Environment: Carbon Footprint, History Of Global Warming

Carbon Footprint
At a time when global warming is one of the challenges the world is facing, it is important to understand what it means at the individual levels and it basically entailed. The first aspects that is crucial to understand is carbon footprint. This is a term that is used to refer to the total amount of the greenhouse gases which are produced directly or indirectly in an effort to support human activities. The amount of these gases produced is expressed in terms of tons of carbon dioxide. For example, to move from one place to the next using a car, it is going to burn fuel and release certain amounts of carbon dioxide. It is then possible to calculate the carbon footprint of the activity which involves using the car to move from one location to the next. This is the same case when it comes to heating the house using wooden pellets of even using LPG to prepare foods in the house.
History of Global Warming
The history of global warming can be traced to the early 18th century, when the first steam engine paved the way to industrial revolution, ushering in the use of coal as the first fossil fuel. Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine in the year 1712. With the first industrial revolution, this led to heavy use of coal, building railroads for better transportation systems, clearing up forests to pave way for the expansion industries and better agriculture leading to less forest cover and higher population growth. Between 1850 and 1890 the mean global temperature was rated at 13.7 degrees Celsius. In 1824, a French physicist named, Joseph Fourier, describes the concept of greenhouse effect.
This is the first mention of the effect that infrared heat has on the atmosphere. In 1861 an Irish physicist John Tyndall explains the effect of water vapor and how it can create the greenhouse effect. The growth in industry and population trig...