Global warming is often defined only for adults. Thousands of pages of technical information are put out on the Internet filled with scientific data that basically can only be understood by a scientist. Now considering that the people most likely to be affected by global warming are kids, maybe they, should be the people articles and information about global warming are aimed at.

So what exactly is global warming?

It is a condition where harm done to the Earth’s atmosphere is making the world get too hot. How hot? Just a degree here and there, but those tiny increases manage to throw a great portion of nature out of balance.

There are a lot of opinions about this. Some people feel that global warming is just nature running a bit of a temperature and that this will pass in due time. Of course time for the earth is measured in millions of years so it could take awhile. Most research that is honest and objective seems to point to the idea that global warming is a man made predicament and as such has a definite cause.

Most scientists will start their explanation of the cause of global warming by trying to list all the many harmful things man has done to the Earth and its atmosphere. While these are all true… a greater truth is far simpler. Air Pollution creates Global Warming. That’s it. That is the main thing you need to know. Now how this happens is another story…

Basically the Earth’s atmosphere (our air) is made up oxygen, nitrogen and a dozen other gases. All of these serve to capture a certain amount of heat and keep the Earth warm. Sunlight hits the Earth and is absorbed as heat. That heat radiates outward back into the air. The molecules in the air absorb and release that heat. Certain molecules that are heavier than others radiate more heat back to earth. Without these molecules from special gases, the Earth would be frozen over at around 14 degrees below zero.

This absorption and reflection of heat is known as the greenhouse effect. For just as in a greenhouse heat is trapped and built up by our atmosphere. So then, if all of this is supposed to happen, what is the problem?

The problem is that we keep adding to the special mixture of our air too much of certain ingredients such as Carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide or CO2 is essential to nature. Plants use CO2 and sunlight to create sugars and fresh oxygen. Still you might think… fine so the plants will grow even better if we have extra CO2. That is what many scientists thought when they first examined global warming.

But we only have so many plants, and our oceans, which also absorb CO2, are at maximum capacity. So all this extra Carbon dioxide goes up into the atmosphere where it blocks the release of heat leaving the earth.

Gases such as CO2 that absorb heat that otherwise would have expelled to outer space are called greenhouse gases. There are quite a few of them.

The main culprit in terms of global warming is Carbon dioxide. This is made naturally as it is needed for our survival but the extra CO2 that causes so many problems is created by man as part of the burning of fossil fuels. Power plants burning coal and cars burning gas release 80% of all this unwanted Carbon. The rest comes from airplanes, forest fires and a few volcanoes.

The next biggest problem as a greenhouse gas is Methane. Methane is a flammable gas that is released as part of certain types of agriculture such as growing rice in flooded fields and cattle farming. Methane is also released when frozen ground and ice thaw out. Sometimes peat bogs and other frozen earth have been storing Methane for thousands of years. When those areas warm up Methane is released. What warms them up? Global warming caused by greenhouse gases.

That same warming turns liquid H20 (water) into gaseous H20 called water vapor. And just like all the other greenhouses gases, when you put too much in the atmosphere the water vapor collects heat and then radiates it back to the earth.

The other major greenhouse gas is NO2, nitrous oxide, what is often called laughing gas. Nitrous Oxide as with all of the other greenhouse gases occurs naturally in small amounts. It is created in harmful amounts by factories making products like nylon and nitric acid.

Combination of all these extra amounts of gas in the atmosphere increases the reflection of heat back to the Earth. This process known as “The Greenhouse Effect” has gone from being a helpful essential part of the Earth’s balance to an almost out of control problem.

If you have never felt the increased warmth found in a greenhouse built for growing flowers then surely you have sat in a car that had been sitting in the summer sun with the windows rolled up. The metal of the car absorbs heat and the glass in the car’s windows reflects and traps it. That is why the inside of a car can reach a temperature of 130 degrees while outside of the car the air is only 85 degrees.

Our Earth is just like that car and we need to find a way to roll down the windows.