Cardiology

Health and the city: Using urban design to promote heart health

Cities harbour a dangerous cocktail of environmental stressors which politicians must tackle to save lives and preserve health. That's the conclusion of a paper published today in European Heart Journal, a journal of the ...

Health

Physicians' roles on the front line of climate change

Physicians can and should help mitigate the negative health effects of climate change because they will be at the forefront of responding to the effects of global warming, argues an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association ...

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Greenhouse gas

Greenhouse gases are gases in an atmosphere that absorb and emit radiation within the thermal infrared range. This process is the fundamental cause of the greenhouse effect. Common greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. In our solar system, the atmospheres of Venus, Mars and Titan also contain gases that cause greenhouse effects. Greenhouse gases greatly affect the temperature of the Earth; without them, Earth's surface would be on average about 33°C (59°F) colder than at present.

Human activities since the start of the industrial era around 1750 have increased the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The 2007 assessment report compiled by the IPCC observed that "changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, land cover and solar radiation alter the energy balance of the climate system", and concluded that "increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations is very likely to have caused most of the increases in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century".

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