We live in a greenhouse world; without such gases Earth would be too cold to sustain life as we know it. Water vapor, the principal molecule that keeps us warm, accounts for almost all (98 percent) of the natural heating of the world. Other gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), also contribute to a warmer world. Over the last three hundred years, as the world has industrialized and become more and more dependent on fossil fuels, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by more than 30 percent while methane concentrations, mainly from agriculture, have increased by about 150 percent. Atmospheric scientists have predicted that increases in those greenhouse gases will lead to, or are already producing, a warmer world. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, a UN body tasked with the science of global warming) believes that if nothing is done to slow global warming, the amount of CO2 will have doubled by the year 2060, causing the world’s temperature to rise by about 2.5°C (4.5°F).
(Vía Francisco Capella)
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