Almost all machines use oil,
gas or coal. All of them produce pollution
-- you know, the smelly stuff that comes out of car
exhaust pipes and factory chimneys, that sort of thing. Much of this
is a gas you can't see called carbon dioxide. It's this gas which seems
to be the main cause of the trouble.
Opening
Pandora's carbon box Pandora
was a woman who figured in one of the Greek
myths. In the myth, the gods gave her a mysterious box. They'd
put something nasty in the box and told her never to open it. But
she was overcome by curiosity and opened the box. Out flew horrible
stuff like plagues, sorrow and misery. She tried in vain to shut
the lid but it was too late: the horrors were free.
It's a little
like that with fossil
fuels. For millions of years, the planet has been tucking away
its carbon
dioxide in the form of coal, oil and limestone.
This natural sequestering
of carbon and burying it deep in the Earth's crust has kept the
climate machine in balance. Too much carbon means global warming;
too little means cooling. Humans have opened the planetary Pandora's
carbon box and let out fossil fuels on a vast scale. Burning them
releases the carbon they contained back into the air as carbon dioxide,
CO2.