What is the Greenhouse Effect?

Answer 1

Some gases ("greenhouse gases") let sunlight in, which warms the Earth, and then block that heat from leaving. That's the "greenhouse effect", and it's a natural thing, mostly caused by water vapor.

Man is making excessive amounts of greenhouse gases, mostly by burning fossil fuels. That causes the delicate natural balance to go out of whack and the Earth warms. That's global warming.

It won't be a Hollywood style disaster. Gradually coastal areas will flood and agriculture will be damaged. But it will be very bad. Rich countries will cope, but it will take huge amounts of money. In poor countries many people will die of starvation, but not all of them.

Most scientists say, in 20-50 years. But we need to start right now to fix it, fixing it will take even longer than that.

More information here:

http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/f101.asp

Lots of numerical scientific data proving it real here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

Answer 2

Imagine a greenhouse or any house that has windows. Now when the house does not have pollution or smoke inside, the sun is able to come through and effect the surroundings, but when the sun sets, the environment is allowed to cool and complete the day cycle. Now, introduce non perishable gases that the environment can not absorbe. These gases form dark clouds that do not let the sun enter effectively. Furthermore, they are heated by the sun and create a layer of insulation (like fiberglass), so during night-time the earth is not allowed to cool properly. This green house is in essense our atmosphere/ ozone layer. If heat is not able to escape through this cloud of burned fuel and so forth, then the sun will just keep heating the earth up (global warming). The ice caps will melt, the climate will change and eventually we will parish. However, with all that said things are not as bad as what they seem and there are natural climate cycles that affect hurricanes, seasons, and natural catastrophies. To blame everything on human misuse of the environment is to give ourselves too much credit. But being enviromentally concious is always a good thing knowing that we will leave the beautiful landscape of this earth for new generations to see and experience.

Answer 3

I found this on the computer under wikipedia.org...

hope this helps.

The greenhouse effect, discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824 and first investigated quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896, is the process in which the emission of infrared radiation by an atmosphere warms a planet's surface. The name comes from an incorrect analogy with the warming of air inside a greenhouse compared to the air outside the greenhouse. The Earth's average surface temperature is about 25°C warmer than it would be without the greenhouse effect [1]. In addition to the Earth, Mars and especially Venus have greenhouse effects.

In common usage, "greenhouse effect" may refer either to the natural greenhouse effect due to naturally occurring greenhouse gases, or to the enhanced (anthropogenic) greenhouse effect which results from gases emitted as a result of human activities (see also global warming, scientific opinion on climate change and attribution of recent climate change).

Answer 4

greenhouses gasses, basically, carbon dioxide, ozone & methane regulate the amount of radiation from the sun that remains trapped into the earth's atmosphere rather than being reflected back into space.

the global warming 'debate' is tied to an increase in the gasses - particularly CO2 - from human/industrial activity over the past 200 years and how the increase in this gas now traps a sufficeint amoutn of solar radiation to cause climate change and melting of the polar icecaps.

Answer 5

A material that is transparent at one wavelength of radiation may be opaque to some other wavelength.Consider glass. Its transparent. meaning light (as our eyes can see) goes thru it. but there we are talking of light at wavelength roughly 0.3 to 0.8 microns (say sunlight). light is electromagnetic wave at cetrain wavelentgh range. electromagnetic wave at wave length say 1.5 micron or above (called Infra Red) does not go thru glass (its opaque). Now consider a glass dome over some area (like in a real greenhouse where plants are kept for warmth in cold climate). Visible light from sun ( sun is at 6000 Kelvin temperature) goes thru glass, strikes land or other objects under glass dome, gets absorbed thus heating up those objects, then as the objects temperature rises (not as high temp as sun) they emit radiation too but at a higher wavelenth than visible light's wavelength (Wein's Law...Higher temp object emits lower wavelength radiation), this higher wavelength radiation strikes the glass dome and is not able to pass thru it (just call that a property of the glass), and thus the radiation (or heat) remains trapped inside the dome and things inside the dome get hot. CO2 gas also acts like glass. many other materials too. If CO2 levels rise , heat from the sun coming in in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum, heats up earth, and the higher wavelenth radiation from earth trying to get back to space is trapped by CO2 causing earth to heat to a temperature higher than would be if the CO2 were not present. Thats greenhouse effect.