Our common threat from filthy air, changes in climate and unseasonably hot weather is due to carbon dioxide pollution and wasteful consumption. We can begin to stop this bingeing on fossil fuel. Together we can admit the problem and begin to take steps to heal the Earth's atmosphere, replant forests and restore the lost balance. Definitions Worldwide hot house conditions due to fossil fuel burning and air pollution are really what the greenhouse effect is all about. Once locked away in fossil deposits of coal, or oil, enormous volumes of solid carbon have been turned to gas by combustion.
Greenhouse gases are largely transparent to solar radiation.
When solar energy reaches the earth's surface it is absorbed and reradiated as heat. Green house gases, raising the surface temperature trap this heat. Any gases whose molecules trap reflected longwave radiation and release heat, are called green house gases. A basic law of chemistry is that everything must go somewhere, or matter is conserved when any reaction changes an element from solid to gaseous form. So the carbon trapped in coal after it is burned is turned into carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere.