Sickness in humans tends to last for weeks, but what if our blue planet gets sick? The Earth is continuously facing many challenges due to global warming. Trapping the heat from the sun is a natural process that helps to sustain life, which makes our earth a unique “goldilocks“ planet among the eight planets of our solar system. But if anything in excess is harmful, then isn’t the increase in temperature of our planet hazardous?
Greenhouse gases absorb heat at daytime and this helps maintain the Earth’s temperature at night. Due to this phenomenon, the planet’s temperature doesn’t fall to minus 20⁰ C even at night, as recorded in other planets (except Venus because it has a thick atmosphere and greenhouse gases). But an excess of greenhouse gases causes global warming. The major greenhouse gases are water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxides, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
Humans have directly or indirectly contributed to global warming through rapid construction, industrial expansion, transportation and agriculture. For building any new infrastructure, at the initial stage, we clear the land that disturbs the proportion of greenery in the natural environment. Burning fossil fuels (petrol and diesel) releases carbon into the atmosphere. Unsustainable practices such as clearing forest for agriculture and overgrazing are also to blame. Stubble burning, where straw is set on fire after the harvest, also releases greenhouse gases.
