Anyone who has either spent time in a greenhouse for plants or simply gotten into a car on a hot summer day has personally experienced the greenhouse effect. Heat enters an enclosed area and then reflects back and forth building upon itself. While the ambient temperature outside might be 85 degrees Fahrenheit, inside an automobile the temperature easily zooms upward to 130F. Simply put, the greenhouse effect is what happens when heat is trapped in one way or another and then increases as more heat radiation is added.

This is fine if you are an orchid or other tropical plant. But living things, including people, require set parameters of climate. When we discuss the greenhouse effect as regarding global warming we place the effect into a specific environment. That is the Earth’s atmosphere. When referencing the Earth, our entire planet becomes the interior of an automobile in the heat of summer. The Earth of course does not have a metal roof or a glass dome around it to trap heat and reflect solar radiation back to its surface. Indeed when drawings depict and descriptions explain the greenhouse effect the principle is simplified to imply that this is the case. Actually the greenhouse effect for the Earth is somewhat different.

When solar radiation passes through out atmosphere the molecules that constitute our air absorb it. The majority of solar heat is absorbed by our planet’s surface. Different types of surfaces absorb or reflect heat in different ways. A white blanket of snow will reflect much more heat than freshly paved asphalt. Still everything that the sun’s rays fall upon either absorbs or reflects heat. In the case of out snowy Polar Regions that heat is reflected back from the planet. In the case of our cities it is trapped on the surface. From there it radiates outward where living things attempt to adjust to the relative heat or cold. Our planet’s original design was for a balance of all the components. Our atmosphere absorbs enough heat to keep us warm but hopefully not bake us. The angle of the sun in areas such as the poles creates an environment suited to North and South Pole inhabitants. The people, creatures and plant life at the Earth’s equator have acclimated to their section of the world.

The greenhouse effect occurs planet wide when solar radiation either bounces off of or is radiated forth from the earth and instead of passing through our atmosphere and outward into space, is absorbed by all kinds of extra amounts of and extraneous gases and particles. These gases et al absorb heat and then radiate it outward in all directions, one of those directions, being the surface of the Earth. From there the process repeats itself until we have a global version of a car with the windows rolled up parked in the noonday sun.

Now, the most obvious thought anyone who did not believe in global warming would think is that all of these factors have existed for millions of years and the fluctuations in them, such as amounts of greenhouse gases and changes in the surface of the Earth are too small to drastically effect climate. In the long term, that is, say a length of 100,000 years that is probably true. The Earth as a master clockwork will probably naturally adjust to all of man’s device. But mankind may not be around to appreciate the changes as those same changes may exclude mankind from existence.

Once again remember we are attempting to define global warming as a chain of events. The first several of these links is an over abundance of solar radiation absorbing gases and other particles floating about in our atmosphere.

The next grouping of events concerns what happens when the small percentage of increased heat on our planet’s surface and in our air begins to effect long standing conditions.
Currently the measured effect of global warming as caused by the greenhouse effect on the planet overall is approximately a 1 degree Celsius increase over the last 50 years. This would seem to mean nothing. One asks, “How could one degree more or less effect anyone or anything.” In terms of that “anyone”, the effect of a one-degree difference in ambient temperature will probably go unnoticed. Our bodies are designed to adjust to a huge range of climatic conditions. No one of us will notice that today it is 71 degrees outside and fifty years ago it would have been 70. The human body will adjust and adapt even if the average temperature globally were to increase by ten degrees. Chances are we would set off a huge oblivious migration to more temperate areas. But that little one-degree change manages to set out of kilter an incredible array of environmental forces.

While that one-degree of heat made you take off a sweater, segments of the Earth known as permafrost began a meltdown. Permafrost is a condition whereby sections of the Earth’s surface have remained at a temperature below freezing (0 degrees Celsius) for at least two years. Literally, it means permanently frozen soil. In actuality, most permafrost regions have been frozen for thousands of years. A large portion of the Arctic is permafrost. During summer months these areas seem to be thawed as they permit a two to twelve foot layer of soil to grow vegetation. But beneath that summer season lays a still frozen core. These frozen strata of the Earth lock away huge amounts of gaseous content with the highest concentrations of gases held in check by permafrost being Carbon dioxide and Methane gas. That one-degree increase in overall temperature is allowing millions of underground acres of permafrost to defrost and release even more greenhouse gas.

In a similar vein frozen areas know as Tundra are also experiencing a subtle warming. Tundra describes the soil above permafrost that is frozen for most of the calendar year but thaws for allowance of small amounts of vegetation growth. Areas of Tundra throughout the world serve as sinks for absorption of massive amounts of Carbon. As these areas begin to exist for more months of the year above freezing they both release their stores of Carbon and cease to function as greenhouse gas depositories.
The extremist view is that within another half century global warming will simultaneously melt the arctic tundra releasing billions of tons of harmful greenhouse gases and ignite the world’s rainforests destroying our planet’s ability to create oxygen. Such a viewpoint is falsely alarming and without basis. The real danger of global warming is sufficient without need to exaggerate.