Technological Advancement & Green House Effect

Technological Advancement & Green House Effect

The journey of technological achievements is the expression of the human wants, as almost all the progress in this direction is directly or indirectly meant to bring more and more comforts in the human life, From Medicine to Space researches, from moderation of crop cultivation to Industrialization boom every new technology invented only for the human beings to meet with the proportionally increasing population and demands.

With the growing population, human individual and social life is under the speedy alterations, rural life is going to be sidelined by the attractive, dreamy, mirage full and more importantly with much and much populated city life. Industrialization and Urbanization are the two important yields of the technological advancement and are the root cause of the deforestation. This process of reduction in the forest lands started the imbalance of the environment and resulted in the disturbance of human health. According to World Health Organization [WHO] Health is fundamental right of every citizen of earth irrespective of race, religion, and political belief, economic and social conditions and is “State of Physical, Mental and Social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity”. In the previous article we had talked about the individual health and effects of pollutants, here we will concentrate on the social aspect. Life activities on earth are dependable on the amount of solar energy [radiations] absorbed by the earth. In the environmental it is common saying "Venus is too hot, Mars is too cold, and Earth is just right." This is because of earth’s average surface temperature remains in between the freezing point and boiling point of the water. This temperature is ideal for the existence and growth of the life; it is unfortunate that our technological advancements are proving catalysts for the growth in the temperature of the earth surface. This phenomenon of increase in temperature is commonly known as the Global Warming, the destroying power of this can be visualized from that Global warming may prove the reason to start of third world war. The first step of Global warming starts with the “Green House Effect”.

Green House Effect

Go on the village bound roads of the Maharashtra state, a state speeding on technological advancement, road side dome shaped structures constructed on the crop fields are the common sight. These dome shaped constructions are the Green Houses, meant to cultivated flowers and vegetables by trapping reflected solar radiations and keeping the temperature inside the dome suitable and matched with the favorable for the plant life. Earth is with natural green house. Energy radiated by the sun in the form of spectrums of varying wave length. Visible light energy [wave length 400 and 700 nm] comes through the atmosphere and absorbed by land, ocean and plants on the earth. This light energy is converted into heat energy and re-radiates in the form of infra red radiation [invisible, wave length range from 700 to 1000 nm]. The natural effect of this must be that during the day temperature of earth goes on increasing and with the sun set it should goes on reducing rapidly to reach below the zero degrees but our day to day life proves other than this, because the trace gases, mainly water vapor (H₂O), carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and nitrous oxide (NO_x), of our atmosphere works as an insulator or blanket which trapped these energy radiations and helps in keeping the earth surface temperature constant. This is the natural Green House effect and these gaseous components of the atmosphere are known as the Green House Gases. This atmospheric green house effect is dependable of many factors [scientific term: albedo, which defines the percentage of solar energy reflected back by a surface] such as cloud cover, type of earth surface, amount of green house gases and so on. The predications of the climatic changes are based on the study of albedo. The following are some of the factors that influence the earth's albedo.

Cloud Albedo: Altitude and optical properties of the clouds are the factors that are intended to produce cool or warm effect on the earth surface respectively. Cumulus and cumulonimbus cloud appearing at low altitudes are reflecting incoming solar energy hence reduce the earth’s surface temperature, where as the cirrus clouds which are comparatively thinner and placed at more height are increasing the surface temperature of earth by absorbing more solar energy.

Surface Albedo: Dark colored lands are more absorptive hence we find high temperatures in the desert land where as ice lands are more reflective so most of the radiation energy get reflected and temperature.

Coming up: How human beings are disturbing atmospheric green house effect and Global Warming.