How does Global Warming work?
The earth’s atmosphere is made up of several gases, which act as a ‘greenhouse’, trapping the sun’s rays as they are reflected from the earth’s surface. Without this mechanism, the earth would be too cold to sustain life as we know it. Since the industrial revolution, humans have been adding huge quantities of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide (CO) to the atmosphere. More greenhouse gases means that more heat is trapped, which causes global warming. Burning coal, oil and natural gas increases atmospheric concentrations of these gases. Over the past century, increases in industry, transportation, and electricity production have increased gas concentrations in the atmosphere faster than natural processes can remove them leading to human-caused warming of the globe. The Evidence Recently, alarming events that are consistent with scientific predictions about the effects of climate change have become more and more commonplace. The global average temperature has increased by about
