Let’s break this down into simpler terms
Brenda Ekwurzel, Ph.D, climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists puts understanding the urgency of climate change in simpler terms in a recent column at the Huffington Post. The following is an excerpt.
Releasing carbon into the atmosphere is sort of like filling a water balloon from an outdoor faucet. If the water is merely trickling in, you can easily remove the balloon from the spout and have room to tie the knot. But if the spigot is gushing and the balloon is swollen with water, you have to act quickly and forcefully to remove it before it bursts.
Human activities, such as burning coal and oil in power plants and cars, have poured excessive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and the natural world just can’t absorb it all. Like the swollen water balloon, the atmosphere is overloaded. The problem with adding more carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide gases to Earth’s atmosphere is that they trap heat, causing global temperatures to rise. Even a rise of a degree or two makes a difference in many aspects of the world that people care about. Back in 1960, about 40 percent of a metric ton of emitted CO2 would remain in the atmosphere. Now that has risen to 45 percent. This means that a ton of CO2 emissions today traps more heat than it would have fifty years ago.
