Think of a greenhouse. It’s a structure with glass walls that lets light in and traps heat, all for the benefit of the plants inside. As for how it works, that’s elementary! It’s all down to the ...

Eunice Newton Foote, who discovered the greenhouse effect and was a pivotal figure in women’s rights movements, is the focus of today’s Google doodle. The discovery of the greenhouse effect is often ...

Have you ever taken a quick trip to the store on a summer day? You return to your car, open the door, and it’s unbearably hot. That’s the greenhouse effect. Sunlight goes through the glass, heats the ...

A Dec. 17 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) claims a CO2-driven greenhouse effect is not causing modern climate change. "The greenhouse effect is a hoax," reads the post's caption. "There is ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1896, the Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius realized that carbon dioxide (CO 2) traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere—the phenomenon now ...