As an essential element that can be found in all living things, carbon flows through the earth, being recycled and used again in the oceans, soils, fossil fuels, and the atmosphere. When stored in vegetation, carbon can return back to the atmosphere through plant respiration—a process where the oxygen in the atmosphere is replaced by carbon dioxide. On the other hand, when the carbon is stored in the atmosphere, for example, photosynthesis brings the carbon dioxide back down by swapping oxygen with it. Essentially, these two processes keep the amount of carbon stored in reservoirs balanced, which enables “the Earth’s temperature [to be] relatively stable, like a thermostat” (Riebeek).
Currently, because of instability between the amount of
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The purchase order of paper towels is worth 519,000 RMB. Meanwhile, the price of one piece of paper towel is 0.0375 RMB. Therefore, we can divide the price of one paper towel to the total purchase order to find how many paper towels are purchased, which is 13,840,000. From The Guardian’s online article “What’s the carbon footprint of …drying your hands?”, I found that one paper towel emits approximately 10 grams of carbon dioxide. Since we have 13,840,000 paper towels, by multiplying it by the 10 grams of carbon dioxide that each paper towel emits, the total amount of carbon dioxide emitted by all 13,840,000 paper towels can be found. This value would be 138,400,000. After plugging in this value into the conversion formula below (see Figure 1), we would find that all the paper towels emit a total of about 37,745,454.55 grams of carbon. Finally, by converting grams into kilograms (see Figure 2), we find that all the paper towels emit about 37,734.45 kilograms of …show more content…
This is an especially big problem since only the usage of paper towels was compared to the stored carbon in trees at the school. If this was investigated further, all consumption sources at SAS would be added to a final total amount of carbon emitted, then compared to this already lacking amount of stored carbon in trees. Evidently, it is significant that action must be taken to solve this problem and help Mother Earth. A possible solution could be cutting down on consumption of paper or other resources from trees especially, as well as planting more trees and plants to help balance out the emitted carbon from
waste paper and recycled. The more paper the world around throws away it cuts down more trees
One starting point to reducing the amount of greenhouse gases that you release is to find your carbon footprint. The carbon
The major effect most scientists fear as the result of increased levels of CO2 in our atmosphere is global warming. By blocking the heat reflected from the Earth's surface, greenhouse gases are able to warm the planet in a similar way to how glass warms up a greenhouse. Without this greenhouse effect, it is calculated our planet would be 35 degrees Celsius cooler worldwide, causing oceans to freeze and greatly altering life (Doyle, 1996). Accordi...
My parents grew up in small town in Mexico. There was a little river that went through part of the town when they were growing up. Every weekend or so they would go out and would go swimming with their families, it almost became a tradition to go swimming there until they noticed that the river 's water level was becoming smaller and smaller. Today there is no river anymore, instead it 's a road that travels through the town. Every time I visit my family in Mexico it would alway be nice and warm up until this year when I went in December. I remember waking up and getting ready to go to my aunt 's house in clothes for warm weather. As I open the door, the cold air punch me and I saw snowflakes falling down. It 's not supposed to snow in that
For many years we have been hearing about how the world was going to end if we do not clean up our acts and stop causing global warming. In reality, we actually are not harming the planet at all and it is all a hoax in order to help the government raise more money. They say with in an increase in CO2 and the earth’s temperature escalating we are doomed for the world to eventually go down in flames. On the contrary, the multiple unscholarly reports have been used as scare tactics when we actually have little to nothing to worry about.
There is a lot going with Earth, it is constantly changing through climate change. Climate change is a global or regional change in climate patterns. It consists of changes in temperature, precipitation, humidity, winds, and seasons. The climate plays a fundamental role in shaping the economy, cultures, and Earth’s ecosystem. The climate is taking a hit due to global warming. Global warming is a bundle of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane that builds up heat in the atmosphere. As years gone by, global warming gradually began heating the Earth 's surface, ocean, and atmosphere. Although global warming is a problem not taken seriously or being known, people should be aware of the affects of global warming, how it is seen affecting the
Earth’s climate is determined by the physics and chemistry of its atmosphere. Earth’s atmosphere consists of four layers; troposphere which is closest to earth, stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere. Hardy says, “During the past 100 years we humans, as a result of burning coal, oil, and gas and clearing forests, have greatly changed the chemical composition of the thin atmospheric layer.” There is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to burning fossil fuels. The atmosphere is made up of many gases such as nitrogen, oxygen, and argon. It also consists of trace gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, chlorofluorocarbons and, ozone. The trace gases have the greatest effect on our climate (Hardy 5). Up to a certain level, these gases help to keep the planet warm by absorbing certain infrared wavelengths, so that there can be life on the planet. Thus, they trap heat in the troposphere and stop it from escaping to space (Hardy 7). Therefore, the greater amount of greenhouse gases, the more heat trapped in the atmosphere. Earth’s temperature is increasing due to increased levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide released into the air from burning fossil fuels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2001 report projects “global average surface temperature increases ranging from 1.4 to 5.8 degrees
Global warming! It’s killing our planet. Wake up America! Our planet as we know it is coming to an end! Why you may ask? Good question. I am just like you. I always thought global warming would just heat up our planet and that’s all. I did not realize how wrong I was. Have you ever wondered why our planet is having areas with major droughts, or why our planet is getting unusually hot, or even wondered why there are such weird weather conditions that are very unusual? Ranging from the devastating floods in China and the Philippines to droughts in Africa, the same extreme weather patterns that have hit the United States! There is a new report that says climate change has. annually, caused 400,000 deaths and
Do you hate seeing litter on the streets, or seeing and smelling heaps of garbage sitting, and rotting away? Humans recycling more will help to reduce this. We throw many things that can be recycled. Recycling glass, plastics, paper, and metals will reduce solid waste dumped into the ecosystem daily. “96 percent of U.S. plastic, and 50 percent of its paper, goes into landfills. Mexico, not exactly a bastion of environmental awareness, recycles more glass than the U.S.” (Alice Horrigan 1). That’s 96 percent of the millions of tons of plastic, which will outlive most of us in a landfill that we could recycle and keep it out of our landfill. Paper is made from trees, if we recycle it, we can decrease our rate of ugly deforestation and the destruction of animal habitats. When paper gets to the landfill, it is guaranteed to get wet. The wetness and decomposition of paper atracts mold spores, which produce an odor and are potentially bad for your health. Also k...
“The worst threat to man is man himself.” These words, from the recent publication The Great Pearl of Wisdom, are from the open mind of Bangambiki Habyarimana, a man known for his work in the fight against HIV and AIDS. His blatant, cut and dry point of view is a very simple way of stating that humanity has the power to destroy itself, whether directly or indirectly. Indirectly, the human race may bring upon its own doom through the destruction and degradation of its caregiver, provider, and home: the Earth. One of the biggest issues in the modern world is climate change, which is directly related to carbon dioxide emissions and the greenhouse effect. The greatest contributor of CO₂ emissions is the use of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and
Everyone needs to respire in order to live, which includes plants and animals. Trees and plants help to regulate the carbon cycle. When the trees take in the carbon dioxide from the environment, they give back to oxygen. When trees are cut down, there is a break in the carbon cycle, and there is no exchange in both oxygen and carbon dioxide which causes a spike in carbon dioxide levels. When these occur carbon dioxide moves in the atmosphere and stores there as a greenhouse gas. “However, deforestation still remains the second leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions, just behind industrial emissions” (Culas). Greenhouse gases disturb the normal regulation of the weather. When greenhouse captures and stores heat problems occur. When the carbon dioxide levels in the greenhouse gases are increased, then the atmospheric conditions becomes unstable, which causes global warming. Global warming is the increase in the temperature of the earth, which is mostly caused by the greenhouse effects. Global warming present itself by affecting the environment by causing drought, floods, change in ecosystem, less fresh water available and other environmental issues. Trees play a big role not only in keeping the soil rich, regulating the water table, providing a stable anchor for soil to lessen soil erosion and providing nutrient rich soil for agriculture but it also helps in the absorption of carbon emission in the atmosphere.
The amount of CO2 in a planet's atmosphere affects the temperature of the planet. As more and more CO2 builds up in the atmosphere, less heat can escape and the planet gets hotter. The CO2 traps radiation from the sun like a greenhouse. This is called global warming or the greenhouse effect. Global warming is becoming a serious problem and CO2 is the major cause. The earth is now warmer than it has been in 1000's of years. The amount of CO2 deposited in the earth's atmosphere from human activities is expected to double by the year 2050. It could possible increase by four in the future with developing countries, such as China, anxious to improve their standard of living.
III. Recycling and composting currently prevent 86.6 million tons of material from being disposed of. This prevented the release of approximately 168 million metric tons of CO2 into the air. This is equivalent to taking 33 million cars off the road for a year.
As humanity develops new technology, the magnitude and severity of waste increases. When computers were developed, it widely was believed that the need for paper would be eliminated. On the contrary this was widely proven false and we are now utilizing more paper than ever. Canada is not an exception as the typical Canadian generates an average of three pounds of solid waste each day1. This alone shows what a careless species we have become- using and disposing materials without even considering the damage we are causing. With half a trillion tones of waste around the world, only 25% may be reused for a second or third time and less than 5% can be renewed limitlessly1. These facts are true only in developed countries. Since these traditional waste reduction methods have been proven inefficient, we must endorse new innovative technology to arrive at a solution.
Environmental health has been a very important issue to talk about internationally these days. We, human beings are leading the earth toward its edge unconsciously. We are using natural resource more than we give to the Mother Nature. Day by Day, people are aware of what damage they do the environment, but they do not care of fixing this damage. In a very simple step, the road of a better healthy environment will begin; recycling is the best idea that illustrate the previous point. To Andrew Roper, recycling is the conversion of waste products into new materials, such as waste paper that can be converts into new paper goods (n.d). There are many types of recycling, for example, there are glass, paper, metal, plastics, textiles and electronics recycling (Evans , 2011). This research will focus on recycling papers in the United Arab Emirates, the benefits or recycling and its effect on the environment, the difficulties of recycling, the process of recycling paper, and the finals products of recycling.