What are some of the causes of global warming?
Now about the Causes
There are three main gases that are responsible for causing the Greenhouse Effect.
The data for this has been taken from ice cores giving thousands of years of information.
- Carbon Dioxide CO2
- Nitrous oxides - often called NOX
- Methane
All three are increasing exponentially at present. We are now sitting a long way outside the concentrations that have ever occurred in the past and we don’t know what will happen.
Who is to blame for this? My little bit can’t make all that difference. Twenty-seven per cent of carbon emissions come from homes which means the rest comes from business in some form or other and a large percentage of business involves small to medium enterprises and farms, just like most of us.
Air traffic is currently blamed for about 3.5% of the human activities that cause climate change and is the fastest growing source of emissions. Its share of total CO2 impact is expected to grow to 5% by 2050.
A recent report stated that agriculture is responsible for 40% of greenhouse gasses,
- 70% of total methane,
- 80% of NOX – this comes from biochemical processes in soils. There are large losses of N from fertilizers – between 15and 50% of N fertilizer goes missing. If you use N fertilizer, you need to improve the efficiency of use.
There are 1.4 billion cows worldwide, each producing 500 litres of methane a day and accounting for 14% of all emission of the gas
There is now 5 times the historic concentration of fertilizers in the sea off the coast of Queensland. This causes and increased growth of algae and algae feed Crown of Thorns starfish larvae. The combination of higher temperatures and Crown of Thorns Starfish is seriously threatening the Great Barrier Reef.
Technorati Tags: ISO 14001, causes of global warming, global warming, CO2, NOX