The Greenhouse effect

What is the greenhouse effect? Where does this term come from.

For once, our imagination doesn't play tricks on us.

If thinking about the greenhouse effect the first thing that comes to mind is a nursery, then you haven't gone too far from the target.

Anyone who's ever been in a greenhouse must have felt the heat on the edge of fainting. Do you know why all that heat is generated inside the tent?

The sun's rays penetrate through the windows, the infrared rays once inside the window, the "dome" can no longer get out. They remain trapped, generating a disproportionate amount of heat. Infrared rays are emitted by all materials affected by the sun's rays. Unlike ultraviolet rays and unlike light itself, infrared rays cannot pass through the glass, they are repelled by them, bouncing back into the surrounding environment. The typical hood of a greenhouse is therefore generated by this completely natural and impossible to prevent.

The greenhouse effect is similar but this time the nursery is our beloved land.

Planet Earth is the greenhouse.

But then what are the windows that trap the infrared rays emitted?

All the gases that reign in our atmosphere tend to be our screens, screens that repel the infrared rays that the Earth tries to repel towards the atmosphere. Those rays stay in Earth's orbit, overheating our planet. Creating the greenhouse effect. Some of the gases in the atmosphere "work" to repel the infrared rays that hot bodies on the planet produce. Carbon dioxide is one of these "bad" gases. This explains why there is so much talk of reducing CO2 emissions.

But let's not confuse the disruptive greenhouse effect that pollution has generated with the natural phenomenon that these gases determine. Without it we wouldn't have life forms, we wouldn't have the climate and temperature thanks to which it is possible to develop vital organisms. Without this phenomenon the earth would risk glaciation with temperatures constantly below zero of about 19°.

As always, excess cripples and hurts.

An excess of CO2, an excess of greenhouse gases causes excessive warming and therefore the many problems linked to it.

It is estimated that within a few decades the average temperature could increase by more than 2°, so much so that it would be enough to determine the melting of glaciers and consequent catastrophic phenomena for us and our planet.

We know that climate change is generated directly and indirectly by man. The greenhouse effect is one of those phenomena that man is contributing to exasperate.

We continue to produce immense quantities of carbon dioxide, CO2, nitrogen. We do this through the construction and continuous proliferation of industries, factories but also by cutting down trees in every corner of the world.

We are the ones who create heat, we are the ones who release enormous quantities of CO2. We are the ones suffocating under our own tent. It is as if each of us in our own home continues to burn wood, generate clouds of smoke, cut down chairs and sofas.

Would you do that?

I don't think so.

Yet we are already doing it only that our home is the Earth and not the four walls that surround us.

We do it every time we drive our car or turn on the heat, every time we consume paper or use plastic. Directly or indirectly we are accomplices of our own extermination.

We will not exterminate ourselves but we could be the killers of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren to whom we will leave a poorly placed planet, a world worse than the one we have inherited.

There are international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Accord that aim to reduce global warming by 2100 by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Will that be enough?

some sources

https://anteritalia.org/effetto-serra-cose-cosa-comporta-contenerlo/
https://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/background_publications_htmlpdf/application/pdf/conveng.pdf
https://www.ecoage.it/effetto-serra.htm