Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.Science: Warming Earth?
CO2 may change world climate
Nature could hardly have created anything that seems more innocuous. An invisible and odorless gas, carbon dioxide is a simple molecular linkup of just a single atom of carbon and two atoms of oxygen (CO2). It constitutes a mere fraction of the atmosphere (.03% vs. about 78% for nitrogen and 20% for oxygen) but becomes dangerous to man and other air-breathing creatures when it accumulates in concentrations higher than 10% as, say, at the bottom of deep wells or mine shafts.
Yet CO2 is vitally important to the earth's wellbeing....
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