Is inefficient housing the real reason for global warming?

Carbon dioxide seems to be getting a lot of bad press lately as being the whole reason for global warming. While lots of scientists say it contributes to the on going heating up of the planet, is it the really as big a problem as everyone thinks?

Don't get me wrong I know that there is lots of evidence that CO2 levels are higher and that it is a green house gas, but can all of our problems really be put down to this single gas?

This got me thinking about how the general population of the planet contribute to its warming. Over the time that scientists say that global warming has really started to take off, it just so happens that the global population has also massively risen bringing with it the need for more housing.

This housing and its inefficient design could be a major contributor to global warming. If you take a reasonably typical house here in England it will have the minimal amount of insulation required in the walls and the roof, meaning that heat is constantly escaping into the outside world. Now if you take all that heat and concentrate it in areas like large towns and cities then I would bet that the general temperature in those areas is significantly higher that the surrounding countryside. This can be easily seen in built up parts of London where the temperature can be several degrees higher than the near by less built up areas.

My theory goes that even if CO2 levels drop significantly, there will be less of a cooling affect on the planet than originally predicted. We need to stop pumping heat out into the environment as a by product of the inefficient housing in which we live.

Hopefully stricter building regulations will be put into place to make sure that houses are built with higher efficiency in mind. However we still have a whole lot of houses out there that were not build with efficiency in mind that could do with being upgraded. Not only could it help save the environment, it could also save a lot of money, by only heating your house and not the environment around it as well.