Word: carbons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Will we run out of gas?"--a question we began asking during the oil shocks of the 1970s--is now the wrong question. The earth's supply of carbon-based fuels will last a long time. But if humans burn anywhere near that much carbon, we'll burn up the planet, or at least our place...
There is one fact, though, that everyone agrees on: the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing steadily. It is near 360 parts per million today, vs. 315 p.p.m. in 1958 (when modern measurements started) and 270 p.p.m. in preindustrial times (as measured by air bubbles trapped in the Greenland ice sheet...
...falling on the earth, the laws of physics decree that the planet has to radiate the same amount of energy back into space to keep the books balanced. The earth does this by sending infrared radiation out through the atmosphere, where an array of molecules (the best known is carbon dioxide) form a kind of blanket, holding outgoing radiation for a while and warming the surface. The molecules are similar to the glass in a greenhouse, which is why the warming process is called the greenhouse effect...
...would be a frigid -20[degrees]C (-4[degrees]F), the oceans would have frozen, and no life would have developed. So the issue we face in the next millennium is not whether there will be a greenhouse effect, but whether humans, by burning fossil fuels, are adding enough carbon dioxide to the atmosphere to change it (and our climate) in significant ways...
...main reason for the spread in the IPCC predictions is uncertainty about how much carbon dioxide will be added to the atmosphere by human activity, because how we will respond to the threat of climate warming is the greatest imponderable of all. We can probably develop technologies to deal with excess carbon--some scientists talk about removing it from smokestacks and stashing it underground--but the most direct way to control carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not to put it there in the first place. This is the point of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol--signed by 84 nations...