Considering that the Greenhouse Effect is consequential to life and is essential to how the planet remains habitable, then why has it been positioned in a seemingly bad light? Is it due to the current global warming trend, hastening the progress of climate change?
There is an ongoing debate whether climate change really is happening, and who’s to blame for this. Like with everything else, people just can’t agree and have different views, beliefs and data to prove their point. One set of data that has caused quite a stir reveals how the Earth’s average surface temperature has risen between 0.4 and 0.8 °C over the past 100 years. The increase in temperature has been attributed to human activities. According to scientific data, there has been a sudden and alarmingly consistent rise in carbon dioxide emissions since the 1950s, an era known as the postwar boom.
Massive gas emissions due to industrialization has largely contributed to the increased levels of carbon dioxide. Add to that the diminishing forests and vegetation that would have greatly helped out in managing the rising levels of carbon dioxide. The increased level of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by human activities has tipped the balance.
The massive amount of greenhouse gases emitted from the earth’s surface by humans has increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which means that more radiation is being absorbed, retained and emitted by the atmosphere back down to the surface, further increasing the surface temperature.