What are the merits and demerits of greenhouse gases? Are they devils or angels? Without them, would you and I be here today?

Greenhouse gases have become a nightmare for mankind, eroding the earth's ecology and seeming to drag life on earth into an abyss of no return. As a result, most people regard greenhouse gases as demons, hate them, and must eliminate them as soon as possible.

Little do people know that greenhouse gases themselves are not malicious and are indispensable to humans. It is just that when they are too much, they will become unbearable. Now, let us learn more about this overly demonized thing.

First, let’s understand what greenhouse gases are.

Simply put, greenhouse gases are gases in the atmosphere that can absorb long-wave radiation reflected by the ground and re-emit the absorbed radiation.

The universe is full of electromagnetic waves, which are actually light waves, including visible light and invisible light. Any object that is not at absolute zero will radiate electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic waves have energy, and the energy varies depending on the wavelength. The longer the wavelength, the smaller the energy, and the shorter the wavelength, the stronger the energy.

The higher the temperature of an object, the shorter the wavelength of the electromagnetic wave it radiates, and vice versa. The surface temperature of the sun is about 6000K, so the wavelength of its radiation is relatively short, with more than 99% of the wavelengths between 0.15 and 4 μm (micrometers); when the earth's surface receives solar radiation, part of it is absorbed and part of it is reflected back. Due to the low surface temperature, the reflected wavelength is relatively long, generally between 3 and 120 μm.

The Earth's atmosphere has a characteristic of bullying the weak and fearing the strong, that is, it will open its doors to welcome short-wave radiation with strong energy, so that solar radiation can pass through the atmosphere as if it is transparent and go straight in (part of it will be reflected); but it will absorb and intercept radiation with longer wavelengths and lower energy, and will not let it pass. In this way, the energy reflected by the Earth is blocked by the atmosphere, heating the atmosphere and the surface.

Not all gases in the atmosphere can absorb and intercept long-wave radiation. Only the so-called "greenhouse gases" are so snobbish that they strongly absorb and emit long-wave radiation. Such greenhouse gases mainly include: water vapor, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, freon, methane, etc. Carbon dioxide is the most powerful of the greenhouse gases, accounting for 60~70% of its contribution.

In the past 100 years, the carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere have increased rapidly. The main reasons for this phenomenon are human deforestation, the burning of fossil fuels (including firewood, coal, oil, etc.), and the production of biogas from planting and breeding industries.

The continuous increase of greenhouse gases has formed the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is also called the "greenhouse effect" or the atmospheric insulation effect. It is equivalent to greenhouse gases covering the earth like a large glass cover. Sunlight radiation can pass through this cover to the surface, but the heat emitted by the surface cannot be discharged to the outside. The earth, this large greenhouse, continues to heat up.

The dilemma facing humanity

Scientists around the world have sent warning letters to humanity twice in 25 years, calling out that the earth's ecology is facing a huge crisis and that time is running out. If humans do not change their behavior patterns and repair the ecology as soon as possible, the earth will soon experience an out-of-control and irreversible climate disaster, and humans will also face the catastrophe of extinction.

The first of the two letters was published in 1992, and the second was published in 2017. In the second letter, scientists lamented with disappointment that in the 25 years since the first letter was sent, humans have not paid enough attention, and the plunder and destruction of the environment have not been restrained at all, but have intensified, and the ecology has continued to deteriorate.

The consequence is that greenhouse gases continue to increase, the greenhouse effect becomes more and more severe, the average temperature of the earth continues to rise, the polar ice caps and glaciers in various places continue to melt and shrink, and the sea level rises, leading to extreme climate and a series of disasters.

How to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow down the rise in temperature has become one of the most important issues for the United Nations. The core content of the Paris Agreement, signed by almost all countries in the world, is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the goal is to control the temperature rise within 2°C of the pre-industrial average temperature by the end of this century.

Monitoring shows that the current average temperature has risen by more than 1 degree compared to before industrialization, and this trend is still intensifying. If it is not curbed, there is a 50% chance that it will rise by 4 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. Scientific research shows that the threshold for the earth's natural regulation system to withstand temperature increases is 3 degrees Celsius. When this critical point is reached, the global climate automatic regulation system will collapse and an irreversible series of disasters will come.

Will the greenhouse effect really lead to such serious consequences as ecological extinction?

This seems indisputable, because the continuous increase in the greenhouse effect will cause a chain reaction of deterioration in the earth's environmental ecology.

The most direct phenomenon of rising temperatures is the melting of ice sheets and glaciers, rising sea levels, changes in ocean circulation, and major changes in the water cycle, which can trigger catastrophic changes in the entire climate.

These disasters include heavy rains in some areas turning deserts into swamps; long-term droughts in some places turning oases into deserts; continuous forest fires and the disappearance of tropical rainforests; the warm climate leading to the rampant spread of pests and diseases, and prehistoric viruses trapped in the ice sheet are waiting for an opportunity to come out, which may cause unpredictable damage to the ecology.

The sea level continues to rise and will submerge coastal areas. 50% of modern people live in coastal areas and more than 80% of developed cities are located in coastal areas. This global catastrophic change will force humans to flee and migrate. Chaos, economic recession, and shortage of supplies will lead to the prevalence of plagues, and humans will face a major reduction in population.

As the glaciers, the treasure trove of fresh water on which human beings depend for survival, disappear, and freshwater resources such as rivers, lakes, and so on continue to dry up, human survival will be greatly threatened; studies have shown that it is easier to conceive a boy in a high temperature environment, and easier to conceive a girl in a low temperature environment, and the side effects of rising temperatures will lead to a serious imbalance in the ratio of men to women, and as a result, humanity will suffer a reproduction crisis.

As greenhouse gases continue to increase, the proportion of oxygen will gradually decrease, and the atmosphere will eventually be similar to the situation on Earth 1 billion years ago, at which time neither wild animals nor humans will be able to survive.

Everything will turn to its opposite when it reaches its extreme. The ultimate result of the greenhouse effect is likely to be the arrival of a global ice age. This is because the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet will cause a large amount of fresh water to flow into the ocean, reducing the salinity of the seawater, and the ocean's cold and warm cycles will gradually stagnate, resulting in a drop in global temperatures and the arrival of an ice age.

During the Ice Age, most or all of the earth's surface was frozen, and blizzards and tornadoes raged continuously. Could humans survive? Some people might think that they could survive underground, but how long would this ice age last? According to research, the most recent ice age is called the Quaternary Ice Age, which began 2 to 3 million years ago and ended 20,000 years ago. Could humans withstand the severe cold test of millions of years of ice cover and thousands of meters of thickness? The question is, what to eat to stay alive?

But greenhouse gases are not all bad, and humans cannot live without them

Studies have shown that greenhouse gases on Earth contribute 38°C to the Earth's temperature, which means that the Earth's temperature has increased by 38°C. Currently, the Earth's average annual temperature is about 15°C. If there were no greenhouse gases, the Earth's average temperature would drop to -23°C.

As mentioned before, a 3°C rise in global temperature is a threshold that will lead to a huge disaster, and in fact a 3°C drop is not acceptable either, which can also lead to a huge disaster. The disaster of a lower temperature is the arrival of an ice age, which means that the world is covered in ice and snow, with no grass or trees left.

If the average temperature drops to -23℃, the earth will become an ice ball that never thaws, and all visible species will die out completely. It can be seen that it is greenhouse gases that protect human beings from living in a moist environment. Therefore, from a philosophical point of view, everything should be divided into two parts. There is no extreme bad, nor extreme good. Greenhouse gases are also a double-edged sword.

70% of the solar radiation absorbed by the earth every day is reflected back into space. Due to the barrier of greenhouse gases, this reflected heat is preserved, which makes the earth warm. If there is too much barrier, the earth will become hotter and hotter, and if there is not enough barrier, it will become colder and colder.

The Huronian glaciation, which occurred between 2.4 billion and 2.1 billion years ago, was caused by insufficient greenhouse gases. At that time, the Earth experienced a great oxidation event, and the oxygen in the atmosphere rose sharply from 0.2% to 4%, but the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere decreased sharply, almost to nothing. This was because a large number of cyanobacteria absorbed carbon dioxide, and the released oxygen oxidized methane.

Without the protection of greenhouse gases, the Earth's temperature dropped sharply and entered an ice age. During the Huronian Ice Age, the Earth froze into a snowball. The white snowball reflected more sunlight, up to 90% or more, and the Earth became colder and colder. As a result of the vicious cycle, the ice ball froze harder and harder, and the ice age lasted for 200 to 300 million years.

This ice age caused the extinction of a large number of fragile organisms that had just been born, and almost strangled the budding of life on Earth. Therefore, greenhouse gases themselves are not evil, but a double-edged sword. Greenhouse gases cannot be absent, nor can they be excessive. They must be just right to be beneficial to the Earth's ecology.

In the future, humans will likely create greenhouse gases on Mars

Mars has now become the first choice for human migration, but the average temperature there is only -55℃; the atmosphere is only 1% of the density of the Earth's atmosphere, and is mainly carbon dioxide; the water there is hidden underground and exists in the form of frozen ice. Such conditions are not suitable for human habitation and must be transformed.

Scientists believe that the first step is to transform the atmosphere there, that is, to produce a large amount of greenhouse gases. Through greenhouse gases, Mars can lock in reflected sunlight and heat up, dissolving groundwater, forming rivers, lakes and oceans on Mars, and then sowing genetically modified seeds of life on it, gradually transforming Mars into a sister planet of the Earth.

There are many plans to produce greenhouse gases on Mars, and the most popular plan is to build a large chemical plant on Mars and build a nuclear power plant to provide power. The chemical plant continuously produces and releases carbon tetrafluoride, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. If 1,000 tons of such gas are emitted into the Martian atmosphere every hour, the temperature of Mars can rise by 27.8°C in just 30 years.

There are many steps and methods in the Mars transformation plan, which I will not elaborate on here. The significance of this is that greenhouse gases are not only not demons, but also saviors, creators and protectors of life in some cases.

That’s all I have to say. Welcome to discuss and thank you for reading.

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