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Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, meaning it causes heat to get trapped in the atmosphere, rather than being released into space, raising the Earth's temperature – known as global warming. [303] Alongside greenhouse gas emissions the industry is also responsible for almost 35% of microplastic pollution in the oceans. [302]
Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause harm. [1] Pollution can take the form of any substance (solid, liquid, or gas) or energy (such as radioactivity, heat, sound, or light). Pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants.
The Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, published by the United Nation's IPBES in 2019, posits that roughly one million species of plants and animals face extinction from anthropogenic causes, such as expanding human land use for industrial agriculture and livestock rearing, along with overfishing. [10] [11] [12]
Assimilative capacity is the ability for pollutants to be absorbed by an environment without detrimental effects to the environment or those who use of it. [1] Natural absorption into an environment is achieved through dilution, dispersion and removal through chemical or biological processes. [1]
The largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions is agriculture, closely followed by gas venting and fugitive emissions from the fossil-fuel industry. [40] [41] The largest agricultural methane source is livestock. Cattle (raised for both beef and milk, as well as for inedible outputs like manure and draft power) are the animal species ...
Air pollution and water pollution are two contributors of climate change that can have detrimental effects such as extreme temperatures, increase in precipitation, and a rise in sea level. [ 83 ] [ 84 ] Because of this, communities are more vulnerable to events including floods and droughts potentially resulting in food scarcity and an ...
Air pollution can occur naturally or be caused by human activities. [4] Air pollution causes around 7 or 8 million deaths each year. [5] [6] It is a significant risk factor for a number of pollution-related diseases, including heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma and lung cancer.
An anthrosol (or anthropogenic soil) in the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB) [1] is a type of soil that has been formed or heavily modified due to long-term human activity, such as from irrigation, addition of organic waste or wet-field cultivation used to create paddy fields.