Sunday 3 September 2017

How big is your footprint?

After reading 'How Big Is Your Footprint?' by Norman Bilbrough the Avengers collaborated on a Cause and Effect map and Summary.




The greenhouse effect is a natural process that’s needed for life on Earth. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (such as water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) are useful because they trap heat, keeping our planet warm. While our planet needs to be warm enough to allow life to exist, there is such a thing as too warm. In recent years, large amounts of greenhouse gases have been released into the atmosphere and this has upset a delicate balance.

The greenhouse effect has been linked to climate change. Currently both Texas in the USA and Bangladesh have suffered from Hurricane Harvey and extreme rainfall causing floods. These events are thought to be linked to climate change and the effect of greenhouse gas emissions.

One possible cause of greenhouse gases is deforestation. In places such as Brazil and Indonesia, thousands of hectares of rainforest are disappearing every day. As a result of the deforestation forests no longer absorb extra carbon dioxide, helping to keep our atmosphere in balance.

As a result of burning fossil fuels, such as burning coal to produce electricity and making petrol for cars from oil, the temperature of Earth has risen, which in turn will cause countries to turn to desert and crops will not be able to be produced.

Evidence suggests that cows produce half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions in the form of methane and nitrous oxide. Extra methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere traps heat and is a known cause of melting the Polar Ice Caps. If the ice caps melt the sea level will rise causing floods, as seen in India and Bangladesh.

Your carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere from the things that you do. To reduce our carbon footprints we can walk or bike to school, learn to cook and eat less meat. These are all small things we can do everyday to have a big impact on our future.

1 comment:

  1. Well done, very interesting information

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