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Global warming - making the Earth the temperature it is at present is caused by the greenhouse effect (given the name by Svante Arrhenius after it was predicted in the early 19th century by the mathematician Joseph Fourier) - without a proportion of greenhouse gases, specifically carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere the temperature would be much lower - probably too low to support life.
Increasing the amount of greenhouse gases causes more solar heat to be retained (decreasing them would cool the atmosphere). As I mentioned on the other thread - we should really be talking about 'accelerated global warming'.
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