Greenhouse
Earth What
happens when you go into a greenhouse on a sunny day? It's hot, isn't it?
That's because the glass in the greenhouse traps the heat from the sun.
This gas carbon
dioxide does the same in the earth's atmosphere
. It acts like glass in a greenhouse, doing the same as my feathers do when
I'm swimming in the very cold sea: my
feathers keep me warm, the glass in the greenhouse keeps the plants
inside warm, and the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases keep the
planet warm. Without them, we'd freeze. Too much of them means that
we boil! Because
people are burning fuels with carbon in (that's oil, gas and coal which
you use in cars,
aeroplanes,
power
stations and so on), all this carbon gets dumped into the air, combined
with the oxygen we all breathe,
and so adds to our greenhouse gas problem. And the
planet warms more than it should.