Transcript:

Today, we will look at global warming.

So when the energy from the sun arrives at the Earth, two things happen. Part of that energy is absorbed by the plants and the phytoplankton in the ocean to be converted to chemical energy. The remainder of it hits the surface of the Earth and warms up the surface. The crust of the Earth becomes slightly warmer. The molecules on the surface start jiggling more.

Now, when the Earth rotates away from the sun, when night happens, those jiggling molecules release their energy as radiation back to outer space. And this release happens at the infrared wavelength. So far, so good.

Now, the chemical energy that has been trapped by the phytoplankton and the plants over millions of years has been converted to fossil fuels. Now humans figured out a way of extracting that trapped energy from the fossil fuels to do our stuff. That was the industrial revolution.

Now, if, in the process of using that energy, we had only converted it to heat, it would not be such a big deal because the Earth would have radiated that heat back to outer space.