The Invisible Blanket

The greenhouse effect is not pollution. It is the reason Earth is habitable. Without it, our planet's average temperature would be about minus eighteen degrees Celsius — a frozen rock incapable of supporting life. The greenhouse effect works like a blanket around the Earth, trapping some of the sun's warmth and keeping temperatures livable.

The problem is not the greenhouse effect itself but the enhanced greenhouse effect — humans adding massive quantities of greenhouse gases that thicken the atmospheric blanket beyond what natural systems can regulate or absorb over human timescales.