Green House Gasses

A greenhouse is a wonderful place, with an amazing habitat for many organisms. Then why is a greenhouse gas a gas in the atmosphere that traps heat and makes the effects of global warming 200 times more drastic? The initial reason why a greenhouse gas was named this was because the gasses created a bubble-like wall around the world, like the walls of a greenhouse. These gasses’ jobs were to make the Earth’s temperature stay sustainable for life on the planet. Without them, the temperature would get down to around -18° C or -4° F, to cold to support a lot of life. But as the consequences of climate change have grown, so have the consequences of greenhouse gasses.

Every year, we put out more gas, and it gets trapped in the layer of greenhouse gasses, and essentially gets bounced back onto the earth. This is the number 1 cause for global warming. The main greenhouse gasses include Carbon dioxide (also known as CO2), Methane, Nitrous oxide, and surprisingly, water vapor. These all have different builds and uses, but in the case of greenhouse gasses, they all essentially do the same thing to global warming. Some things we can do to reduce the outcome of greenhouse gasses are to reuse and recycle, but in the long term, we can switch over to an electric vehicles instead of ones that put out gas, and we can also slowly phase out the fossil fuels that we use; like coal and oil. You can also put out solar panels on your roof to capture energy from the sun and turn it into electricity. What some people are doing to achieve greenhouse gas reduction is trying to reach net zero. What is net zero, you may ask? Think about it like this: if you turn on a water faucet, water comes out, but water also comes out of the drain. Reaching net zero is like that. We need to achieve a medium in which the amount of greenhouse gas we put out is the same amount that we take in. That is achieving net zero.

Green house gas is a big problem, but by using more efficient energy sources we can reach net zero and continue our race to fight climate change.