General Global Warming

Essay by BrthrbruceCollege, UndergraduateA, December 2002

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Life on this planet Earth is the product of a delicate hand of God. He created the nature, a wonderful ecosystem with the ability to maintain itself. Mankind's existence is totally dependent on this ecosystem, nature. A valuable player in the balance of the environment, the ozone layer, is facing a very serious threat by man. One of the chemical agents used, which has a very big impact in depletion of the ozone layer are Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), and they are used in a variety of industrial, commercial, and household applications. Ozone, the gas developed in the stratosphere protects the Earth from the ultraviolet waves, but the CFCs are implicated in the accelerated depletion of it.

The ozone layer is a layer of the upper atmosphere lying about 12 to 15 miles above the Earth's surface. It is so named because the unstable form of oxygen called ozone is concentrated in this layer.

It forms a layer that shields the earth and its inhabitants from the deadly ultraviolet waves (UV) emitted by the sun. Stratospheric ozone plays a beneficial role by absorbing most of the biologically damaging ultraviolet sunlight, allowing only a small amount to reach the Earth's surface. Depletion of this thin layer of ozone not only increases health risks such as skin cancer and suppression of the immune system, but it may also cause a decrease in aquatic species. The Antarctic ozone hole is also a result of gases containing chlorine and bromine, whose sources are mainly human-made halocarbon gases. The risk is higher here than a simply case of sunburn. Unfortunately, the world is already witnessing the early effects of ozone depletion.

Chlorofluorocarbons were invented in 1928. They were the product of an intensive search by engineers to find a safe, non-toxic, non-flammable refrigerant, and the...