Air Pollution

Global warming is one of the biggest problems that face the world. One main cause of global warming is air pollution. Air pollution is the CO2, dust, smoke and other gases that come out from industry and motor vehicles or natural sources such as wind-blown dust and smoke from fires. These gases stay in the atmosphere and cause the greenhouse effect. In this essay I will outline the problem of air pollution and discus some of the solution that may help to reduce it.

Air pollution has many effects one of the effect is the health. Air pollution can harm the human health by harming the lunges, heart and can cause skin cancer and birth defects (www.infoplease.com). Air pollution also effects the environment. It can cause acid rain which can affect plants by destroying their leaves, it poisons the soil, and it changes the chemistry of lakes (www.lbl.gov). It also causes the earth temperature to rise. The temperature of the earth rises because air pollution affects the ozone layer which protects the earth from the sun and affects plants and wildlife.

There are some solutions to reduce air pollution. One new solution is Carbon Capture and Storage. The technology is made to prevent the CO2 of building up the atmosphere by catch the CO2 and store it deep underground. The CO2 is stored below sea level instead of going to the atmosphere. The best places to build the technology on are old oil and gas fields. What happens is the CO2 goes to old oil fields which have a percentage of oil not produced and help to make it easier to produce.

It is a very important to start with this technology now to help the environment and the government should help to such as in Britain which published a new law that ever coal fire power stations must have technology of carbon capture and storage(www.guardian.co.uk). In my opinion this is a helpful technology that reduces CO2 emission.

Resources:

Carbon Capture and Storage. 28 May 2009 http://www.co2storage.org.uk/.

Editorial: Carbon capture and storage - A victory for green thinking Comment is free The Observer." Latest news, sport, business, comment and reviews from the Guardian guardian.co.uk. 28 May 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/26/carbon-capture-and-storage-coal.

Air Pollution." Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 28 May 2009 http://www.lbl.gov/Education/ELSI/pollution-main.html.

Infoplease: Encyclopedia, Almanac, Atlas, Biographies, Dictionary, Thesaurus. Free online reference, research & homework help. Infoplease.com. 28 May 2009 http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0856526.html.

"Carbon storage trial set to go." Ecos. 141 (Feb-March 2008): 4(1). Student Resource Center - Gold. Gale. Higher Colleges of Technology. 27 May. 2009 .

cool cities

Cool cities are projects that will have zero carbon emission and an example of cool cities is Masdar city. But are cool cities practical? In my opinion they are not. In this essay I will outline some of the reason why I think that cool cities are not practical.

The first reason why cool cities are not practical is the size of the world population. There are over 6 billion people (International program center), around the world and these cities take only less than 50000 people which mean that they have to build 120000 cool cities or more because the continuous growth of the people around the world. Additional to that it’s impossible to build more than 120000 cities because there are no land specs for all these new cities on earth.

The second reason is the cost of these projects. Masder city cost around $22 billion (Wiemers). Most cities in the world can’t afford to build these cities. Building one city is not enough for one country which means that they have to build more which they will pay double. This kind of money can build more than one project to reduce the spreading of carbon dioxide than one project like cool cities.

In conclusion these kinds of projects are a waste of money and can’t even take a population of one country.

"International Programs." Census Bureau Home Page. 14 May 2009 http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html.

Masdar will build $22 billion carbon-free city -." ClimateChangeCorp.com. 14 May 2009 http://www.climatechangecorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=5172.