Didn't read, but.....
No such thing as global warming. The planet gets warm, the planet gets cold. Shit happens. Nothing to do with us.
Let us both come at this from a completely neutral perspective - take humans out of the equation altogether for a moment.
Some unbiased facts:
- The Earth's atmosphere is composed of several gaseous elements with nitrogen and oxygen comprising the vast majority of it.
- The remaining atmosphere is made up of argon and trace elements among which are the "greenhouse gases" including CO2, nitrous oxide, methane and ozone.
- These greenhouse gases share the properties of being able to absorb and emit solar radiation.
- When the suns radiation reaches the atmosphere, much of its radiation is absorbed by these gases (they act as a protective filter toward the Earth's surface). It is for this reason that the Earth's surface does not reach extremely high temperatures during daylight hours (compared with Mars for example, located a similar distance from the Sun's radiation).
- Similarly, the radiation that does pass through the atmosphere and is reflected back off the Earth's surface is absorbed before it leaves the atmosphere. In this way, the atmosphere acts as a insulation blanket, with the greenhouse gases trapping radiation on its way out and keeping the Earth's surface warm enough during sundown (for example temperatures on Mars at night plummet to well below freezing as there is no atmosphere to keep the surface insulated).
So... we have established that the certain gaseous elements in the Earth's atmosphere (CO2, methane, ozone, nitrous oxide etc) trap solar radiation reflected back off the Earth's surface (i.e. heat waves) thus insulating the Earth's surface and keeping it from dropping to below freezing point at night time. At no point have I mentioned carbon emissions or fossil fuels or human activity, just stated some facts about the Earth.
So here is my question - considering the facts, what do you think would happen if the concentration of greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, ozone etc) increased in the Earth's atmosphere?
