How big is your carbon foot print?

How big is your carbon foot print?

To get things started what is out carbon foot print? Carbon footprint is the term for the amount of greenhouse gasses we release. Below is a brief abstract explaining the greenhouse effect.

The greenhouse effect is a combination of the earth, sun and the atmosphere. The process starts by the sun heating the planet via short wave radiation, which is then in turn emitted by the atmosphere. When the sun’s rays hit the planet, the rays that do not get absorbed reflect of the planet, heading for the atmosphere (Long wave radiation). Unlike shortwave radiation, long wave radiation gets absorbed by greenhouse gases (mainly carbon dioxide and water vapor). When the greenhouse gases have absorbed the radiation, they reemit the rays in an array of directions. It’s the radiation that gets directed towards the earth that becomes the issue, this then creates a bounce of rays between the earth and the atmosphere (seen in the picture below). By creating more greenhouse gases, the amount of radiation being stuck between the atmosphere and the earth increases, leading to the rise of the planets temperature (Casper 2010).

The WWF (The World Wide Fund for Nature) provide a questionnaire were they give you a rough estimate on how big your carbon foot print is! According to this question if everyone was to live like me, we would need 1.82 planets. If you read the abstract hopefully you will understand the need for us to lower out carbon foot print, but how much is acceptable? Its argued that global warming is a natural event, hence some people ignorance towards it, the side is that global warming is a natural event but we are speeding up the process! So all comes back to our interpretation of the environment and how much we value it. I believe that the planet needs a massive event due to the greenhouse effect, this will then help show people that we have to look after the planet.

Web address link:

http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/

Reference

Casper. J. K. (2010 ). Global Warming, Greenhouse Gases, Worldwide Impacts. USA: Infobase Publishing.