Are Humans Contributing to Global Warming?

Question

there is no doubt in my mind that global warming is a natural cycle on earth but we humans are contributing way too much to the cycle. Do you think that we are contributing to Global Warming?

Answer 1

duh

Answer 2

not anymore...

I thought we were, but i saw on the news that an international effort to record climate change (most scientists agree that up to 70% of warming happens in the oceans) in the oceans. The international community put numerous probes into several different oceans: they found that the temperatures haven't changed in a few decades and in some cases, they were lower than the last recored temperatures (in the 1980's). Now, many avid supporters of the theory say that global warming is now "taking a break."

That's total bull.....

Answer 3

absolutely not, the only thing that MIGHT contribute to global warming that isn't natural is all of Al Gore and the tree huggers HOT AIR.

Answer 4

Absolutely - Al Gore flying around in his jet and heating the atmosphere.

Answer 5

Look at the temperature reports and if it ever starts we will be breaking records that are 100 years old.

Answer 6

Climate change is a natural phenomena. Unfortunately what is occurring now is a very unnatural climate change taking place much fast than would occur naturally. In nature plants and animals can adapt and evolve to suit changes in the environment but the change that we are causing now is taking place too fast for most species to do this.

Answer 7

They are still trying to figure that out. The best thing it do is more research and try to understand the environment. They can't even predict the weather correctly but where suppose the understand that they got this Global warming thing figured out.

Answer 8

It is indeed a natural cycle, but if you look at records acquired by scientists (judging by the layers of earth), you'll see a dramatic increase in temperature when humans first began life. Sure,it didn't just shoot up at a 90% angle, but it didn't follow the "normal" path, either.

So yes, I believe we're contributing to Global Warming.

However, I don't believe we're causing the whole thing.

Answer 9

Yes, we are contributing to global warming. The more pollution and gas emissions that we produce, the more it damages the ozone layer. When the ozone layer takes damage, it allows more and more sunlight to pass the atmosphere and thus heat the earth. Also, hair spray is one of the most known contributers to global warming. When you spray harispray, it damages the ozone layer very badly. And Al Gore is a very good follower of global warming. His house uses solar panels, stores energy, and uses water to produce electricity. It is one of the most environmentally friendly houses on the planet.

Answer 10

WATCH THIS DOCUMENTARY:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...

Answer 11

yes were are becuase  our citys are growing and the cars are giving co2 and so are  were giving of co2

Answer 12

How can we not?

Oh yeah, I forgot it's a myth created to scare people...

Like those little tiny invisible things called "germs" that can make you sick.  Ha!  How ridiculous!

Puhleeeez!

There's even people who are convinced that the earth actually rotates AROUND THE SUN!?!?!?  Woah, I mean comon, we all know the sun rises and sets.

Some people even think that the earth is round and floating in a vacuum... I mean, seriously, everyone knows they made that up to discredit religion.

Say what they might, so called "scientists" will always try and use scare tacticts to somehow prove to the rest of us how insignificant we are.  We gotta fight the good fight folks!

Tell Al Gore and all those scientists to go jump!  

Moon landings?  Please!  Where do you think cheese comes from?

Yeah, that's what I thought!

Now, go and take a S**t in your living room and leave it there - don't do anything, don't pick it up for goodness sake, just deny it's there.  Have fun!

Answer 13

it cant be denied that when you spit in the ocean you cause sea level to rise.& when you exhale you increase the co2 content of the atmosphere.

so what else is new?

Answer 14

The sun is heating up a bit and thus all the planets are currently experiencing some warming:

http://www.livescience.com/environment/0...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk...

Answer 15

Technically you could say we're contributing to it, but that's pretty much where it ends for me.  I also believe this is just one of the earth's naturally occuring little episodes of change.  However, to say that the amount of damage humans contribute is that significant is pretty arrogant.  I think we contribute, but not enough to be devastating to the planet.

Answer 16

well we as humans contribute to the environment, so if in fact there is global warming or cooling that occurs that can be traced to things that happen in nature and that humans replicate then yes, but in a very small way. nature is more destructive to it's self than man ever can be.

Answer 17

No, I don't think we are contributing to it. But I do agree that it is natural cycle the earth goes through.

Answer 18

They are one of the main causes of global warming and most don't even care.

Answer 19

There are many basic scientific facts which can only be explained if the current global warming is being caused by an increased greenhouse effect due to carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere from humans burning fossil fuels.

For example, the planet is warming as much or more during the night than day.  If the warming were due to the Sun, the planet should warm a lot more during the day when the Sun has influence.  Greenhouse gases trap heat all the time, so they warm the planet regardless of time of day.  Another example is that the upper atmosphere is cooling because the greenhouse gases trap the heat in the lower atmosphere.  If warming were due to the Sun, it would be warming all layers of the atmosphere.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

We know it's warming, and we've measured how much:

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science...

Scientists have a good idea how the Sun and the Earth's natural cycles and volcanoes and all those natural effects change the global climate, so they've gone back and checked to see if they could be responsible for the current global warming.  What they found is:

Over the past 30 years, all solar effects on the global climate have been in the direction of (slight) cooling, not warming.  This is during a very rapid period of global warming.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/62902...

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

A recent study concluded:

“the range of  [Northern Hemisphere]-temperature reconstructions and natural forcing histories…constrain the natural contribution to 20th century warming to be <0.2°C [less than one-third of the total warming].  Anthropogenic forcing must account for the difference between a small natural temperature signal and the observed warming in the late 20th century.”

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/104...

You can see this in the third graph here, where the dotted lines are just from natural causes, and the full lines are natural + human causes:

http://www.pnas.org/content/vol104/issue...

If that’s not enough to convince you the Sun isn’t responsible, consider the fact that no scientific study has ever attributed more than one-third of the warming over the past 30 years to the Sun, and most attribute just 0-10% to the Sun.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

So the Sun certainly isn't a large factor in the current warming.  They've also looked at natural cycles, and found that we should be in the middle of a cooling period right now.

"An often-cited 1980 study by Imbrie and Imbrie determined that 'Ignoring anthropogenic and other possible sources of variation acting at frequencies higher than one cycle per 19,000 years, this model predicts that the long-term cooling trend which began some 6,000 years ago will continue for the next 23,000 years.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitc...

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ab...

So it's definitely not the Earth's natural cycles.  They looked at volcanoes, and found that

a) volcanoes cause more global cooling than warming, because the particles they emit block sunlight

b) humans emit over 150 times more CO2 than volcanoes annually

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man....

So it's certainly not due to volcanoes.  Then they looked at human greenhouse gas emissions.  We know how much atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased over the past 50 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna...

And we know from isotope ratios that this increase is due entirely to human emissions from burning fossil fuels.  We know how much of a greenhouse effect these gases like carbon dioxide have, and the increase we've seen is enough to have caused almost all of the warming we've seen over the past 30 years (about 80-90%).  You can see a model of the various factors over the past century here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Clima...

This is enough evidence to convince almost all climate scientists that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming.