Many people don't know how much they contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. The truth is that we, as people, support the use of fossil fuels almost unconsciously. We use them for everything from everyday household supplies to the gases we use to heat our homes and run our cars. The steady increase in the use of these fossil fuels is having an alarming effect on our climate. Global warming will change the Earth in unimaginable ways. With the ever-increasing amount of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, glaciers are melting rapidly causing sea levels to rise. Coastal changes will certainly change our living environment in the next hundreds of years. Global warming is a phenomenon in which the temperature on Earth increases. Throughout history we see natural phases in our Earth's climate between warm periods and cold periods due to increases in carbon dioxide. These phases are usually cyclical, but temperatures are rising faster than ever (Pipkin). Ancient ice cores dating back 800,000 years show a constant level of greenhouse gases (Scambos). Demonstrating this point, Ted Scambos states: “The dramatic increase in gases observed in recent decades has gone from 315 parts per billion in 1958 to 388 parts per million for carbon dioxide. . . "(37). Greenhouse gases are emitted from the burning of fossil fuels (carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrogen oxides). These gases create a barrier that traps incoming solar radiation (insolation) and warms the earth. Carbon dioxide it is the most abundant of the gases but not as powerful as methane for example, "methane in the atmosphere warms the Earth more than 20 times more per molecule than carbon dioxide which after a decade or two, oxidises into dioxide. carbonic and maintains... ... middle of paper ......mbia University. Columbia University, January 19, 2011. Web. October 15, 2010. Kunzig, Robert . "World without ice." National Geographic October 2011: 90-109. Print.Orlove, Ben. “Glacier retreat: reviewing the limits of human adaptation to climate change.” Environment 51.3 (2009): 22. MasterFILE Premier. Network. November 21, 2011.Pipkin, Bernard W.. Geology and the Environment. 6th ed. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.Scambos, Ted. "The Earth's Ice: Sea Levels, Climate, and Our Future Commitments." Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 67.1 (2011): 28-40. Elite academic research. Network. November 21, 2011. Stephen M. Smith, et al. "A review of recent developments in climate change science. Part II: The global-scale impacts of climate change." Advances in Physical Geography 35.4 (2011): 443-464.Academic Search Elite. Network. November 21. 2011