Form 4

Biology Folio
Topic : The causes and effects of global warming

Name
Seow Chun Pin
Yee Kok Hong
Ong Kenli
Khor Ming Jin
Chong Keat Jun
What is the Green house effect?

The Earth is kept warm by its atmosphere, which acts rather

like a woolly coat. Without it, the average surface
temperature would be about -18 degrees Centigrade. Heat
from the sun passes through the atmosphere, warming it
up, and most of it warms the surface of the planet. As the
Earth warms up, it emits heat in the form of infra-red
radiation - much like a hot pan emits heat even after it's
taken away from the cooker. Some of this heat is trapped by
the atmosphere, but the rest escapes into space. The so-
called "greenhouse gases" make the atmosphere trap more
of this radiation, so it gradually warms up more than it
should, like a greenhouse (although a greenhouse actually
does this by stopping warm air rising and escaping from it).
Problems of The Greenhouse Effect
The greenhouse effect causes trouble by raising the
temperature of the planet. The actual rise is not very much,
but the Earth's ecosystem is very fragile, and small changes
can have large effects.

A Panel on Climate Change has predicted that this rise

of one degree will happen by the year 2025. What Causes
The Greenhouse Effect?

This could potentially cripple the North American corn belt,

which produces much of the world's grain, leading to much
higher food prices, and even less food for the Third World
than they already have. However, it would also mean that
some countries which are further north would be able to
grow crops they had never been able to before, although
there is less land as you move north from the corn belt.

The other serious worry is that rising sea levels from the
melting of the polar ice caps could severely flood many
countries. A rise in sea levels of one metre, which many
experts are predicting by the year 2100 (and some as soon
as 2030), would flood 15 percent of Egypt, and 12 percent
of Bangladesh. The Maldives in the Indian Ocean would
almost completely disappear.

Most of the countries which would suffer most from a rise in

sea levels are the poor island states, so the islands in the
Caribbean, South Pacific, Mediterranean and Indian Ocean
have formed the Alliance of Small Island States, AOSIS, so
they have a louder voice in international politics and can
make the richer developed world listen to their problems.
Britain would lose most of East Anglia, and to protect the
coast line would cost an estimated 5 to 10 billion pounds.
What causes the Greenhouse effect :-

There are some natural greenhouse gases: water vapour,

nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide, methane and ozone.

However, over the past fifty years, production of carbon

dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane has risen sharply, and a
new type of chemical - the chlorofluorocarbon, or CFC - has
been introduced as a refrigerant, solvent and aerosol
propellant, but it is also a very powerful greenhouse gas,
because it can trap a lot of radiation - one molecule of CFC
is 12,000 to 16,000 times as effective at absorbing infra-red
radiation as a molecule of carbon dioxide.