Can someone in Laymans Terms explain to me what Global Warming is exactly?

Question

From all the BS ive been listening to about Global Warming, i get confused with it all. People saying its real, people saying its not. So what the hell is happening?

And what should i do to help if it really is a big concern?

Hey just thought id add some details :

All the answers i have read, but they all seem to contradict themselves. So im still none the wiser. and also THANK YOU to the answerer EMPANDA for actually giving an answer i was needing so far. But please continue adding anwsers because i do indeed want to know whats going on.

Answer 1

well, a lot of these answers were pretty confusing too I think!

The planet is getting warmer is true.

We are producing more CO2, that is also true. CO2 is a greenhouse gas (though not the 'major' one, that is water vapour) and so traps heat.

However, the planet has been cooling and warming for its entire existance, due to changes in the earth's rotation over thousands and thousands of years ('croll-milankovitch' cycles, after the men who discovered them). So the warming could be natural, as the earth's temperature is in no way static.

HOWEVER, correct me if I am wrong, we are now in an intertglacial period, and according to the Milankovitch pattern stressed as so important by the answerer above, it should be getting colder. hmm....

You are right to be confused, no one really knows what's going on. We are only human and know very little about the world!

I doubt you bothered to read this far , as you have so many long answers, but if you did, I commend you!

Answer 2

Though several people have given good answers to your question, with thorough details, I would like to put the level of warming we are facing into context.
62million years ago, the planet was so warm there were temperate forests at the South Pole. Life bloomed everywhere. There were more species living on the planet than there ever have been since. To have those temperatures at the poles would make them at least 30 degrees C warmer than they are today. And yet now people are worrying about a rise of just a few degrees.
I'm not denying global warming is a real effect. I merely believe, to quote Michael Crichton, that life finds a way. Areas that previously were too cold for life will become acceptably warmer. Some species will have new opportunities and what were minorities may become major players in the food chain, for both plants and animals. Species will adapt as has been exhibited again and again in our planet's history.
It took just 50 years for most of the Ice Age glaciation to melt back to pre - Ice Age levels. Now THAT's climate change far more extreme than anything we could be facing now, even in the worst case scenario. And look - life didn't just drop dead when the ice melted. Sure, the mammoths bit the dust, but the elephants were happy.

Answer 3

The basic idea is that sunlight passing through the atmosphere loses some energy. (another way to look at that is it is shifted towrd the red, or heat end of the spectrum). Some of the sunlight gets absorbed, warming our planet, and driving reactions like photosynthesis. The rest is reflected back into space by lighter covered terrain like the polar caps. By then it has lost so much energy it can't get back out, so it just bounces around in the atmosphere, until it's lost as much energy as it can and become infrared (or heat). How much makes it in, or out, depends on the particular gases that make up the air. The atmosphere did not take on it's current form until the evolution of the single celled green plant, in the oceans. That's about the halfway point in the history of life on the planet. They began removing the carbon in the form of carbon dioxide from the astmosphere, and converting it to various solid compounds that remained part of the soil or ocean bottom, and releasing the remaining oxygen back into the air. When the oxygen level of the atmosphere was sufficient, single celled (and larger) animals evolved, they accellerated and improved the process by eating the carbon rich green plants, and converting them to calcium carbonate, the stuff sea shells are made of. The big difference was the carbon could not be converted back to gas, as it is by burning a forest, say. When the level of oxygen reached a still higher level, animal life was able to move onto the land and evolved eventually into us. Because Carbon Dioxide robs the sunlight of more energy that the other gases, naturally it got cooler. Prior to life, conditions on earth had been much like conditions on Venus today.


Climate change, or global warming used to be called "the greenhouse effect", because humans had used the effect to grow plants in the winter for centuries (passing light through glass robs it of energy in much the same way as passing it through air).

People first began to measure the temperature and the common gases of the atmosphere in reliable way in the 1820's. Scientists noted that as the Industrial revolution began (with it's many coal fired furnaces) in the 1880's, both the temperature and the CO2 began rising, and that has continued ever since. If you graph both, they both take the shape of a hockey stick laying on it's side, with the upswing of bot temperature and CO2 starting at the same point. Scientists reasoned that just as the plants had removed CO2 from the air and turned it to solid compounds like coal and limestone, burning those solids broke the molecular bonds of the carbon, recombined it with the free oxygen in the air, and the two together became carbon dioxide once again.

The "theory" is that the evolution of a breathable atmosphere was casued by life and helped bring about conditions where more advanced life became possible AND that reversing the processes that led to those conditions will return conditions to their original state.

The big difference of course is that nature required millions of years to accomplish the first change. The measured data suggests that humans using their powerful guided technolgy will fully reverse it in the next 100, or less.

Answer 4

When used in the correct context Global Warming refers to the trend of increasing average temperatures around the globe. It may be that in some places and at some times the average temperature drops but it's the longer-term trend that is important.

There can be confusion between global warming and climate change, they're two different things. Global warming is as explained above whereas Climate Change refers to the way in which the climate has changed, is changing and will change in the future. GW is essentially the cause and CC is the effect.

There are two parts to global warming, the natural part and the manmade part. Manmade global warming is sometimes referred to as anthropogenic global warming and it's this part that is causing both concern and controversy.

The key aspect is the 'greenhouse gases'. This is the term used to describe the different gases that contribute to global warming. There's lots of them but really only four important ones - water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

Water vapour is, for all intents and purposes, entirely natural. Because of the physical properties of the atmosphere it's impossible to have too much water vapour, once the maximum limit is reached it simply falls back to earth as rain or snow. Because there's many, many times the amount of water vapour than all the other greenhouse gases combined this is the one that contributes most to global warming.

Unlike water vapour, the other greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere, in time they will dissipate but this can be a long wait, 115 years in the case of carbon dioxide. There are natural cycles that remove some greenhouse gases but the amount they are able to recycle is much less than the amount we're adding to the atmosphere - in effect we've managed to overload nature.

What makes the greenhouse gases different from the other gases in the atmosphere (such as nitrogen and oxygen) is that they have a physical property that enables them to trap heat within our atmosphere.

The heat our planet receives comes from the sun in the form of solar radiation; this warms the earth and everything on it. When night falls or the temperatures drop the heat that has been absorbed from the sun is radiated back out towards space but it's radiated out as a different type of heat - thermal radiation. This has a longer wavelength than solar radiation and has difficulty getting past the molecules of greenhouse gases.

Effectively the greenhouse gases are insulating the planet and the more there are the greater the insulative effect. It's essential that they do this, if they didn't and all heat was lost into space the planet would be so cold that life would never have evolved.

The problem we're facing at the moment is that we've put massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, far more than any natural cycles can handle and the effect is that the insulating layer is getting thicker. The bottom line really is very simple - the more greenhouse gases there are the warmer the planet is.

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There are people on both sides of the debate and without wishing to be disrespectful to the skeptics; their many arguments simply do not stand up to scrutiny. The arguments favouring global warming can easily be traced back to their scientific origins whereas those refuting global warming can only be traced back to media reports or websites, never to credible science.

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The effects of climate change are diverse and for some people they're beneficial, especially those living in cold climates and those who are cashing in on what's happening.

However, there are far more negatives than there are positives and some of the effects include flooding, droughts, wildfires, desertification, rising sea levels, loss of agricultural land, threat to many species, population migration, spread of disease and disease vectors, insect infestation and more.

These aren't dramatic changes and from year to year things will appear almost unchanged but over periods of decades and centuries the effects are dramatic. Sea levels for example are rising by an average of 3mm (⅛ inch) a year, not a lot but they are rising faster and in 100 years time they're expected to have risen by 750mm (30 inches) - enough to cause devastating flooding and the loss of much low lying land.

Global warming is a big concern and at the moment we don't have a cure. We can treat some of the symptoms through a variety of simple measures but it will take some dramatic changes to significantly slow down or even stop manmade global warming.

Here are some websites with further info and ideas for helping slow down global warming...
http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/combat.html
http://www.nrdc.org/air/energy/genergy.asp
http://www.est.org.uk/myhome/
http://www.carbontrust.co.uk/energy
http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/saving_energy/index.html
http://www.energy.gov/energyefficiency/index.htm
http://www.ase.org/
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Environmentandgreenerliving/Energyandwatersaving/DG_064371
http://www.roughguides.com/savingenergy/
http://www.srpnet.com/menu/energy.aspx

Answer 5

At best Global warming is a theory. Look who is pushing it for his own gain Al Gore in his movie.

I am a chemist and there is a possibility for chemical reactions to occur that create green house gases that inturn may trap or absorb light and act as a heat sink.

However, that is a theory and has not been proven to cause substantial global temperature changes.

Try reading the science about the causes of temperature change. The Milankovitch Model suggests that temperature changes are caused by the wear and tear on the earth do to spinning among other things that do not include global warming or even greenhouse gases. So remember this model is more powerful than a theory. It has been proven.

Consequently, Global warming or whatever it has been defined as does not hold water.

Are sunspots or any other forces effecting the earth? Please
read the science. As much as you can. Listen, I could be wrong. Remember, I am open to changing my mind if the argument for global warming was strong enough and I do not mean by advertisement in a movie.

Answer 6

The problem is that Global Warming has become a MORAL bandwagon - and because it's so confusing, and because not even so-called experts can agree or produce any conclusive facts, most of the public just agree with the voice they hear most of, which is that Global Warming is caused by humans pumping out too much CO2.

But there are TWO very different issues here that 99% of people get confused... (1) Global Warming (2) the CO2 agenda i.e. of Gore.

MOST valid experts/scientists appear to support that the Earth is warming for whatever reasons that might be (there are several reasons it might be warming). However, NOT ALL of those support the CO2 agenda, because there is ABSOLUTELY NO solid verifiable concrete evidence available to support the theory that lots of CO2 makes the planet warmer.

It is possible to use proxy data and observable effects that can show the Earth is warming, but you can also do just the same to show it isn't, AND do just the same to show we're getting colder!

The ONLY things you can definitely be sure of is that (1) No-one can be sure about anything and only TIME will tell (2) The CO2 agenda is purely about commerce, power, and public control.

Answer 7

First an explanation. Then proof that it is real.

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.

Contrary to what people above say, this has ben proven scientifically. The data clearly shows that the present warming is caused mostly by manmade greenhouse gases. Here's one nice picture, from the source below.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

Other theories don't work. The numbers don't add up. Many myths about global warming are discussed here:

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462

Most all scientists agree about this. There are a few noisy "skeptics" but the numbers in their "theories" don't add up.

More information here:

http://profend.com/global-warming/

Answer 8

The term itself describes the warming trend observed over the past century. Earth's mean temperature has gone up by approximately .7 ºC since about 1850. It usually refers to projected future warming as well.

Science currently tells us that the warming is due primarily to emissions of so called 'greenhouse gases' by us humans. These greenhouse gases trap radiation from the sun and effectively warm the planet's atmosphere, making life as we know it possible. Adding more of these gases (from combustion of fossil fuels, among other things) causes more radiation to be trapped, which shifts Earth's radiation budget, and forces the climate.

Answer 9

The theory is that all of the coal, gas and oil thats been burned in the last 250 years has caused the total amount of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere to double. And that increased CO2 gas acts as a type of thermal blanket causing the earth to heat up slightly.

The interpretation of that single basic theory is where all the controversy comes from. Some people say it will just raise sea level a little. And on the other extreme people right here in Y!A claim it will "destroy the planet", in those very words.

And it gets even more interesting when you discuss what to do about something thats been done by the last 250 years worth of our ancestors. Suggestions range from local activism to merely "create awareness" to switching to a near hermit lifestyle to sending money to third world economies in the form of "carbon credits". Take your pick...or even make up your own response because a panel of consultants hired by the UN say its going to be around for several centuries to come no matter what we do.

Answer 10

the whole in the ozone layer is caused by co2 cfc the ozone layer is there for the regulation of the temperature, as there is a whole in it there is no regulation, hence the struggle to keep the temparature balanced, and why we are having so many changes weather wise. Heal the world enevitably means heal the ozone layer to cure the weather flux.