Children's Attitude and Perceptions to Environmental Sustainability - Research Paper Example

The radiations’ escape into space is delayed by greenhouse gases such as water vapour, carbon dioxide, ozone, and methane.Greenhouse gases are about 1 per cent of the atmosphere. Still, they act like a cover around the Earth, like the glass roof of a greenhouse, trapping heat. This keeps the planet 30 Celsius degrees warmer than it would be otherwise (Understanding Climate Change: a beginners guide to the UN Framework Convention and Climate Change).Human activities are increasing the natural levels of those gases, by emitting carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas; methane and nitrous oxide produced by agricultural activities and changes in the use of land use; and by some industrial gases that do not occur naturally but are long-lived in the atmosphere.

These changes are happening rapidly. If emissions continue to grow at the present levels, the concentration of carbon dioxide will double those from pre-industrial levels during this century. It is quite easy to ignore the scientific information about the effect of greenhouse gases, but the evidence of greenhouse gas effects in the form of global warming has become so overwhelming that these effects can not be ignored. Global warming has started to affect the lives of people across the world in a significant way.

In the report published by United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate in 2007 sufficient pieces of evidence were presented to prove that huge amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, mainly created by various human activities, are continually warming the earth’s surface (“Climate Change 2007 Synthesis Report”). Under such circumstances ‘the question is not whether climate change is happening but whether, in the face of this emergency, we ourselves can change fast enough.