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Heating up.

Article Excerpt
In the 1995 second assessment report (SAR) the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made the widely quoted statement that "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." The phrase "balance of evidence" was used deliberately to suggest the (English) common-law standard of proof required in civil as opposed to criminal courts: not as high as "beyond reasonable doubt." In 2001, the third assessment report (TAR) upgraded this by saying "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities"

Back in 1824, good old Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier discovered the process we now call the greenhouse effect. A mathematician and physicist in France, Fourier came up with a formula involving sines and cosines to describe the transfer of heat among molecules.

The "natural" greenhouse effect is essential to the maintenance of life on Earth. The problem that appears to be occurring today is the "anthropogenic" greenhouse effect. That's the scientific word for human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, that add to the natural heating.

A bi-product of burning coal, oil, and gas, is carbon dioxide (C[O.sub.2]), which has thickened the warming blanket of the Earth's atmosphere. This blanket allows the Sun's heat to warm up the planet but traps the heat in, keeping the atmosphere warmer.

By 1865, factories and steam locomotives had been belching out vast quantifies of smoke and C[O.sub.2] for several decades. Then, the average air temperature at the surface of the Earth was around 13.7[degrees]C. By the 1990s, millions of gasoline-powered engines were burning fossil fuels and most of our buildings were heated or cooled...