Question

According to an article published by the University of Missouri Extension Service, the United Nations credits U.S. animal agriculture as being responsible for 18 percent of the greenhouse gases in the environment. The Environmental Protection Agency disputes that data, suggesting that the percentage should be closer to 8 percent for animal agriculture. Follow up on these articles. Can agriculturalists reduce the number of greenhouse gases being released? Write a persuasive paper to convince the reader that 1) agriculture cannot possibly be responsible for all these greenhouse gases and bears no responsibility in cleaning up the environment, OR 2) agriculture is responsible for these gases and needs to voluntarily clean up their act. Your paper should be at least 300 words long.

Answer 1

A greenhouse gas is a gas that absorbs and emits radiant energy within the thermal infrared range. Greenhouse gases cause the greenhouse effect on planets. The primary greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone . Without greenhouse gases, the average temperature of Earth's surface would be about, rather than the present average of . The atmospheres of Venus, Mars and Titan also contain greenhouse gases..

Human activities since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution have produced a 45% increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, from 280 ppm in 1750 to 415 ppm in 2019. The last time the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was this high was over 3 million years ago. This increase has occurred despite the uptake of more than half of the emissions by various natural "sinks" involved in the carbon cycle.

The vast majority of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions come from combustion of fossil fuels, principally coal, petroleum and natural gas, with additional contributions coming from deforestation and other changes in land use. The leading source of anthropogenic methane emissions is agriculture, closely followed by gas venting and fugitive emissions from the fossil-fuel industry. Traditional rice cultivation is the second biggest agricultural methane source after livestock, with a near-term warming impact equivalent to the carbon-dioxide emissions from all aviation.

At current emission rates, temperatures could increase by 2 °C, which the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change designated as the upper limit to avoid "dangerous" levels, by 2036.

Gases in Earth's atmosphere

Non-greenhouse gases

The major constituents of Earth's atmosphere, nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, are not greenhouse gases because molecules containing two atoms of the same element such as and have no net change in the distribution of their electrical charges when they vibrate, and monatomic gases such as Ar do not have vibrational modes. Hence they are almost totally unaffected by infrared radiation. Some molecules containing just two atoms of different elements, such as carbon monoxide and hydrogen chloride, do absorb infrared radiation, but these molecules are short-lived in the atmosphere owing to their reactivity or solubility. Therefore, they do not contribute significantly to the greenhouse effect and often are omitted when discussing greenhouse gases.

Greenhouse gases

Greenhouse gases are those that absorb and emit infrared radiation in the wavelength range emitted by Earth. The proportion of an emission remaining in the atmosphere after a specified time is the "airborne fraction" . The annual airborne fraction is the ratio of the atmospheric increase in a given year to that year's total emissions. As of 2006 the annual airborne fraction for was about 0.45. The annual airborne fraction increased at a rate of 0.25 ± 0.21% per year over the period 1959–2006.

Indirect radiative effects

Step-by-step explanation: