For example, the photosynthesize is one way from atmosphere to ground. Respiration from living things to atmosphere. Fossil fuel is also one of evidence of carbon cycle which from death living things and it can transferrable to CO2 gas. Now most of countries tried to burn the fossil fuel for developing the industries, and that is most of part of emission of CO2 gas. Therefore, we concern the emission of CO2 from burning fossil fuel because the significant increasing CO2 gas in atmosphere is main reason of the Enhanced Greenhouse Effect. Therefore, many people have researched to find alternative energies such as solar power, wind power, and nuclear energy. However, most of all, the solar energy is possible to alternate the fossil fuel, because the sunlight which is emitted from the sun is too much to use for earth, if it is possible to transfer these sunlight to useful energy.

    In the US, the average household of carbon footprint is 48.5 tons of CO2 per year. However, in my home town average is 37.7 tons of CO2 per year. In my case, my footprint is only 21.6 tons of CO2 per year because I spent the car less than average and water and electric also less than average. If I spent personal vehicle less than before, I can reduce the CO2 emission. In addition, if I save electricity and water from the unnecessary turn on the light or using personal heaters, it would be impacting to reduce the CO2 emission. If I spent less money to buy meat or processed food such as snacks, it could be reducing the CO2 emission.


    Kim, Gyuntae: Global Warming & Your Carbon Footprint is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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