With the release special effects driven extravaganza "The Day After Tomorrow" global warming will once again be on the forefront of everyone's minds. It is strangely appropriate that the newest boogey man is not a space alien, as the director's previous movie, "Independence Day", used, but climate change. Just as parents trying to scare their kids into behaving used the original boogieman threat, global warming is being used by environmental organizations to scare the public into being good. .
The theory of global warming is rather complex. Thanks to our media and the efforts of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Academy of Sciences and a whole slew of other alphabet soups, internationally it can be simplified (some say over-simplified) enough for the lay person to grasp it. Before I address the scientific debate on the validity of the global warming hypothesis. I will attempt to explain the science behind it.
The driving force behind the global warming hypothesis is the greenhouse effect. Unfortunately this effect has nothing to do with greenhouses the name is an unfortunate misnomer. A greenhouse stays warm by preventing convection between the outside and the inside of the house. The atmosphere of the earth actually facilitates convection. What the term "greenhouse effect" actually describes is the way in which atmospheric gases absorb radiation from the earth. The atmospheric gases then turn the infrared radiation into kinetic and potential energy in the molecules. The molecules then radiate different wavelength of energy out again. The atmosphere actually radiates more energy to the earth than the sun. -Nearly twice as much! (Fraser, 2004) Without this complex interaction the earth would be an average of 50 degrees colder Fahrenheit and life, as we know it could not exist on earth. This is the positive side of the effect.
The negative side, the one that makes a great villain for a disaster movie, is when the greenhouse effect is linked with present climate change.