Ask any climate scientist to explain global warming to a fifth grader, and they will pull out the bathtub analogy: The atmosphere is the tub. The level of carbon is the water standing in said tub. There's a spigot and a sink -- water in and water out. For the longest time, carbon in and carbon out of the atmosphere have been in balance. Then man came along and fiddled with the spigot. Now there's an ever increasing flow of carbon in, and the level in the atmosphere keeps rising. Simple enough.The bathtub analogy has an important conclusion: We can't just stabilize emissions at current levels. The water in the tub would keep rising and flood everything in sight. Instead, we need to turn off the spigot or do something unprecedented with the sink.More... (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gernot-wagner/are-mit-students-smarter-_b_926321.html)
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