Reduce Your Footprints - What Are Carbon Emissions

What are carbon emissions? In order to understand the term, we must first understand the process by which carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere. Well, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere every time we burn fossil fuels such as gas, coal, or oil. In a natural carbon cycle, carbon dioxide is re-absorbed by plants and trees. However, we are burning fuels where the carbon dioxide has been trapped under the earth's surface for millions of years, and we're doing it so quickly that plants and trees that are alive now have no chance of soaking it up.

Click Here For Reduce Your Footprints Instant Access Now!

In the past 150 years, such activities have pumped enough carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to raise its levels higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years. Because of all this extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the overall temperature of the planet is increasing in what we call global warming. From this, we can see that carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is in fact, the main pollutant that is warming the earth. Indeed, living things emit carbon dioxide when they breathe. But then again, it is widely considered as a pollutant when it is associated with cars, planes, power plants, and other human activities that involve the burning of fossil fuels.

Direct manifestations of a widespread and long-term trend toward warmer global temperatures include heat waves and periods of unusually warm weather, ocean warming, sea-level rising, coastal flooding, glaciers melting, and Arctic and Antarctic warming.

Aside from global warming, the rise in carbon dioxide emissions is driving fundamental and dangerous changes in the chemistry and ecosystems of the world's oceans. More than thirty percent of the carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels, cement production, deforestation, and other human activities goes straight into the oceans, turning them gradually more acidic.

So now, before you burn those fuels, ask yourself these questions: What are carbon emissions? What can these emissions do to the environment?

Click Here For Reduce Your Footprints Instant Access Now!

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/environment-articles/reduce-your-footprints-what-are-carbon-emissions-3057679.html

This author writes about Carbon Dioxide Climate Change and Best Carbon Offset