Overview of Greenhouse Effect/Definitions and Causes

•  specific human activities responsible for the increase in four greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons 
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•  Of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide is the one that humans have had the most effect upon. The burning of fossil fuels, which really took off once the industrial revolution is what has lead to an increase in the amounts of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere and thus to an increase in the amount of heat energy that is trapped into the Earth. 
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•  IPCC has made the claim that climate change is occurring on Earth.
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•   One important piece of information that kids may have trouble with, it that the proper amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are essential, with out any the earth would no longer be habitable (with and average temperature of 0 degrees vs. the 59 degrees we have today. 
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•  Most climate scientists agree the main cause of the current global warming trend is human expansion of the "greenhouse effect"1 -- warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space. 
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•   Think of how you and your classmates may play a role in their increase.
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•   Certainly student as well as teachers have a big impact simply by looking at car travel and burning of fossil fuels in the production of electricity
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•   How does evidence shows that current global warming cannot be explained by changes in the sun's energy
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•   - what is this evidence?
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•   One of the arguments given by the nay sayers was that the increase in temperature could be caused by increased solar action …unfortunately there is no truth here because the past ten years have been very hot and the past ten years has had low amounts of solar action.
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•  The series of videos from the NPR site are very good ---I have used these with students in the past and they are very good.
•  1st All about Carbon … as a biology teacher I have always had an affinity toward carbon 
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• 2nd Making Carbon Bonds…. discussion of the bonds in the carbon of the living things that once buried and fossilized 
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• 3rd Breaking Carbon Bonds … Energy released once carbon bonds are broken and released to form new bonds at lower energy levels and release energy
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•  4th Carbon in Love – carbon a social atom and the molecule is happiest with is oxygen. Some of the carbon dioxide are used by plants and some are deposited in the oceans but increasing amounts are released into the atmosphere 
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• 5th What do we do? – possible solutions carbon sequent ion or we can learn to release carbon