Well, gasoline is mostly hydrocarbons derived from fossils fuels. Fossil fuels are the result of the decaying of animals and plants. So the atmospheric carbon that plants converted millions of years ago into organic material (leaves and bark) that died or was eaten by animals (also carbon based) is in large part the carbon side of the hydro-carbons we now use today.
When you burn fossil fuels, you essentially release into the atmosphere the carbon that had been stored underground for millions of years and that was never intended to ever see the light of day. Obviously doing this will change the amount of carbon that now lies in our current day atmosphere.
This is why wood, while being a high source of carbon when burned and therefore a "dirty" means of heating your home, its not as harmful in the long term because the carbon you are burning in the wood (since trees are a carbon life-form) was absorbed by the tree probably during your lifetime, so the amount of new carbon in the atmosphere during your lifetime is negligible. As opposed to burning fossil fuels where, again, the carbon has been out of the atmospheric equation for millions of years.
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