What are Greenhouse Gas Emissions?
Regardless of how involved or informed you are in climate activism, you have likely come across campaigns and reports around emissions. This is because emissions are a very important factor in the current conversation on the human impact on climate change and global warming, particularly from more macro contributors.
The greenhouse gas (GHG) effect is a natural process of trapping the earth’s heat that would have otherwise escaped to space and, just like the presence of Carbon Dioxide (CO2), is needed for the earth to be inhabitable for us and many other living organisms. Therefore, the reason GHG emissions are such a concern isn’t because the effect and the gas is in the atmosphere, human activity has tipped the natural balance so that these gases keep more heat than needed from escaping.
The global warming effect resulting from GHG emissions is not as simple as the earth getting hotter. Global warming is responsible for a higher frequency of extreme weather events, ranging from hurricanes to droughts, heat waves to flood, and wetter regions getting wetter while dryer regions get drier. The melting glaciers also affect sea levels which impacts how much coastal land is inhabitable and the ecosystems of a wide variety of animals who follow certain seasonal patterns.
How much a GHG impacts the environment is determined by three factors:
How much of it exists in the environment (the concentration),
How long it stays in the atmosphere,
How effective it is at trapping heat.
For example, while CO2 is by far the largest concentration of the GHGs, CO2 isn’t the gas that depletes the ozone layer. In fact, human beings create and emit numerous other GHGs, most of which have a far greater relative heat-trapping effect than CO2. The most prevalent of these gases are methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). Some of these gases also stay in the atmosphere longer, so even a slow rate of adding more overtime will have damaging effects in the future.
Further Reference
