Global Warming is the idea that light loses energy passing through the atmosphere on its way from the sun, and becomes trapped within our ecosphere. Normally enough sunlight is reflected back into space, so conditions on earth stay stable. Adding certain gases to the atmosphere increases the amount of the sun's energy that is trapped, warming things up. This has been tracked for about a century, as factories, cars, etc produce a lot of those gases. Current projections by the scientific community are that this will reach a catastrophic level soon, much sooner than predicted. That is believed to be because production of those gases has increased more than predicted, and less has been done about the problem than predicted.
Carbon dioxide is the main problem. Doubling the level of CO2 would increase the earth's temperature by about 7 degrees. That has only happened once in the earth's history, and it killed off everything except the algae. Scientists are monitoring the level of CO2 as it rises.
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