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Products from Oil

How does Oil affect the Environment?

Fossil fuels are burnt on a huge scale.

What are Greenhouse Gases?

How do Carbon Dioxide and other Greenhouse Gases
cause Global Warming?

The temperature of our planet is a balance between
the amount of heat it receives in the day from the Sun
and the amount of heat given out at night into space.

In the day, energy from the Sun reaches the Earth in the form
of electromagnetic radiation (this includes heat and light).
The surface temperature (and the atmospheric temperature)
of the Earth rises in the day. At night, heat energy from the
Earth is lost to space. This heat energy is a fairly narrow range
of electromagnetic radiation called infra-red radiation.

Carbon dioxide, methane, water vapour and nitrous oxides
absorb
infra-red radiation in the same range that
is given off by the Earth at night. More carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere means more heat is absorbed,
and less can escape at night into space. The overall effect
is that the Earth receives more heat in the day
than it can lose at night, so the temperature rises.

The same thing happens in a greenhouse where glass
instead of carbon dioxide is used to prevent the heat escaping
at night. So, carbon dioxide, methane, water vapour
and nitrous oxides have been called greenhouse gases.

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