What do we need greenhouse gases for

Farmers add fertilizers to their soils to provide crops with the nutrients they need to grow. For thousands of years, humans have used mineral and organic fertilizers, like manure and ground bone, to improve soil fertility. In the last century, human-made fertilizers have greatly boosted crop production, letting farmers grow more food on less land. But this uptick in fertilizer use has come at a cost: planet-warming 1—and both the manufacturing and application of fertilizer has a heavy emissions toll. Climate toll of fertilizers One of the main nutrients that plants need to grow is nitrogen. But plants can’t take in nitrogen from the air the way they can absorb carbon dioxide or oxygen. In the early 1900s, scientists invented a process to mass-produce a nitrogen-containing compound, ammonia, that plants can absorb from the soil. Today, ammonia is the second-most commonly produced chemical in the world, used in huge quantities as a very effective fertilizer. This invention revolutionized farming, doubling the number of people that one acre of land could feed. 2 But ammonia has to be made at a high pressure under high temperatures—meaning it takes a lot of energy to manufacture. Most of that energy comes from burning fossil fuels like coal and methane gas, which give off the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, the main cause of climate change. Ammonia manufacturing today contributes between 1 and 2% of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. 3 Fertilizers also produce greenhouse gase...

• • Ancient Worlds • Being Human • Energy & Transport • Environment & Nature • Health & Medical • Innovation & Technology • Space & Astronomy • • • • Great Moments in Science • Dr Karl on triplej • Karl Trek • Sleek Geeks • School's video prize • Karl Who? • • • • • Lesson Plans • Conundrums • Demonstrations • Careers • Ace Day Jobs • Talking Science • Catapult on triplej • [an error occurred while processing this directive] comments • Share • Print Why we must act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions Each year humans emit more greenhouse gases than the previous year. Australia needs to help turn this around if we don't want to bear the brunt of climate change, says Chief Scientist Professor Penny Sackett. By Penny Sackett Related Stories • • • The world is at a crossroads. We must contain and then reduce our greenhouse gas emissions so that our farmers, graziers and fishermen have the best chance to feed the world, and our industries have the best opportunities for sustainable growth and new green markets. So that we — along with the rest of Earth's inhabitants — are best able to flourish in good health, and the world's poorest have the best opportunity for hope. The leading climate scientists from the world over warn that we have about five years to avoid the dangerous climate change that would be generated if average global temperatures increase by more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Australia will be one of the most affected regions in the world if we exceed t...

Much like the glass of a greenhouse, gases in Earth’s atmosphere sustain life by trapping the sun’s heat. These “greenhouse gases” allow the sun’s rays to pass through and warm the planet but prevent this warmth from escaping the atmosphere into space. Without them, Earth would be too cold to sustain life as we know it. When we talk about greenhouse gases, we’re referring to carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride. Email Submit For thousands of years, the global greenhouse gas supply was essentially stable. Natural processes removed as much carbon from the atmosphere as they released. Human activities like burning fossil fuels have added huge quantities of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide to our atmosphere, creating a “greenhouse effect” that traps energy from the sun and causes Earth’s temperature to rise. Deforestation and intensive agriculture also contribute greenhouse gas emissions, but not nearly as much as fossil fuel production, which accounts for 75 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in North America. As a result, the It’s clear that climate change is here — the last decade has been the hottest on record. We’ve known about it for over a century but have delayed taking action again and again. It’s crucial that we act now. If we can cut our emissions in half this decade and reach net-zero emissions by mid-century, we still have a chance to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. ...

To cut carbon emissions, President Biden announced an initiative to further cut the cost of solar installations, like this one being tested at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. Dennis Schroeder/NREL President Biden announced on Thursday a number that could shape the rest of his presidency: a goal to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions between 50 to 52 percent by 2030. The announcement marks the country's renewed commitment to the Paris accord, the international climate change agreement that former President Trump withdrew from. That target lines up with scientific assessments of the reductions needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. To limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, emissions A 50 percent cut isn't the world's most aggressive target, but it puts the U.S. Still, achieving that target by 2030 won't be simple, requiring both political buy-in and a sweeping deployment of cleaner cars and clean energy sources. "It's pretty ambitious," says Danielle Arostegui, senior analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund. "This is not an easy target to achieve but we think it is something that is achievable if we really put the pedal to the metal here and put these policies in place that we need to actually get there." What would it take? Based on research from universities and advocacy groups, here's what the U.S. might look like in 2030. 1. Renewable energy takes over, coal fades away The fastest and largest way to cut emissions by 2030 is likely throu...

Global warming describes the current rise in the average temperature of Earth’s air and oceans. Global warming is often described as the most recent example of climate change. Earth’s climate has changed many times. Our planet has gone through multiple ice ages, in which ice sheets and glaciers covered large portions of Earth. It has also gone through warm periods when temperatures were higher than they are today. Past changes in Earth’s temperature happened very slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years. However, the recent warming trend is happening much faster than it ever has. Natural cycles of warming and cooling are not enough to explain the amount of warming we have experienced in such a short time—only human activities can account for it. Scientists worry that the climate is changing faster than some living things can adapt to it. In 1988, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme established a committee of climatologists, meteorologists, geographers, and other scientists from around the world. This Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) includes thousands of scientists who review the most up-to-date research available related to global warming and climate change. The IPCC evaluates the risk of climate change caused by human activities. According to the IPCC’s most recent report (in 2007), Earth’s average surface temperatures have risen about 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.33 degrees Fahrenheit) during the past 100 year...

Behind the phenomena of global warming and climate change lies the increase in greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. A greenhouse gas is any gaseous compound in the atmosphere that is capable of absorbing infrared radiation, thereby trapping and holding heat in the atmosphere. By increasing the heat in the atmosphere, greenhouse Solar radiation and the "greenhouse effect" Global warming isn't a recent scientific concept. The basics of the phenomenon were worked out well over a century ago by Swedish physicist and chemist Svante Arrhenius, in 1896. His paper, published in the Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, was the first to quantify the contribution of carbon dioxide to what scientists now call the " greenhouse effect." The greenhouse effect occurs because the sun bombards Earth with enormous amounts of radiation that strike NASA's Earth Observatory. As they heat up, the oceans, land and atmosphere release heat in the form of IR thermal radiation, which passes out of the atmosphere and into space. It's this equilibrium of incoming and outgoing radiation that makes the Earth habitable, with an average temperature of about 59 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius), according to NASA. Without this atmospheric equilibrium, Earth would be as cold and lifeless as its moon, or as blazing hot as Venus. The moon, which has almost no atmosphere, is about minus 243 F (minus 153 C) on its dark side. Venus, on the other hand, has a very dense atmosphere that traps solar ra...

2) is the most significant greenhouse gas. Natural sources of atmospheric CO 2 include outgassing from 2 from the 2 during A number of oceanic processes also act as 2. Another process, the “biological pump,” involves the uptake of 2 by marine vegetation and 2 to build skeletons and other structures made of calcium 3). As these organisms expire and 2 in the atmosphere. CO 2 has consequently 2 builds at an exponential rate (that is, at a rate of increase that is also increasing over time). The natural background level of carbon dioxide varies on timescales of millions of years due to slow changes in outgassing through 2 concentrations appear to have been several times higher than today (perhaps close to 2,000 ppm). Over the past 700,000 years, CO 2 concentrations have varied over a far smaller range (between roughly 180 and 300 ppm) in association with the same Earth orbital effects linked to the coming and going of the 2 levels reached 384 ppm, which is approximately 37 percent above the natural background level of roughly 280 ppm that existed at the beginning of the 2 levels continued to increase, and by 2018 they had reached 410 ppm. According to 2 concentrations increase, for additional CO 2 2 concentration. At current rates of 2 concentrations over preindustrial levels is expected to take place by the middle of the 21st century (when CO 2 concentrations are projected to reach 560 ppm). A doubling of CO 2 concentrations would represent an increase of roughly 4 watts per ...