So I'm curious about what people actually know and think about global warming. Therefore, let's say I know absolutely nothing about global warming. So tell me, what is it?

LOL, I'm loving the graph

And yeah, I didn't think it had anything to do with the hole in the Ozone layer. It's the greenhouse gases that remain in the atmosphere and effectively insulate the planet, preventing the heat from escaping the Earth.

Global warming is caused by a lack of pirates. That's all there is too it. More pirates = less global warming. This scientific graph proves it.

Okay, time to be serious (even if the FSM is the coolest thing ever). Climate change is something that naturally occurs. Over time, global temperatures will rise and fall like a sine graph. When temperatures are extremely low, we enter into an ice age. We're currently entering into one of the high temperature periods.

However, this is not to say that humans have no effect. Since the Industrial Revolution, the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has steadily increased, corresponding to a steady increase in global temperatures not associated with the natural trend. The assumption, therefore, is that humans have, in a small way, changed the natural cycle. I like to think of it like adding a drop of water to a full glass. The one small drop may not compare at all to the amount of water in the glass, but it will still make the glass overflow.

In the global warming context, the drop is the CO2 humans have contributed to the atmosphere. The glass is the natural balance, and the water in the glass is the naturally-produced CO2 (from volcanoes, the ocean, decaying biomatter, etc.). The small human contribution, which in no way compares to the huge amount of naturally-occurring CO2, is still enough to screw up the balance, making the climate change worse than it would be otherwise.

The natural cycle is still occurring, but average temperatures are higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution. Think about it: the old ice ages covered much of the Northern Hemisphere with ice, but the most recent ice age (the Little Ice Age) was only enough to make things a bit colder than usual. My conjecture is that the increased temperature since the Industrial Revolution is what caused the Little Ice Age to be so, well, little.

In short, global warming is a naturally-occurring phenomenon that humans have made worse, if only by a small amount. I still prefer the pirate explanation, though.

Oooh! I know!

There's a hole in the ozone layer! And the ozone layer is like.. some kinda chemical or something that surrounds the earth, and it's supposed to either block stuff out or keep stuff in. So anyways, all the pollution made a hole in it, and that's what caused global warming. So THAT means it'll get warmer by a few degrees every year and THAT means the oceans will get warmer and THAT means there'll be more hurricanes and THAT means more people are gonna die (That's what my science teacher said).