ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the history of environmental problems. It focuses on the global warming/climate change mainly caused by CO2 emission due to fossil fuel burning. The chapter demonstrates that the role of engineers, especially that of chemical engineers, was significant in the course to combat pollution problems. Various effects of the global environmental problem have become apparent in desertification, marine pollution, nuclear waste contamination, acid rain, destruction of the ozone layer, and the transfer of harmful substances over international borders. The first category of the global environmental problem is that harmful or waste products are left untreated, dispersed or transported elsewhere. Global warming results from the actions of so-called “greenhouse gases”. The measures for global warming are first classified into four categories: cooling the earth, symptomatic measures against possible effects of global warming, reduction in non-CO2 gas concentrations and that of CO2.
