Global warming is mostly because of people burning things, like gasoline to make cars go and natural gas to keep houses warm. But the heat from the burning itself only makes the world a tiny bit warmer: it is the carbon dioxide from the burning which is the biggest part of the problem. Among the greenhouse gases, the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the main cause of global warming, as predicted by Svante Arrhenius a hundred years ago, confirming the work of Joseph Fourier more than 200 years ago. When people burn fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas this adds carbon dioxide into the air. This is because fossil fuels contain lots of carbon and burning means joining most of the atoms in the fuel with oxygen. When people cut down many trees (deforestation), this means less carbon dioxide is taken out of the atmosphere by those plants.