The outermost layer of the Earth’s living environment is the atmosphere, a mixture of gases surrounding the planet. The atmosphere contains a thin layer called ozone, which protects all life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. For most of human history, people had very little effect on the atmosphere. For many thousands of years, humans routinely burned vegetation, causing some intermittent air pollution. In ancient times, the smelting of ores, such as copper ore, released metals that traveled in the atmosphere from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea as far as Greenland. With the development of fossil fuels, however, much more intense air pollution began to trouble humanity.
Before widespread use of fossil fuels, air pollution typically affected cities more than it did rural areas because of the concentration of combustion in cities. People in cold-climate urban areas kept warm by burning wood, but local wood supplies were soon exhausted. As a result of the limited supply, wood became expensive. People then burned comparatively little amounts of wood and heated their homes less. The first city to resolve this problem was London, where residents began using coal to heat their buildings. By the 1800s, half a million chimneys were releasing coal smoke, soot, ash, and sulfur dioxide into the London air.
The development of steam engines in the 18th century introduced coal to industry. The resultant growth from the Industrial Revolution meant more steam engines, more factory chimneys, and, thus, more air pollution. Skies darkened in the industrial heartlands of Britain, Belgium, Germany, and the United States. Cities that combined energy-intensive industries such as iron and steel manufacturing, and coal-heated buildings, were routinely shrouded in smoke and bathed in sulfur dioxide. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of the United States’ major industrial cities at the time, was sometimes referred to as “Hell with the lid taken off.” The coal consumption of some industries was so great that it could pollute the skies over entire regions, as was the case in the Ruhr region in Germany and around Hanshin, the area near Ôsaka, Japan.
The Essay on Global Warming Atmosphere Pollution Year
Physical Geography Turn Up The Heat For decades and decades, human factories and cars have discharged billions of tons of artificial greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the climate has begun to show many signs of global warming. On the other hand, some people want you to believe that global warming does not exist. There are many people are only out for personal gain and are outright liars. ...
