Greenhouse effect

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 473.

What Is Global Warming?

We call the result global warming, but it is causing a set of changes to the Earth's climate, or long-term weather patterns, that varies from place to place. As the Earth spins each day, the new heat swirls with it, picking up moisture over the oceans, rising here, settling there. It's changing the rhythms of climate that all living things have come to rely upon.

What will we do to slow this warming? How will we cope with the changes we've already set into motion? While we struggle to figure it all out, the face of the Earth as we know it—coasts, forests, farms and snow-capped mountains—hangs in the balance.

The "greenhouse effect" is the warming that happens when certain gases in Earth's atmosphere trap heat. These gases let in light but keep heat from escaping, like the glass walls of a greenhouse.

First, sunlight shines onto the Earth's surface, where it is absorbed and then radiates back into the atmosphere as heat. In the atmosphere, “greenhouse” gases trap some of this heat, and the rest escapes into space. The more greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere, the more heat gets trapped.

Scientists have known about the greenhouse effect since 1824, when Joseph Fourier calculated that the Earth would be much colder if it had no atmosphere. This greenhouse effect is what keeps the Earth's climate livable. Without it, the Earth's surface would be an average of about 16◦C cooler. In 1895, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius discovered that humans could enhance the greenhouse effect by making carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.

Levels of greenhouse gases have gone up and down over the Earth's history, but they have been fairly constant for the past few thousand years. Global average temperatures have stayed fairly constant over that time as well, until recently. Through the burning of fossil fuels and other gas emissions, humans are enhancing the greenhouse effect and warming Earth.

Scientists often use the term "climate change" instead of global warming. This is because as the Earth's average temperature climbs, winds and ocean currents move heat around the globe in ways that can cool some areas, warm others, and change the amount of rain and snow falling. As a result, the climate changes differently in different areas.

3.Translate into English:

1. Рух за вторинне використання відходів розпочався в 1960-ті і особливо активним став в 80-90-х роках минулого століття в зв'язку усвідомленням їх шкоди довкіллю та зростом екологічного руху. 2. Переробка відходів стає сьогодні вигідним бізнесом. 3. Частиною повсякденного життя в розвинутих країнах стали окремі ящики для сміття (для консервних банок, пластмаси, харчових відходів, скла та ін.) 4. В установах поширюється повторне використання паперу для чернеток, закупка паперу, виготовленого з макулатури. 5. Сьогодні клімат на планеті змінюється швидше, ніж жива природа може до нього пристосуватися. 6. Деякі політичні лідери застерігають щодо перетворення харчових продуктів в біопальне в той час, коли два мільярди людей на планеті голодують. 7. Не дивлячись на численні угоди щодо захисту довкілля та збереження природних ресурсів, ситуація погіршується. 8. Вчені стверджують, що через глобальне потепління планеті загрожують серйозні катастрофи.

Rendering material:

Today the contradictions between man and nature are acquiring a dramatic character. Every year world industry pollutes the atmosphere with 1 million tons of dust and other harmful substances. People of many cities suffer from smog. Forests are disappearing and this upsets the oxygen balance. The pollution of the air, of world's oceans, seas, rivers and lakes and the destruction of the ozone layer could lead our planet to a global catastrophe. That is why serious measures to protect the environment should be undertaken. As many as 159 countries-members of the United Nations Organization have set up the environmental protection. They have worked out hundreds of projects to protect nature. One of the fundament provisions is the transfer of industry to low and non-waste technologies.

In our country more attention has been given to the problems of ecology recently. The State Committee for Environmental Control has been established. The role of Ukraine in the solution of ecological problems has greatly increased.

Nowadays the quality of life became more than a phrase; environmental and pollution became everyday words; and ecology became almost a religion to some of the people.

Progress in environmental problems is impossible without a clear understanding how the economic system works in the environmental.

People have come to recognize that pollution imposes direct costs on the economy. Pollution destroys health and thus reduces labour force activity and output. Pollution destroys capital (for instance, air pollution effects steel structures) and diverts resources to undesired activities (car washes, laundry and cleaning). Pollution directly reduces our social welfare by denying us access to clean air and water.

On the other hand, controlling pollution is costly, too. To clean up sewage, car exhausts, and smoke stains, we have to employ scarce factors of production to build, install, and maintain antipollution equipment.

4. Translate from English:

1. While scientists study global problems and policymakers debate the issues, many in business are already moving to seize extraordinary opportunities in protecting the natural environmental and meeting social needs. 2. Companies can invest in and value the wealth of ecosystem services (such as clean air and water) that nature provides. 3. Developing countries need basic infrastructure: 1.2 billion people lack clean drinking water, 2 billion lack electricity, and 3 billion lack adequate sanitation. 4. The issue of global warming has given rise to heated debate. Is the burning of fossil fuels and increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the air a serious threat or just a lot of hot air? 5. Solutions to the future won't come easily, particularly in today's business climate, but you can't find them if you do not keep looking. 6. One of the great business advances of the 20^th century has been the gradual recognition that business, society, and the environment are partners in a global alliance. 7. Economic growth and environmental responsibility go hand in hand. 8. Economically advanced countries can more easily afford the cost of implementing clean air and water standard. 9. U.S. and European economies consume 80 tons of natural resources per person annually. 10. The world is fast becoming urbanized. Today, just half of the people on Earth live in or around cities. 11. Global demand for energy will more than double by 2050, increasing the risk of climate change. 12. Environmental protection and equal employment laws in the United States are among the strictest in the world.

5. Translate into English:

Пекін – найбрудніше місто планети. Так стверджують в космічній агенції. В атмосфері китайської столи ці зафіксовано найвищу концентрацію діоксиду азоту – внаслідок чого в Пекіні та інших великих містах КНР щорічно помирають більше 400 тис. чоловік.

В місті, яке вибороло право стати столицею Олімпіади 2008 р., кількість автомобілів подвоїлось за останні п'ять років. Автомобільні вихлопи є однією з причин утворення так званих парникових газів, за їх кількістю Китай вже займає друге місце у світі після США.

Серед найбрудніших міст України – Слов'янськ, Донецьк, Одеса. Що стосується Києва, то велика доля забруднення відбувається через вихлопи автомобільних двигунів.

6. Read and discuss your reaction:

1. Between 1990 and 2000 10% of the estimated 30 million species of plants and animals are considered to be lost forever. By 2030 another 20% are likely to be lost. The extinction of one plant species can cause the loss of 30 dependent organisms.

2. By 1990 half the world's rainforests had already been destroyed. Of the remaining half, one third disappears between 1990 and 2000 and another third by 2030.

3. Between 1990 and 2000 the average temperature rose by 1º C. By 2100 it will rise by 3º C. to 5º C. This will have unpredictable effect on local weather patterns. The sea level is likely to rise between 10cm and 2m.

4. There were 600 million motor vehicles in 1990, 750 million in 2000, and there will be 1,100 by 2030.

5. The total world population in 1990 was 5,300 million. By 2000 it was 6,000 million, and by 2030 there may be 8,000 to 10,000 million mouths to feed and by 2100 11,000 to 14,000.

6. Glaciers melting in Greenland are sending more and more icebergs into the North Atlantic and cooling the ocean. This may divert the Gulf Stream and bring much colder weather to Western Europe.

7. An area of tropical forest the size of Britain is deforested every year. That is equivalent to an area the size of a football pitch every second.

8. In 1950, 30% of the earth was covered by tropical forest By 1975, only 12% was left

9. Today more than 40% of the world's original tropical forests have gone. Latin America has lost 37% of its original tropical forests, Asia 42% and Africa 52%.

10. The world is now losing its tropical forest at the rate of 7% a year and if this continues it will have all gone in just 40 years' time.

Greenpeace