It is time to talk about Global Warming. I prefer the term Global Warming(GW) to Climate Change(CC) simply because it is the warming that changes the climate. But either term is fine. We are going to tackle this in small portions. It is a very complicated and a largely misunderstood topic. My major interest is the economic impacts but I think we need to start by understanding what Global Warming is and why it is happening.
In Part I, I am going to discuss the imbalance between incoming energy and outgoing energy. I am also going to try to explain why it is happening and the role of greenhouse gases. I believe we are at the point now where there is no doubt that this is caused almost totally by the activities of humans. But even if it was a natural phenomenon, what I am presenting in this article would apply. The only way to get warmer is to receive more energy than you send into space. Not being in balance could be caused by humans or by something else. We will deal with the cause in a future article. Part I of this Introduction to Global Warming is about the imbalance.
