How could increased carbon dioxide be linked to global warming?

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a powerful greenhouse gas. In the atmosphere it captures the sun's heat and warms the planet. This is part of the natural carbon cycle. Additional carbon dioxidecomes from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas). This CO2 has been hidden underground for millions of years so its presence is an extra burden that the carbon cycle cannot manage.

A:Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring greenhouse gas. In previous concentrations, it helped maintain global temperatures at a level that is comfortable for humans and other animals that have adapted to the present climate. Increases in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are resulting in global warming, by trapping more heat. The planet Venus offers an extreme example - although its orbit is close to that of the Earth, Venus has a surface temperature that would melt lead, because its atmosphere consists mainly of carbon dioxide.

In the very long term, concentrations have fallen below these levels, but always coinciding with Ice Ages. A very good demonstration of this come from an ice core two kilometres long and equivalent to 150,000-year record of warmth, cold and warmth, that a French-Soviet drilling team at Vostok Station in central Antarctica produced in 1985, a complete ice age cycle. They found that the level of atmospheric CO2 had gone up and down in remarkably close step with temperature throughout the length of the core.

The CO2 levels in the Vostok Station record got as low as 180 parts per million (ppm) in the cold periods and reached 280 in the warm periods, but never higher. But in the atmosphere over the ice, the level of the gas had already reached 350, far above anything seen in this geological era, and is now around 380 ppm.

From the time of the Industrial Revolution, things began to change, slowly at first, then gradually more quickly, especially after 1970. Using isotope comparisons for C12, C13 and C14 ratiOS, scientists have proven that the increase from 260-280 ppm to the present 390 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide is entirely due to human activities.

A:Global warming is a slow but steady rise in earth's temperatures and is caused, largely, by increase in greenhouse gases, of which the major human contribution is carbon dioxide.

The greenhouse effect warms the atmosphere and is caused by atmospheric carbon dioxide. Photosynthesis consumes carbon dioxide tending to counteract greenhouse effect.

A:The Earth is much like a greenhouse where the gasses produced by the plants will stay in the greenhouse to create a much more moist and humid atmosphere.

• Heat from the sun comes in as visible light.
• Heat escapes as infra-red radiation (invisible light)
• If they balance, THEN the temperature of the Earth stays constant.

Carbon dioxide tends to block the infra-red radiation, less heat escapes, and so the planet gets warmer.

A:

One of the more interesting issues that is often ignored in most discussions is the saturation issue of carbon dioxide. The first 20 ppm in our atmosphere make up most of the induced warming from carbon dioxide. After the first 150 ppm or so, the ability of carbon dioxide to increase temperature by itself become almost nill. (see Lindzen-Choi graph in related link). The doubling of CO2 from the 190 to 380 ppm has followed this trend and seen less then a degree (C) of overall warmth. Doubling again, using this graph, will see almost no additional heating of the planet according to this concept.