By answering these questions about the greenhouse effect, I learned what is greenhouse gas and how it really threatens the global warming. Also I learned about how the greenhouse effect works. Global Warming is a serious problem of Earth that we all have to care of, so I post this work about greenhouse effect.
Green House Gases and Green House Effect Reflection Questions
Eun Song Kim
1. How does the green house effect work? Explain and provide a detailed drawing in your answer.
ECY.Wa.Gov. http://www.ecy.wa.gov/climatechange/whatis.htm
The greenhouse effect is the rise in temperature when the greenhouse gases such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, trap the heat from the sun. When the sun’s radiation reaches to Earth’s atmosphere, the surface of Earth absorb 70 percent of the energy and reflects other 30 percent to space. Then the some of the absorbed sunlight is reflected back by oceans and land masses but get trapped by the greenhouse gases like CO2 and stays on Earth’s atmosphere that will eventually increase the temperature of Earth.
2. What are green house gases and are they good or bad for us? Explain.
The greenhouse gases are water vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone, and methane, which trap the heat from the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases are good because it keeps the temperature of Earth warm, if we don’t have any greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere, the Earth will freeze to 30 degrees Celsius. But these gases cause the global warming; the Global temperature is increasing quickly by the greenhouse gases that cause the climate change and ice burgs to melt.
3. How do you think the carbon cycle is affected by deforestation?
By the deforestation, there is not much photosynthesis happening that would reduce the carbon dioxide in the air. If the plants produce less oxygen from the carbon dioxide, the humans can be affected by it. Also, when people burn the trees to get rid of them, the plants release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere which will cause the green house effect. In carbon cycle, there will be more carbon dioxide in the air.
4. What do you think will happen to the CO2 in the atmosphere as the world population increases? Give three reasons why increased population growth would create this change in the carbon cycle.
As the population increases on Earth, more CO2 will stay in the atmosphere. First, people will produce carbon dioxide when they exhale. Secondly, the use of the electricity would increase and lots of buildings and electronics will be made for increasing populations. Also, more people will use more transportation which means they would ride more cars and air planes that produces massive amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
5. Identify three detailed, reasonable, but different activities you could do to keep the carbon cycle in balance.
To keep the carbon cycle balance and prevent the greenhouse effect, I would grow trees because many of the forests are gone by the deforestation so the plants can balance the carbon dioxide in the air by photosynthesis. Secondly, I would not use vehicles so much because I leave most of my carbon foot prints by transportation. Instead I can use bicycle or walk even though it is a little bit hot outside. Thirdly, I can use the renewable energy; the solar energy to heat up the water when I shower that would save some electricity. Some of the students in our class already use solar energy to heat water.