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Greenhouse 4 beginners

Greenhouse Dictionary

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Greenhouse 4 Beginners

Greenhouse is a great story. The greenhouse story involves mystery and adventure. There are cool-characters and slippery-situations in the greenhouse story.

Chapter 1 - Some Simple Science

The greenhouse effect is natural!

The greenhouse effect keeps the earth warm against the cold of space.

The greenhouse effect is caused by 'greenhouse gases' in the atmosphere. These gases absorb heat from the sun and keep the planet warm.

Naturally occurring greenhouse gases include water vapour, carbon di-oxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

These gases have been keeping planet earth warm for millions of years, ensuring that the conditions on earth are suitable for life.

Without greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, earth would be as lifeless as the moon - baking hot on the sun side and freezing cold on the dark side.

Without the greenhouse effect there would be no life on earth, no humans and no GECOs!

The greenhouse effect was first described to science in 1824 by Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier. Fourier wrote a paper with the elaborate title: 'General Remarks on the Temperature of the Terrestrial Globe and Planetary Spaces'. In this paper, Fourier suggested that the earth's atmosphere trapped heat much like a bell jar - the big glass jar used in scientific experiments. This was Fourier's famous 'Bell Jar Hypothesis'.

Greenhouse next appeared in science when Svante Arrhenius started to take an interest in the subject. Arrhenius was a Swedish scientist. In 1906, he predicted that industrial activity such as buring coal to make power "would raise the temperature of the Earth's surface by 4 degrees celcius" because burning coal released CO2 into the atmosphere. (Modern day calculations about the projected impact of global warming bear a striking similarity to these early calculations).

Moving to modern times, from 1959 until today, scientist Charles Keeling has been taking direct measurements of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere from a laboratory high in the Hawaiian mountains. Keeling has recored a continually increasing concentration of CO2: rising from 275 ppm during early Industrial Revolution to 370 ppm today. Keeling's data demonstrated that the theories about increasing concentrations of CO2 can be matched with real observations.

Part 2 - Some Politics

Coming soon...