Министерствообразования и науки Украины
Днепропетровскийобластной медицинский
Лицей –интернат «Днiпро»
Курсоваяработа
«Ecological problems.Environmental protection»
Выполнила:
Ученица 11 – Г класса
Калашникова Анастасия
Научные руководители:
Кривонос И.А.
Легкий П.В.
Introduction
My term-paperis devoted to the theme of the global ecological problems and the environmentalprotection. I would like to tell you about some problems for example“Greenhouse effect”. The aim of my project is to show and explain howecological problems influence on our life and about there consequences.
The sources ofmy work are:
· Scientificbooks and newspapers
· Numerousinternet data
My projectconsists of the following parts: Introduction, Literature overview, conclusionand literature.
· Literatureoverview consists of 11 themes.
· Conclusion.
· Literature.I suppose that the topic I chose isvery actual nowadays and I hope that it will contribute to our knowledge andwill also have a practical implementation in the class.
Ecological situation nowadays
Ecology is avery popular word today. But what does it mean? Ecology is a since whichstudies the relationship between all forms of life on our planet and theenvironment. This word came from Greek “oikos” which means home. The idea ofhome includes our whole planet, its population, Nature, animals, birds, fish,insects and all other living beings and even the atmosphere around our planet.
Since ancient times Nature has served Mangiving everything he needs: air to breathe, food to eat, water to drink, wood forbuilding and fuel for heating his home. For thousands of years people lived inharmony with the environment and it seemed to them that the resources of naturehad no end or limit. With the industrial revolution our negative influence onNature began to increase. Large cities with thousands of steaming, pollutingplants and factories can be found nowadays all over the world. The by-productsof their activity pollute the air we breathe the water we drink the fieldswhere our crops are grown. That’s why those who live in cities prefer spendingtheir days off and their holidays far from the noise of the city, to be closerto nature. Perhaps they like to breathe fresh air or to swim in clear waterbecause the ecology is not so poor as in the cities.
So, pollution is one of the most burningproblems of nowadays. Now millions of chimneys, cars, buses, trucks all overthe world exhaust fumes and harmful substances into the atmosphere. Thesepoisoned substances pollute everything: air, land, water, birds and animals.So, it is usually hard to breathe in the large cities where there are lotsplants.
Every year the atmosphere is polluted byabout 1000 tons of industrial dust and other harmful substances. Big citiessuffer from smog. Cars with their engine have become the main source ofpollution in industrial countries. Vast forests are being cut down for the needof industries in Europe and USA. The loss of the forests upsets the oxygenbalance of the new wastelands. As the result some species of animals, birds, fishand plants have disappeared and keep disappearing.
Water pollution is very serious, too. Uglyrivers of dirty water polluted with factory waste, poisoned fish are all-roundus. And polluted air and poisoned water lead to the end of the civilization.So, nowadays a lot of dead lands and lifeless areas have appeared, because ouractions and dealings can turn the land to a desert.
Greenhouseeffect
The greenhouseeffect is the process in which the emission of infrared radiation by theatmosphere warms a planet's surface. The name comes from an analogy with thewarming of air inside a greenhouse compared to the air outside the greenhouse.The Earth's average surface temperature is about 33°C warmer than it would be without the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect was discovered byJoseph Fourier in 1829 and first investigated quantitatively by SvanteArrhenius in 1896. In addition to the Earth, Mars and especially Venus havegreenhouse effects.
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Basicmechanism
ecologicalenvironmental protection greenhouse
The Earthreceives energy from the Sun in the form of radiation. The Earth reflects about30% of the incoming solar radiation. The remaining 70% is absorbed, warming theland, atmosphere and oceans. For the Earth's temperature to be in steady stateso that the Earth does not rapidly heat or cool, this absorbed solar radiationmust be very nearly balanced by energy radiated back to space in the infraredwavelengths. Since the intensity of infrared radiation increases withincreasing temperature, one can think of the Earth's temperature as beingdetermined by the infrared flux needed to balance the absorbed solar flux. Thevisible solar radiation mostly heats the surface, not the atmosphere, whereasmost of the infrared radiation escaping to space is emitted from the upperatmosphere, not the surface. The infrared photons emitted by the surface aremostly absorbed in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases and clouds and do notescape directly to space.
The reasonthis warms the surface is most easily understood by starting with a simplifiedmodel of a purely radiative greenhouse effect that ignores energy transfer inthe atmosphere by convection (sensible heat transport) and by the evaporationand condensation of water vapor (latent heat transport). In this purely radiativecase, one can think of the atmosphere as emitting infrared radiation bothupwards and downwards. The upward infrared flux emitted by the surface mustbalance not only the absorbed solar flux but also this downward infrared fluxemitted by the atmosphere. The surface temperature will rise until it generatesthermal radiation equivalent to the sum of the incoming solar and infraredradiation.
A morerealistic picture taking into account the convective and latent heat fluxes issomewhat more complex. But the following simple model captures the essence. Thestarting point is to note that the opacity of the atmosphere to infraredradiation determines the height in the atmosphere from which most of thephotons are emitted into space. If the atmosphere is more opaque, the typicalphoton escaping to space will be emitted from higher in the atmosphere, becauseone then has to go to higher altitudes to see out to space in the infrared.Since the emission of infrared radiation is a function of temperature, it isthe temperature of the atmosphere at this emission level that is effectivelydetermined by the requirement that the emitted flux balance the absorbed solarflux.
But thetemperature of the atmosphere generally decreases with height above thesurface, at a rate of roughly 6.5 °C per kilometer on average, until one reaches the stratosphere 10-15 km above the surface. (Most infrared photons escapingto space are emitted by the troposphere, the region bounded by the surface andthe stratosphere, so we can ignore the stratosphere in this simple picture.) Avery simple model, but one that proves to be remarkably useful, involves theassumption that this temperature profile is simply fixed, by the non-radiativeenergy fluxes. Given the temperature at the emission level of the infrared fluxescaping to space, one then computes the surface temperature by increasingtemperature at the rate of 6.5 °C per kilometer, the environmental lapse rate, until one reaches the surface. The more opaque the atmosphere, and thehigher the emission level of the escaping infrared radiation, the warmer thesurface, since one then needs to follow this lapse rate over a larger distance inthe vertical. While less intuitive than the purely radiative greenhouse effect,this less familiar radiative-convective picture is the starting point for mostdiscussions of the greenhouse effect in the climate modeling literature.
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Greenhousegases
Quantummechanics provides the basis for computing the interactions between moleculesand radiation. Most of this interaction occurs when the frequency of theradiation closely matches that of the spectral lines of the molecule,determined by the quantization of the modes of vibration and rotation of themolecule. (The electronic excitations are generally not relevant for infraredradiation, as they require energy larger than that in an infrared photon.)
The width of aspectral line is an important element in understanding its importance for theabsorption of radiation. In the Earth’s atmosphere these spectral widths areprimarily determined by “pressure broadening”, which is the distortion of thespectrum due to the collision with another molecule. Most of the infraredabsorption in the atmosphere can be thought of as occurring while two moleculesare colliding. The absorption due to a photon interacting with a lone moleculeis relatively small. This three-body aspect of the problem, one photon and twomolecules, makes direct quantum mechanical computation for molecules ofinterest more challenging. Careful laboratory spectroscopic measurementsprovide the basis for most of the radioactive transfer calculations used instudies of the atmosphere.
Themolecules/atoms that constitute the bulk of the atmosphere: oxygen (O2),nitrogen (N2) and argon; do not interact with infrared radiationsignificantly. While the oxygen and nitrogen molecules can vibrate, because oftheir symmetry these vibrations do not create any transient charge separation.Without such a transient dipole moment, they can neither absorb nor emit infraredradiation. In the Earth’s atmosphere, the dominant infrared absorbing gases arewater vapor, carbon dioxide, and ozone (O3). The same molecules arealso the dominant infrared emitting molecules. CO2 and O3have «floppy» vibration motions whose quantum states can be excitedby collisions at energies encountered in the atmosphere. For example, carbondioxide is a linear molecule, but it has an important vibrational mode in whichthe molecule bends with the carbon in the middle moving one way and the oxygenson the ends moving the other way, creating some charge separation, a dipolemoment, thus carbon dioxide molecules can absorb IR radiation. Collisions willimmediately transfer this energy to heating the surrounding gas. On the otherhand, other CO2 molecules will be vibrationally excited bycollisions. Roughly 5% of CO2 molecules are vibrationally excited atroom temperature and it is this 5% that radiates. A substantial part of thegreenhouse effect due to carbon dioxide exists because this vibration is easilyexcited by infrared radiation. CO2 has two other vibrational modes.The symmetric stretch does not radiate, and the asymmetric stretch is at toohigh a frequency to be effectively excited by atmospheric temperaturecollisions, although it does contribute to absorption of IR radiation. Thevibrational modes of water are at too high energies to effectively radiate, butdo absorb higher frequency IR radiation. Water vapor has a bent shape. It has apermanent dipole moment (the O atom end is electron rich, and the H atomselectron poor) which means that IR light can be emitted and absorbed duringrotational transitions, and these transitions can also be produced bycollisional energy transfer. Clouds are also very important infrared absorbers.Therefore, water has multiple effects on infrared radiation, through its vaporphase and through its condensed phases. Other absorbers of significance includemethane, nitrous oxide and the chlorofluorocarbons.
Discussion ofthe relative importance of different infrared absorbers is confused by theoverlap between the spectral lines due to different gases, widened by pressurebroadening. As a result, the absorption due to one gas cannot be thought of asindependent of the presence of other gases. One convenient approach is toremove the chosen constituent, leaving all other absorbers, and thetemperatures, untouched, and monitoring the infrared radiation escaping tospace. The reduction in infrared absorption is then a measure of the importanceof that constituent. More precisely, define the greenhouse effect (GE) to bethe difference between the infrared radiation that the surface would radiate tospace if there were no atmosphere and the actual infrared radiation escaping tospace. Then compute the percentage reduction in GE when a constituent isremoved. The table below is computed by this method, using a particular1-dimensional model of the atmosphere. More recent 3D computations lead tosimilar results.
Gas removed
percent reduction in GE
H2O
CO2
O3
36%
12%
3%
By thisparticular measure, water vapor can be thought of as providing 36% of thegreenhouse effect, and carbon dioxide 12%, but the effect of removal of both ofthese constituents will be greater than 48%. An additional proviso is thatthese numbers are computed holding the cloud distribution fixed. But removingwater vapor from the atmosphere while holding clouds fixed is not likely to bephysically relevant. In addition, the effects of a given gas are typicallynonlinear in the amount of that gas, since the absorption by the gas at onelevel in the atmosphere can remove photons that would otherwise interact withthe gas at another altitude. The kinds of estimates presented in the table,while often encountered in the controversies surrounding global warming, mustbe treated with caution. Different estimates found in different sourcestypically result from different definitions and do not reflect uncertainties inthe underlying radioactive transfer.
When Do YouSend Greenhouse Gases into the Air
Wheneveryou...
Watch TVUse aHair Dryer
Use the AirConditionerRide in a Car
Turn on aLightPlay a Video Game
Listen to aStereoWash or Dry Clothes
Use a DishWasherMicrowave a Meal
… you arehelping to send greenhouse gas into the air.
To performmany of these functions, you need to use electricity. Electricity comes frompower plants. Most power plants use coal and oil to make electricity. Burningcoal and oil produces greenhouse gases.
Otherthings we do send greenhouse gases into the air
The trash thatwe send to landfills produces a greenhouse gas called methane. Methane is alsoproduced by the animals we raise for dairy and meat products and when we takecoal out of the ground. Whenever we drive or ride in a car, we are addinggreenhouse gases to the atmosphere. And, when factories make the things that webuy and use everyday, they too are sending greenhouse gases into the air.
And nowlet’s talk about Climate and Weather
Weather is allaround us. Weather may be one of the first things you notice after you wake up.Changes are, if it is cold and snowing, you'll wear a jacket when you gooutside. If it's hot and sunny, you may wear shorts. Sounds pretty simple,right?
But what aboutclimate? How is it different from weather? And what is weather, exactly?
Weather
Weatherdescribes whatever is happening outdoors in a given place at a given time.Weather is what happens from minute to minute. The weather can change a lotwithin a very short time. For example, it may rain for an hour and then becomesunny and clear. Weather is what we hear about on the television news everynight. Weather includes daily changes in precipitation, barometric pressure,temperature, and wind conditions in a given location.
Climate
Climatedescribes the total of all weather occurring over a period of years in a givenplace. This includes average weather conditions, regular weather sequences(like winter, spring, summer, and fall), and special weather events (liketornadoes and floods). Climate tells us what it's usually like in the place whereyou live. San Diego is known as having a mild climate, New Orleans a humidclimate, Buffalo a snowy climate, and Seattle a rainy climate.
Isthe climate warming
Global surfacetemperatures have increased about 0.6°C (plus or minus 0.2°C) since the late-19th century, and about one half degree F (0.2 to 0.3°C) over the past 25 years (the period with the most credible data). The warming has not beenglobally uniform. Some areas (including parts of the southeastern U.S.) havecooled. The recent warmth has been greatest over N. America and Eurasia between40 and 70°N. Warming, assisted by the record El Nino of 1997-1998, hascontinued right up to the present. Linear trends can vary greatly depending onthe period over which they are computed. Temperature trends in the lowertroposphere (between about 2,500 and 18,000 ft.) from 1979 to the present, the period for which Satellite Microwave Sounding Unit data exist, are small and maybe unrepresentative of longer term trends and trends closer to the surface.Furthermore, there are small unresolved differences between radiosonde andsatellite observations of tropospheric temperatures, though both data sourcesshow slight warming trends. If one calculates trends beginning with thecommencement of radiosonde data in the 1950s, there is a slight greater warmingin the record due to increases in the 1970s. There are statistical and physicalreasons (e.g., short record lengths, the transient differential effects ofvolcanic activity and El Nino, and boundary layer effects) for expectingdifferences between recent trends in surface and lower tropospherictemperatures, but the exact causes for the differences are still underinvestigation (see National Research Council report «ReconcilingObservations of Global Temperature Change»).
An enhancedgreenhouse effect is expected to cause cooling in higher parts of theatmosphere because the increased «blanketing» effect in the loweratmosphere holds in more heat. Cooling of the lower stratosphere (about30-35,000ft.) since 1979 is shown by both satellite Microwave Sounding Unit andradiosonde data, but is larger in the radiosonde data.
There has beena general, but not global, tendency toward reduced diurnal temperature range(the difference between high and low daily temperatures) over about 50% of theglobal land mass since the middle of the 20th century. Cloud cover hasincreased in many of the areas with reduced diurnal temperature range.
Relativelycool surface and tropospheric temperatures, and a relatively warmer lowerstratosphere, were observed in 1992 and 1993, following the 1991 eruption ofMt. Pinatubo. The warming reappeared in 1994. A dramatic global warming, at least partly associated with the record El Nino, took place in 1998. This warmingepisode is reflected from the surface to the top of the troposphere. Indirectindicators of warming such as borehole temperatures, snow cover, and glacierrecession data, are in substantial agreement with the more direct indicators ofrecent warmth.
Arctic sea ice has decreasedsince 1973, when satellite measurements began but Antarctic sea ice may haveincreased slightly.
Can wechange the climate
It may seemhard to believe that people can actually change the Earth’s climate. Butscientists think that the things people do that send greenhouse gases into theair are making our planet warmer.
Once, allclimate changes occurred naturally. However, during the Industrial Revolution,we began altering our climate and environment through agricultural andindustrial practices. The Industrial Revolution was a time when people beganusing machines to make life easier. It started more than 200 years ago andchanged the way humans live. Before the Industrial Revolution, human activityreleased very few gases into the atmosphere, but now through population growth,fossil fuel burning, and deforestation, we are affecting the mixture of gasesin the atmosphere.
Since theIndustrial Revolution, the need for energy to run machines has steadilyincreased. Some energy, like the energy you need to do your homework, comesfrom the food you eat. But other energy, like the energy that makes cars runand much of the energy used to light and heat our homes, comes from fuels likecoal and oil – fossil fuels. Burning these fuels releases greenhouse gases.
Environmentalprotection in Ukraine
In the 20thcentury, the rapid growth of science and technology resulted in an increasingnegative effect on the biosphere of the Earth. Huge industrial enterprisespollute the air we breathe? The water we drink and the land, which gives usbread, vegetables, and fruit. Their discharge of dust and gas into theatmosphere returns to the Earth in the form of acid rains. It also destroys theozone layer of the Earth and causes ‘’ greenhouse effect‘’. It effects forests,rivers, crops and people’s health. This leads to the reduction of the life-spanof man. People die younger because of cancer, AIDS and other diseases which aredirectly connected with the polluted environment they live in. Many species ofanimals and birds face extinction due to the pollution of the biosphere.
The world’soceans are in danger too. They are filled with poisonous industrial and nuclearwaste, chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The Aral Sea in Russia is alreadydead, the Mediterranean and the North Sea are slowly dying.
The worstsituation with air pollution is in big overpopulated cities. In Cairo andMexico City, for example, breathing is equivalent to smoking 2 packs of cigarettesa day. The big industrial cities in Ukraine like Zaporizhiya, Donetsk, Kharkivand some others have the same situation.
Another threatfor the environment are nuclear power stations like Chernobyl. In April 1986that nuclear power plant just north-west of Kyiv suffered the worst nuclearaccident in history: dozens died immediately, tens of thousands were evacuated,while the long-term effects to human life are difficult to calculate. A largepart of Ukraine, Russia and Byelorussia was polluted by radioactive substances.Great damage was done to their economy, nature and people’s health. The problemof Chernobyl has not been solved yet because of the economic difficulties thatUkraine is having now. The power plant was closed on December 15, 2000.
Nowadayspeople of Ukraine, like most people in developed countries, realize thatwithout solving environmental problems, the life of the future generations willbe in real danger. Many people join the Great Party of Ukraine to unite theirefforts to save the planet where we live, to make our world healthier and morebeautiful.
Greenpeace
Greenpeace isan international environmental organization founded in Vancouver, BritishColumbia, Canada in 1971. It is best known for its campaigns against whaling.In later years, the focus of the organization turned to other environmentalissues, including bottom trawling, global warming, ancient forest destruction,nuclear power, and genetic engineering. Greenpeace has national and regionaloffices in 42 countries worldwide, all of which are affiliated to theAmsterdam-based Greenpeace International. The global organization receives itsincome through the individual contributions of an estimated 2.8 millionfinancial supporters, as well as from grants from charitable foundations, butdoes not accept funding from governments or corporations.
Missionstatement
Greenpeace'sofficial mission statement describes the organization and its aims thus:
Greenpeace isan independent, campaigning organization which uses peaceful direct action andcreative communication to expose global environmental problems, and to forcesolutions for a green and peaceful future. Greenpeace's goal is to ensure theability of the earth to nurture life in all its diversity.
Structure
Greenpeace isa global environmental organization, consisting of Greenpeace International(Stichting Greenpeace Council) in Amsterdam, and 27 national and regionaloffices around the world, providing a presence in 41 countries. These nationaland regional offices are largely autonomous in carrying out jointly agreedglobal campaign strategies within the local context they operate in, and inseeking the necessary financial support from donors to fund this work. Nationaland regional offices support a network of volunteer-run local groups. Localgroups participate in campaigns in their area, and mobilise for larger protestsand activities elsewhere. Millions of supporters who are not organized intolocal groups support Greenpeace by making financial donations and participatingin campaigns as citizens and consumers.
Nationaland regional offices
Greenpeace ispresent in the following countries and regions, as of March 2007: Argentina, Australia-Pacific region(Australia, Fiji, Papua New-Guinea, Solomon Islands), Belgium, Brazil, Canada,Chile, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greenpeace Nordic (Denmark,Finland, Norway, Sweden), Greece, Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe(Austria, Hungary, Slovak Republic, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia,Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia), India, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, GreenpeaceMediterranean (Israel, Cyprus, Lebanon, Malta, Tunisia, Turkey), Mexico, theNetherlands, Greenpeace Aotearoa New Zealand (New Zealand), Russia, South-EastAsia (Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand), Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom,and the United States.
Friend ofEarth (FoE)
Friends of theEarth is the U.S. voice of an influential, international network of grassrootsgroups in 70 countries. Founded in San Francisco in 1969 by David Brower,Friends of the Earth has for decades been at the forefront of high-profileefforts to create a more healthy, just world. There members were the foundersof what is now the world's largest federation of democratically electedenvironmental groups, Friends of the Earth International.
In March of2005, Friends of the Earth finalized a merger with Bluewater Network. Bluewateris a dynamic organization with creative campaigns to combat global warming, airand water pollution and damage to public lands by thrill vehicles such assnowmobiles and jetskis. The merger has added to our capacity and enabled us tobroaden the scope of our work in a number of areas.
Among therepresent efforts are successes that draw headlines nationwide and internationaland local efforts that make a difference in your backyard and those of people aworld away.
FoE conductedlab tests that confirmed our suspicion that genetically engineered corn notapproved for human consumption was in products on supermarket shelves acrossthe nation.
They alsoexposed the fact that Enron received $2.5 billion in taxpayer loans funneled throughinternational financial institutions.
In Indiana,they are working with local groups to fight the destructive new-terrain I-69project. This 140-mile, $1.8 billion highway would demolish thousands of acresof farms and forests and bisect an Amish community.
Over theyears, there efforts and those of our supporters mean FoE have been able to:stop over 150 bad dams and water projects worldwide; ban international whaling;oust infamous James Watt; press for landmark regulations of strip mining andoil tankers; reform the World Bank; and eliminate billions in taxpayersubsidies to corporate polluters.
Literature
Internet data:
· www.greenpeace.com
· www.world-ecology.com
· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect#_note-2
· http://epa.gov/climatechange/kids/climateweather.html
· http://epa.gov/climatechange/kids/change.html
· www.google.com.ua
Multimedia Editions· BritannicaEncyclopedia (Multimedia Edition)· BritishMultimedia Encyclopedia
Books
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· НикитинД.П., Новиков Ю.В. Окружающая середа и человек: Учебное пособие для студентоввузов.- Москва: Высшая школа, 1986.- 415 с.
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· БілявськийГ.О., Фурдуй Р.С., Костіков І.Ю. Основи екології: Підручник. – Київ: Либідь,2005. – 408 с.
· Тучина Н.В.,Меркулова Т.К., Кузьмина В.С. Speak English with pleasure. – Харьков 2003,с. 233