In "Climate Change and Global Warming" we discussed these concepts. Here’s your refresher:

Climate change ‘refers to the increasing changes in the measures of climate over a long period of time – including precipitation, temperature, and wind patterns’.(1) ‘These shifts may be natural, but since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas that are used to generate energy. Thus, increasing global temperatures and disrupting natural cycles. (2)

Global warming ‘refers to the rise in global temperatures due mainly to the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases’(3)

Let's start from the beginning:

Greenhouse gases are those gases present in the Earth’s atmosphere that trap the heat that comes directly from the sun. They are: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide and water vapor.

During the day, the sun shines and warms Earth’s surface. During the night time, with no sun, the surface cools down and the heat is radiated back into the atmosphere. So, to keep this balance and maintain a comfortable average temperature of 14˚C (57˚F), the greenhouse gases trap some of the heat that is about to escape out of the planet. Without this protection, temperatures would drop to as low as -18˚C (-0.4˚F) and our planet could have a totally different biodiversity, including human life.

This is the Greenhouse Effect. Nothing wrong about this, right? It’s a natural cycle that allows life to flourish on the warmth of our planet.

The problem is that ‘mankind’s voracious burning of fossil fuels for energy is artificially amping up the natural greenhouse effect.’ (4)

During the last 800,000 years the concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere was around 200 molecules of gases per million molecules of air. But in the last century, the concentration increased up to 400 parts per million. And this increment comes directly from human activities.