It has become a great fashion today to talk about climate change and greenhouse effect. Those who grab the microphone reduce themselves to hapless and helpless onlookers against the mighty nature. Both greenhouse effect and climate change are intimately inter linked. To understand greenhouse effect, we have to delve into the nomenclature GREEN HOUSE.
Basically, name green house is a misnomer for a glass house maintained in a family garden to maintain temperature sensitive plants during harsh winter. In many countries it is known by different names, glass house, hot house and finally green house.
The name green house is well entrenched in the minds of common people. Yet the nomenclature is little confusing. Then why the epithet “green”. It is because it houses green plants.
It makes sense is it not. Green houses are built with glass roof top and glass side walls. These glass houses are prestigious show pieces of famous botanical gardens. The famous botanical garden of England the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew, Surrey boasts itself of holding a mammoth glass house called “The Palm House” to house tropical palm trees, trees and plants of various orders, native to tropical regions of the world.
It is imperative to understand the principles of greenhouse effect. What is the result of greenhouse effect inside the glass house – rise in temperature. Take a simple day to day example.
When you park your car on the parking lot on a bright sunny day and open your car doors after a couple of hours of shopping you feel very hot inside the car. This is the greenhouse effect. To understand this in a more logical way, it requires a knowledge of resonance. To understand resonance, we have to understand
vibration and frequency of vibration. Everything on our planet living and nonliving have vibration. These vibrations differ in their frequency. When vibrations of the same frequency meet or interact, we say that they resonate or the vibrations are in resonance. The resonance has its good and bad side. Now we take an example of two human beings walking on the road in opposite direction if they are friends they stop and greet each other if they are strangers they pass by. That is to say if they are friends, they resonate that is they have the same frequency of vibration in their system.
Now let us take the glass house for example. Sun light which passes through glass has all components of spectrum except infrared. The spectral assembly interacts with the plants inside the glasshouse and produces infrared radiation which are heat waves. Infrared cannot escape through glass into the outer atmosphere because the vibrations of infra-red and glass molecules are the same like two friends meeting on the road with same frequency. In the language of physics, we say glass is opaque to infrared radiation. With no way to escape infrared radiation gets trapped inside glass house making it warm. With this warmth plants inside the glass house can survive the harsh cold of the winter bound world.
When it is a phenomenon useful in a glass house why is it made into big issue globally. There comes the real crux of the problem. We have to consider the entire planet earth as a glass or green house with its encircling atmosphere as roof and side walls. The roof and side walls are made of various types of gases and pollutants. These are known as greenhouse gases (GHG). They trap or resonate with infrared (heat waves) escaping from earth’s surface into the atmosphere. The greenhouse gases (GHG) include carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), fluorinated gases-hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, Sulphur hexachloride, nitrogen trifluoride.
Infrared radiation, is produced as a result of sunlight’s interaction with objects on earth. The infrared radiation which tries to get out of earth’s atmosphere is blocked by greenhouse gases (GHG) as I mentioned earlier like the glass roof and glass sidewalls of the glass house. Without a chance to escape, blocked by the greenhouse gases by resonance phenomenon the infrared radiation gets reflected back to earth increasing the atmospheric temperature. The GHG are produced by various human activities. These activities include burning of fossil fuel coal based industrial activities farmland activities and innumerable domestic activities
Greenhouse gases (GHG) get accumulated in the lower layers of earth’s atmosphere called the troposphere.
It is interesting to note that water molecules which surrounds earth’s atmosphere also resonate with infrared radiation. When there is bright sunshine after a rain shower, we feel a sudden increase in atmospheric temperature. This is as a result of infrared radiation getting blocked by water molecules and reflected back to earth
While talking about water molecules resonate with infrared, I am reminded of a science fair competition in Dallas USA. Our granddaughter Shriya Siddhartha of 7th grade in 2016-2017 rigged up a set up where metal pipes were sandwiched between glass plates and kept out in the sun. Cold water was allowed to flow through the pipes from a higher gradient. After a few minutes she was able to collect hot water at the end of the tubes at a lower gradient. Our granddaughter won the first prize for her [bk1] experiment exploiting greenhouse effect. She was selected to compete at the Beal Bank Dallas Regional Science and Engineering Fair.
When greenhouse effect is viewed as a villain creating unprecedent rains floods and cyclones, there is an advantageous side. With the melting of polar ice caps and melting of ice sheets north of Yukon territory of Canada makes the passage of commercial ships easier without the help expensive ice breakers. If this happens the traffic time of ships from Pacific to Atlantic will be reduced considerably. Goods can become cheaper. The country that will be benefitted by this is Canada earning a traffic toll of about 600 million dollars annually.
Green plants and trees use atmospheric carbon dioxide to manufacture their food through a process called photo synthesis. This functions as a good sink for the escaped carbon dioxide Tropical rain forests function as a very good sink for carbon dioxide, the speed with which carbon dioxide emission takes place and speed with which trees are felled in forests nullifies nature’s effort to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Greenhouse effect and its impact will not be reduced by hollow political platitude. Every single individual living on this planet has to get involved to pin point GHG production and reduce GHG emission. It is a Herculean effort. It may take one generation or two to arrive at a semblance of normalcy.
PROFESSOR K.A.BALASUBRAMANIAN
COMMERCIAL GLASS HOUSE
DOMESTIC GLASS HOUSE
GLASS HOUSE "PALM HOUSE" AT THE ROYAL BOTANICAL GARDEN AT KEW, SURREY,ENGLAND
Green house effect& Mankind’s challenge is an eye opener for all to under stand in simple scientific terms who all struggled to understand what it is all these days.Professor KAB as he is very popularly known in India& now World over with his classic blogs on several issues facing mankind always explains science underlying these issues as NobelLaureates do to enlighten common as well as intellectuals.Yes Green house malady now troubling people in major capital cities of the World can be mitigated if all mainly the industrial countries take measures on time rather than to repent afterwords.Dear World wake up now& do your might to save the planet.Great call Professor Saab.Thanks from all of us.