What are the greenhouse gases

For those of you already heavily involved in environmental issues you’ll already know this stuff. However, greenhouse gases can be confusing if you’re new to this. Everyone is all greenhouse this and greenhouse that. Well, here are some basics.

global-warming

What are greenhouse gases?:

There’s a collection of chemical compounds, both naturally occurring and some man-made, found in the Earth’s atmosphere that are called and behave like “Greenhouse gases.” Basically these gases allow sunlight to come into our atmosphere. Some sunlight is bounced back toward space as heat but the greenhouse gases trap some of this heat and keep it from bouncing back. If the greenhouse gases are stable the Earth should remain about the same temperature but of course greenhouse gases don’t remain consistent. Also, it’s obviously more complicated than this (but we don’t have all day). For a more in-depth overview check out the EPA’s climate change page.

Where do greenhouse gases come from?:

Water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are all naturally occurring gases that act as greenhouse gases. However, in the U.S. the majority of gases come from the combustion of fossil fuels in energy use.

The basic greenhouse gases you hear about:

Carbon dioxide: CO2 is the largest source of gases. Humans make it all on their own simply by exhaling during the breathing process but a larger amount comes from burning fossil fuels. Since we like low levels of greenhouse gases and we also enjoy breathing, it’d be good to burn less fossil fuels such as oil, gasoline, and coal. Wood burning is a source as well.

Methane: This would be farts (joy) and methane is also created when rotting plants and garbage breaks down. Landfills are a large source of methane.

Nitrogen Oxide: This is one of the greenhouse gas that has the potential to be totally stopped. It comes from driving cars and burning power plants (coal burning specifically).

Chlorofluorocarbons: CFCs could also potentially be halted, although, right now, CFCs are used in literally thousands of items. CFCs are a big bad. When CFCs interact with sunlight they release chlorine atoms. As those atoms rise up into the atmosphere they attack the ozone layer, eating away at it and you cannot stop the damage caused once it’s started. If every single person on the planet quit using CFCs forever as of today we’d still have about a century of residual damage to deal with. Note: Use LESS CFCs.

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