Do you believe global warming is a real threat or just a big hype?

Question

Do you believe global warming is a real threat or just a big hype?

Answer 1

A real and present danger, backed up by mountains of scientific evidence. In fact observations show a greater threat and rate than the IPCC projections of just a few years ago.

"A common skeptic characterisation of the IPCC is that they exagerate warming projections and the dangers from global warming. In actuality, IPCC projections tend to underestimate climate change, particularly for sea level. Perhaps a more appropriate characterisation is a middle-of-the-road, conservative approach to science."

  There is a good overview at this website, with graphs and such.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Comparin...

Anyone who trades stocks and is familiar with stock charts and technical analysis can clearly see that claims of warming having stopped in recent years are not very real.  The upward sloping moving averages and trendlines have never been broached to the downside.

I am speaking of longer term graphs of over 10 years.  The charts at this website and others demonstrate that.  

Skeptic argument

"Global warming and natural climate change in the past.    Earth's climate has changed long before we were pouring CO2 into the atmosphere. Europe was far warmer in the Middle Ages. During the 17th and 18th century, it was much colder, prompting the ‘The Little Ice Age’, when the Thames was frozen over months at a time. Further back, there were times when the Earth was several degrees hotter than current temperatures. Warming of several degrees often took only centuries or decades."

What the science says:

"The usual drivers of natural climate change have shown little to no warming trend since the 70's.

It's a well established fact that climate changes naturally and sometimes dramatically. The pertinent question isn't "has climate changed in the past?" (of course it has) but "what is causing global warming now?" To begin to answer that, it's helpful to look at the major causes of natural climate change in the past."

Solar activity

"Solar variations have been the major driver of climate change over the past 10,000 years. When sunspot activity was low during the Maunder Minimum in the 1600's or the Dalton Minimum in the 1800's, the earth went through 'Little Ice Ages'. Similarly, solar activity was higher during the Medieval Warm Period."

"However, the correlation between solar activity and global temperatures ended around 1975. At that point, temperatures started rising while solar activity stayed level. This led a team of scientists from Finland and Germany to conclude "during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source."

Milankovitch cycles

"Earth's climate undergoes 120,000 year cycles of ice ages broken by short warm periods called interglacials. The cycle is driven by Milankovitch cycles. Long term changes in the Earth's orbit trigger an initial warming which warms the oceans and melts ice sheets - this releases CO2. The extra CO2 in the atmosphere causes further warming leading to interglacials ending the ice ages."

For the past 12,000 years, we've been in an interglacial. The current trend of the Milankovitch cycle is a gradual cooling down towards an ice age."

Volcanoes

"Volcanic eruptions spew sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere which has a cooling effect on global temperatures. These aerosols reflect incoming sunlight, causing a 'global dimming' effect. Usually, the cooling effect lasts several years until the aerosols are washed out of the atmosphere. In the case of large eruptions or a succession of eruptions such as in the early 1800's, the cooling effect can last several decades. Strong volcanic activity exacerbated the Little Ice Age in the 1800's."

"The usual suspects in natural climate change - solar variations, volcanoes, Milankovitch cycles - are all conspicuous in their absence over the past 3 decades of warming. This doesn't mean by itself that CO2 is the main cause of current global warming - you don't prove anthropogenic warming by eliminating all other options. But the causes of the commonly cited climate changes in the past are understood and have played little to no part in the current warming trend."  

Skeptical Science

Also, we are at the low in the solar cycle and should start seeing the solar forcing bringing temps back in line with the long term uptrend.

Funny how skeptics claim the sun is causing the warming, but won't admit it's role in the current plateau since 1998 while the solar cycle has been in it's downtrend.

"The other significant finding is that solar forcing will add another 0.18°C warming on top of greenhouse warming between 2007 (we're currently at solar minimum) to the solar maximum around 2012. In other words, solar forcing will double the amount of global warming over the next five to six years."

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Solar-cy...

"However unlikely and difficult to predict, imagine for the sake of argument that the sun does go through another Maunder Minimum over the next century. What effect would this have on Earth's climate? The difference in solar radiative forcing between Maunder Minimum levels and current solar activity is estimated between 0.17 W/m2 (Wang 2005) to 0.23 W/m2 (Krivova 2007)."

"In contrast, the radiative forcing of CO2 since pre-industrial times is 1.66 W/m2 (IPCC AR4), far outstripping solar influence. And that's not including the extra CO2 to be added to the atmosphere in upcoming decades. In other words, the warming from CO2 dwarves any potential cooling even if the sun was to return to Maunder Minimum levels."

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Are-we-h...

skeptic argument: there is no consensus

"People that say this often have little or no grasp of the science and are using denial to avoid having to face a danger. Fix the denial mechanism by showing them this list of sustainable/green technologies. Then make them read this consensus and say the following quote out loud: "I don't know anything about science, so given the choice of trusting 99.9% or 0.1% of the experts, I'll go with the 0.1%". If still they don't think that sounds silly and they don't start to ask questions then you are wasting your time trying to educate them. This ratio is correct because there are 12,301-14,305 members of the AGU and who knows how many European experts on climate. As Eli Rabbet says "if you ain't a member of the AGU you ain't no d**n climate scientist in the US, just like the AMA". Also keep in mind that with the tens of thousand of climate change skeptics on the planet if only %1 of them are corrupted by the $10,000 payment (or bribe) currently being offered by Exxon through AEI then you will have at minimum 200 skeptics/deniers. So far 200 skeptics/deniers have not turned up."

http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptic_ar...

Predictions of global cooling in the 70s?  

There were actually far more published papers predicting warming than cooling.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-197...

One scientist has done a survey of climate papers from the 70s.

"The paper surveys climate studies from 1965 to 1979 (and in a refreshing change to other similar surveys, lists all the papers). They find very few papers (7 in total) predict global cooling. This isn't surprising. What surprises is that even in the 1970's, on the back of 3 decades of cooling, more papers (42 in total) predict global warming due to CO2 than cooling."

"So in fact, the large majority of climate research in the 1970s predicted the Earth would warm as a consequence of CO2. Rather than climate science predicting cooling, the opposite is the case. Most interesting about Peterson's paper is not the debunking of an already well debunked skeptic argument but a succinct history of climate science over the 20th century, describing how scientists from different fields gradually pieced together their diverse findings into a more unified picture of how climate operates. A must read paper."

"Scientific skepticism is a healthy thing. Scientists should always challenge themselves to expand their knowledge, improve their understanding and refine their theories. Yet this isn't what happens in global warming skepticism. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and yet eagerly, even blindly embrace any argument, op-ed piece, blog, study or 15 year old that refutes AGW"

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

Answer 2

A natural effect our planet goes through.

It's been going on for Eons... But it's sped

up with the o-zone layer disappearing!!

Answer 3

Of course it's a real threat... but at the same time, it is also a hype. Alot of environmentalists make us guilty for breathing, scream for chopping down a tree, and for drinking water.

Answer 4

I know it's a real threat.  For details, the see wiki article I wrote linked below.

Answer 5

i cant go into that here ..email me

Answer 6

I definitely believe global warming is a real threat. I do as much as I can to keep my carbon footprint as small as possible. To find out you carbon footprint, go on :

http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/

Answer 7

I really do believe it is a real threat, the freshwater melting from the ice in the poles is causing so many problems with the rise in the oceans temperatures

Answer 8

The Arctic is 5 degrees warmer the 20 years ago and the polar ice caps are melting, I'd say its a real threat

Answer 9

Yeah I belive in it how could some one not when there is prof! Global warming IS real sum time I think people just choose to ignor it!

Answer 10

It is mostly c**p.

Answer 11

the earth has been warming in general for 11,000 to13,000 years so if its hype no one can remember who started it, or why.

Answer 12

Global warming is but a component, in a group of destructive forces at work such as ;deforestation,desertification,Subsequen... wind and Water erosion,soil and water contamination ,irresponsible or wasteful utilization of bio resources and air pollution.

WHICH WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR.

A while ago one of NASA's top scientists concluded that the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free within five years, much faster than all previous predictions.

when the north pole is gone , you may have polar bears soon in America ,looking for a home ,

Calculations do not include the accumulative ,speeding up ,factor with time. the increase in water temperature will get faster all the time as well as the melting, when the ice is all gone the deeper cold Ocean currents will be drastically affected,which in turn will affect the warm currents,since all moving bodies of water are connected in series.

This will affect coastal climates ,world wide ,almost instantly. All aquatic flora and fauna will be affected,many dying off and others becoming invasive,

And recently In Chiapas ,and Tabasco in Mexico .more then a million people became homeless overnight with water coming up to their roofs ,because of rains from super evaporation from the forests,this had never happened before. Millions of animals died.

In India 3000 people died because of super storms .

.A few years ago in Europe 3500 people,died during a heat wave ,many of them in France .

Right now the average death toll annually is 150.000 due to Global warming

. these figures are already out of date and are expected to double soon.

In Northern China millions of people are running for their lives because regular dust storms so far have buried 900 villages under the sand and the whole of northern China is turning into a dessert.

The Sahara is growing by 7 kilometers a year all around the edges ,like a slow burning fire shriveling up their neighbors In the Kalahari huge rivers have dried up and thousand of species are gone due to their habitats disappearing .

The biggest changes are invisible at micro biotic levels species are becoming extinct ,others are multiplying ,

This affects the insect populations that follow ,and changes in that ,affect all that follows in the food chains ,

in the last 300 years half of the planets forests have gone

and in the last 50 years

half of our wet lands ,rain forests and ice fields .and 3000 species of animals .

We are now witnessing a mass Extinction of animals and plants of Biblical proportions,equal since the disappearance of the dinosaurs

.

There is a series that you can download easy ,called

bbc,Planet earth by David Attenborough.

About 15 ---700mb videos

this is a photographic team that has been filming Nature stories all over the world ,for a very long time .

In 3 of the episodes called --the future--saving species(this one covers extinction and the importance of species)

the future--living together ,ice worlds ,

they compare films they made before of places and species to what they are filming now in the same places.

Many scientists give commentaries as well .

Whole migrations of animals involving millions have disappeared in only 20 years,

in one place in the tundras ,in just 5 years

CHECK THE CLOCK FOR THE SPEED

http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf

If we want to save ourselves as a specie ,we have to address

the problems

We can correct most of the destructive factors

with disciplines ,changes of attitude and habits,alternative energies ,sustainable design etc.

All species are in Danger eventually,and each is important because all of Life on this planet is interrelated even if it is not obvious

Imagine that the Eco system is a wall and each specie is represented by a brick

Every brick taken out weakens the wall ,and eventually it will collapse ,which brick is the most important ???

they are all important and we are one of the bricks