The increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution* has resulted in global warming, and today reports are increasing of natural disasters, infectious disease outbreaks, rising sea levels, melting Arctic Sea ice, and ocean acidification caused by climactic change. Newspapers, magazines, the Internet, and other media present detailed information about the dangers of global warming and measures taken to combat it, yet often fail to present the numerical data that could present a clearer and more concrete picture of the situation.

For example, what is the total global amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and how is it circulated within the environment? What is the effect of our individual efforts to conserve electricity or reduce carbon dioxide emissions? What, specifically, must we do to stop global warming and return the environment to an ideal state? Only the proper data can answer these questions.

These pages present numerical data about carbon dioxide emissions, the Kyoto Protocol, and biomass, a representative renewable energy source for generating electricity.

*Despite some claims that anthropogenic (i.e., caused by humans) emissions are not the cause of global warming, the increase in mean global temperature is correlated with the increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Further, no other factor suggests itself for the sudden increase in mean average temperatures over the past 100 years, a relatively short period of time. For the above reasons, this article accepts as fact that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is a chief cause of global warming.