Mankind has proven a destructive force on Mother Nature and the world we inhabit. With the industrial revolution, we advanced our convenience of living with modern goods as well as raised our incomes, allowing the purchase of modern age products. Moreover, the manners of production were cause of much pollution.

Today we still reap the rewards of the industrial age as well as the problematic issues caused by its occurrence. In this, our present modern day, we are now faced with these problematic by products of our own neoteric times. Though few seem to realize the exigent need to think now, of our coming climate change.

Greenhouse Gases and Climate Change.

A myriad of chemical compounds are found in the earth’s atmosphere and act as greenhouse gases. These gases allowing sunlight to enter the earth’s atmosphere, letting sunlight glare upon the earth’s surface, with a large percentage of it reflecting back towards space as infrared radiation or better known as heat. Greenhouse gases absorb this infrared radiation trapping the heat in earth’s atmosphere. Many greenhouse gases occur in nature as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, however many more are man-made.

Levels, several of which are the most damaging of greenhouse gases, have increased by 20 to 30 percent since the industrialization began approximately 150 years ago. With the modernization of third world economies over the past 20 to 25 years, three quarters of synthetic carbon dioxide emissions have been from burning fossil fuels.

The “carbon cycle,” measures the movement of carbon between atmosphere, land, oceans and plant photosynthesis. Carbon cycling is capable of absorbing some 6 billion metric tons of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions annually. However, humankind adds over 3 billion metric tons of carbon to earth’s atmosphere annually. Thus crippling the earth’s healthy balance between emissions and absorption.

The effects on our world are average temperature increases over the last century, causing changes in weather, rising sea levels, and changes in patterns of land use. Polluted air has given rise to many of humankind’s diseases. Unless we seek and implement cleaner energy sources, humankind will find his world a much less welcome place to inhabit.