Word: co2
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...significant advantage. "They are experimental tools that allow us to test our hypotheses," he says. "We can ask such questions as 'What happens when a big volcano like El Chichon goes off?' and 'How much will the earth warm up by 2030 if we continue to dump CO2 into the atmosphere...
Potentially more damaging than ozone depletion, and far harder to control, is the greenhouse effect, caused in large part by carbon dioxide (CO2). The effect of CO2 in the atmosphere is comparable to the glass of a greenhouse: it lets the warming rays of the sun in but keeps excess heat from reradiating back into space. Indeed, man-made contributions to the greenhouse effect, mainly CO2 that is generated by the burning of fossil fuels, may be hastening a global warming trend that could raise average temperatures between 2 degrees F and 8 degrees F by the year...
...ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon with positive consequences. Without it, points out Climate Modeler Jeff Kiehl, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, "the earth would be uninhabitable. It is what keeps us from being an ice-frozen planet like Mars." Indeed, if gases like CO2 did not trap the sun's energy, the earth's mean temperature would be 0 degrees F, rather than the current 59 degrees...
Still, as far back as the late 1890s, Swedish Chemist Svante Arrhenius had begun to fret that the massive burning of coal during the Industrial Revolution, which pumped unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, might be too much of a good thing. Arrhenius made the startling prediction that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would eventually lead to a 9 degrees F warming of the globe. Conversely, he suggested, glacial periods might be caused by diminished levels of the gas. His contemporaries scoffed. Arrhenius, however, was exactly right. In his time, the CO2 concentration was about 280 to 290 parts...
...involved. In Brazil the Amazon rain forest, which once covered 3 million sq. mi., has been slashed by an estimated 10% to 15% as the region has been developed for mining and agriculture; an additional 20% has been seriously disturbed. When the downed trees are burned or rot, CO2 and other greenhouse gases are released. The same kind of deforestation in Africa, Indonesia and the Philippines, say experts, may already be helping to make the world warmer...