Atmospheric Warming Explained

I assume you know how a microwave works to heat things up. There is a device in the unit that puts out radio waves that are the exact frequency to cause water molecules to vibrate. As the water molecules vibrate they cause molecules around them to vibrate. Vibrating molecules are hot molecules. This explains why when you put certain materials in the microwave, like most plastics, they don't heat up - no water molecules.

Well guess what, the sun produces radio type waves that are at the exact frequency to cause C02 molecules to vibrate. This vibration causes adjacent molecules to vibrate therefore heating the atmosphere. Without this the Earth would be a cool place. Actually some other molecules called "green house gases" also vibrate but they are a very small part of the atmosphere.

An interesting fact - The atomic weight of carbon is 12 the atomic weight of oxygen is 16. So carbon dioxide, consisting of one carbon and two oxygen molecules weight 44. This means that when you "burn" one ton of carbon it produces 3.6 tons of carbon dioxide. Carbon burning occurs whenever you burn anything with carbon - your car burning gasoline, power plants burning coal or gas, etc.

Ok so it seems like there must be a lot of CO2 and how much is created by man? Turns out the atmosphere has .03 percent C02, a pretty small amount. It wouldn't take much to increase the percentage and that will cause more warming.

So lets think back... One hundred years ago (1913) there were very few cars. The vast majority of people in the United States and the world did not have electricity. No airlines. Fewer people. Since then  man made carbon dioxide creation has greatly increased.

This is all pretty simplistic and does not take into account the conversion of carbon dioxide to carbon and oxygen by plants. It also doesn't take into consideration absorption by the ocean or the amount of carbon dioxide created by rotting biomass on the earth or volcanoes. However the one component that seems to be growing the fastest is mans addition to the amount of C02.

You might try googling "co2 production by humans". Lots of good stuff there on both sides of the issue.