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Greenhouse Gases and Global Warming

Your very own easy to follow guide.

For more information about greenhouse gases and global warming you can visit the Main Stories section.

What's it all about?
To begin at the beginning.
Who is making all this carbon dioxide?
Why are things getting worse?
Who's to blame?
Can anything be done?
The consequences of global warming.
So what would we see?
Would you be worried?
Find out more about greenhouse gases and global warming.
The other side of the argument.
The fossil fuel lobby’s main arguments.
The alternatives to fossil fuels.

What's it all about?

Now let's get one thing perfectly clear! This section is not about holes in the ozone layer.

Ask most people and they will link global warming with the hole in the ozone layer. They are wrong! The hole in the ozone layer is a serious environmental problem; but it is not the cause of global warming.

Maybe the two get confused because some of the gases responsible for global warming - especially nasty ones like CFCs - also make holes in the ozone layer.

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To begin at the beginning.

But first, a story...

Once upon a time the Earth was covered in trees. The seas were full of tiny creatures, all busily eating plankton. All this activity was powered by the Sun. This huge energy source fuelled the green plants, the green plankton, and the animals that ate both.

But in time, the trees died and fell to the ground to rot away; the plankton died and sank to rot on the sea bed. Both became covered by layers of sand and silt; and they were both warmed and crushed. The trees became coal, and the marine life became oil.

And both lay undisturbed for millions of years.

And in their fossilised bodies, the Sun's energy was locked up - waiting.

Then one day, miners dug the coal from the underground seams. Drillers released the oil from under the ground. And both were burned to heat houses, to drive machines, to power transport.

And when they were burned, the locked-up energy of the Sun was released again. And with it, waste products - especially a gas called carbon dioxide.

Now usually, the Earth's trees and plants can deal with the carbon dioxide. They turn it into plant-growing material, into energy for themselves and into oxygen, which we can breathe.

But now there was too much carbon dioxide. The plants couldn't cope. The extra gas rose into the air, making a big carbon dioxide blanket around the Earth.

For a while, nobody noticed. Then scientists began to realise that the Earth was getting hotter and hotter.

And the ice at the poles began to melt, raising the sea level and flooding low-lying land.

TO BE CONTINUED - WE HOPE…WITH A HAPPY ENDING!

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Who is making all this carbon dioxide?

YOU ARE!

And carbon dioxide isn't the only greenhouse gas.

Methane and CFCs are also known as greenhouse gases which when released into the atmosphere cause global warming.

Methane comes from natural gas. Animals that eat green plants - like cows - also make huge amounts of methane.

CFCs are man-made chemicals used to cool refrigerators. Modern refrigerators are made without CFCs, but every time an old refrigerator, or freezer, is scrapped, it can release these gases into the atmosphere.

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Why are things getting worse?

The burning of fossil fuels has increased nearly five-fold since 1950.

Twenty per cent of the world’s population in the richest countries account for more than 50 per cent of carbon dioxideemissions. The poorest 20 per cent of the world’s populationaccount for just three per cent of carbon dioxide emissions.

By 2030 the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may betwice that of the last century.

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Who's to blame?

The USA with less than five per cent of the world’s population pumps out around 25 per cent of global emissions.

In comparison, the entire developing world, consisting of more than 100 countries and representing almost 80 per cent of the world’s population, is responsible for approximately the same amount of carbon dioxide emissions.

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Can anything be done?

The Earth Summit in 1992 committed industrial countries to reduce by 20 per cent their carbon dioxide emissions by 2005 based on 1990 figures.

What you can do

See 'How to live a sustainable lifestyle'.

And also the Energy project!

For more information about greenhouse gases and global warming you can visit the Main Stories section.

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The consequences of global warming

The Earth needs the Sun's heat. But there is much more heat coming from the Sun than we need. Much of the heat should be reflected back into space. Usually, that's what happens. But as the blanket of waste products build up around the Earth, this heat is trapped. It's making the Earth warmer and warmer. This is global warming.

When we produce greenhouse gases in Europe, we add to global warming. This melts the ice caps, and sea levels rise. People living on flat lands near the sea are in danger from flooding. This is what the West’s over-use of fossil fuels is leading to:

Climate change is likely to cause a spread of extreme weather patterns including droughts, cyclones, tropical storms and flooding.
Climate change is causing some diseases like malaria and dengue fever to spread to areas where populations don’t have resistance.
Climate change will cause polar ice caps and glaciers to melt. Low-lying coastal regions and vegetation will flood, and millions of people will be made homeless.
The world is in the grip of the biggest thaw since the end of the last ice age.
Spring is coming a week earlier than it did 20 years ago.
Glaciers in the Andes are melting seven times faster than ever before.
Two-thirds of the biggest ice sheet in Antarctica has melted in the last 30 years.
Sea levels may rise by up to one metre by 2100 due to global warming.
In the UK, sea levels may rise by 20 centimetres meaning low-lying parts of North Wales, East Anglia and the Thames estuary may be drowned.
Rising sea levels will wipe out islands just as effectively as an atomic bomb.
Animal species threatened with extinction due to global warming include: polar bear and walrus in the Arctic, Adelie penguin in the Antarctic and many coral reefs and species around the world.
Costa Rica’s golden toad has already become extinct as a result of climate change.
In 1988, the highest flood levels ever recorded occurred in Bangladesh: 80 per cent of the entire country was affected.
Bangladesh in the next century will lose around 17 per cent of its total land area as a result of global warming, forcing its inhabitants to move away. So here is a link between traffic jams in Europe and homeless people in Bangladesh!

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So what would we see:

if Siberia were to get warmer?

if Europe were to lose half its glaciers?

if glaciers were to melt in the Andes?

if sea levels rose by up to 25cm in less than a century?

if 80 per cent of the world's beaches began to disappear?

if islands around the world - the Maldives, the Marshall Islands, Anguilla, Tokelau and others - began to flood?

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Would you be worried?

WELL GUESS WHAT… YOU'D BETTER BE! BECAUSE ALL THESE THINGS HAVE HAPPENED. ALREADY.

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The other side of the argument.

NOT EVERYONE SUPPORTS THE ARGUMENTS ABOVE.

The fossil fuel lobby, which uses many finite resources, are a powerful consortium of mostly American industries.

These companies are divided into three industry lobby groups which specialise in intervening in the climate change negotiations and challenging the argument of reducing emissions of climate change gases.

The three industry lobby groups are:

1.The Global Climate Coalition (GCC).
2.The International Climate Change Partnership (ICCP).
3.The Climate Council.

The GCC membership list includes General Motors, Texaco, Chevron, Mobil and Exxon. The first is a car-maker. The other four are oil companies.

The ICCP membership list includes BP America, Dupont, General Electric and 3M Company.

These lobby groups all share a common policy goal - namely the maintenance of a ‘business-as-usual scenario’. This means the unimpeded production and use of fossil fuels to allow members to maximise profits.

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The fossil fuel lobby’s main arguments are:

There is no real evidence that global temperatures have risen as a result of human causes.
Responding effectively to climate change is simply too expensive.
Computer models of climate change have predicted far more warming than satellite records actually show.
Up to 600,000 jobs annually would be lost.
There's no point in the industrial world doing anything to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases, since developing countries like China and India will produce most of these gases in the future.

(All information supplied by Friends of the Earth.)

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A sceptical site about the effect of climate change and greenhouse gases.

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The alternatives to fossil fuels

For more information about renewable energy you can visit the Main Stories section.

There are alternatives to fossil fuels that are cleaner, safer and more importantly won’t run out!
Renewable energy captures the inexhaustible energy of the wind, water, waves and the Sun.
Wind energy alone could supply at least 20 per cent of the UK’s electricity. At present we have 0.5 per cent that is put to good use.
Denmark leads the world in wind power, employing 20,000 people world-wide.
By 2005, Denmark will produce 10 per cent of its energy supply by wind power.
The British Wind Energy Association is confident that by 2010, 6 per cent of the UK’s energy needs will come from wind power.
Presently there are 700 wind turbines installed in the UK. To generate ten per cent of the UK's energy needs, an estimated 28,000 turbines would be required.
There are now 50 wind farms in the UK.
The government has committed itself to increasing the amount of renewable energy generation to ten per cent of the total by the year 2010.
The UK’s peak electricity demands could be met by placing solar panels on just ten per cent of its buildings.
Small devices can be used to turn sunlight straight into electricity. These are called photovoltaic cells or PV cells. Many calculators use solar energy this way.
Water energy is made from hydro (water) turbines. The water flowing in the rivers turn the turbines round producing hydro-electricity. At present two per cent of the UK’s electricity is made this way.
Other types of renewable energy can be produced from: waste, waves and heat from inside the earth (geothermal).
Europe’s first commercial wood-fuelled power plant near Selby, in North Yorkshire, generates electricity using wood chips from forest residues and specially-grown willow coppice. It can produce enough electricity to meet the demands of more than 18,000 local people.