Increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will contribute to preventing the normal escape of earth's surface heat into space, creating a "greenhouse effect." The predicted result is a rise in average temperatures with increased melting of glacial and polar ice.
Scientists are concerned that the "greenhouse-effect" gases are in the atmosphere. The consequences of this trend may range from agricultural disaster because of droughts, coastal destruction due to rising sea levels, increasingly severe storms, and even the spread, in temperate zones, of tropical diseases.
