Do you think global warming was caused by human interaction, nature, or a combo of both.?

Question

I personally think it is caused by people but it may not be as severe as everyone thinks. It is thought that if humans were not on earth we would be heading towards an ice age. Basically, we have delayed the inevitable and are fighting something that can't be stopped.

Answer 1

the earth was here long before man and will be here long after man is gone.

Answer 2

Nature all the way. After more than $50 billion dollars being spent, there is yet to be a scientific study which has suggested man is the cause.

How much more needs to be spent for us to realize the sun controls the climate.

Answer 3

the sun.

The earth is constantly bombarded with cosmic rays, which come from a star that blew up long long ago. When the sun is active (very stormy), it repels most of the cosmic rays from reaching us, and we warm, but when the sun is calm (very few sunspots) which it is at the moment, bucket loads of cosmic rays reach our atmosphere. When cosmic rays reach our atmosphere, they create major cloud cover, and the tops of the clouds are brilliant white, which reflects the suns rays back into space so we cool.

Answer 4

It's obviously a combination. Humans put 0.0037% of the CO2 into the air. Termites and cattle also put some in. As does volcanoes. Of course, since CO2 is a lagging indicator, we really should be looking elsewhere for the cause of gw. Contrary to what gw believers say, the sun does indeed have a measurable effect on the earth's climate. It also affects other planets, such as Mars.

We are currently some 11,500 years into the longest interglacial period on record. It's only a matter of time before the next ice age begins. If it is caused by the stalling of the gulf stream, it will at least explain a lot that has been inexplicable before this. Did you know that the Vikings used the Northwest Passage a millenia ago? We've been here before, and no harm done.

Answer 5

ummmmm well im not sure about "heading toward an ice age" but, this green house/global warming thing is caused by everyone. Like, cows their farts have a gas in them that is a pollutant. i think global warming has been going on for forever. Buts its at its greatest effect now. Because some people think that what they do doesn't effect the world around them. And that WE are THE ONLY ONES in this PLANET. But thats NOT TRUE. we have to learn and respect the animals and plant life around us. we have been destroying the food chain and habbitat since we have come to be as we kno us. but there are many sides to this argument. like, this may be part of this planets naturel cicle and we may have nothing to do with it. Remember the dinosaures???? who knows if something happened like what is going on now. Global warming and all. And it destroyed them. Who knows.

Answer 6

i think that it caused by humans. Were the ones driving cars and stuff, like having those professional car races that burn lots of gas and contribute to the global warming.  Were all doing things that contribute to global warming, which makes me ashamed of myself

Answer 7

Nature.

Answer 8

Bigdimize   quotes a syndicated columnist as his expert witness.  And right off the bat, anyone who know anything about these issues, knows that it's a complete lie to say there was any consensus about the predictions of global cooling in 1972

  It was a handful of scientists, and the lead scientist recanted 3 years later, saying he had underestimated the amount of CO2

"It is true that there were some predictions of an "imminent ice age" in the 1970s, but a cursory comparison of those warnings and today's reveals a huge difference."

"Today, you have a widespread scientific consensus, supported by national academies and all the major scientific institutions, solidly behind the warning that the temperature is rising, anthropogenic CO2 is the primary cause, and it will worsen unless we reduce emissions."

"In the 1970s, there was a book in the popular press, a few articles in popular magazines, and a small amount of scientific speculation based on the recently discovered glacial cycles and the recent slight cooling trend from air pollution blocking the sunlight. There were no daily headlines. There was no avalanche of scientific articles. There were no United Nations treaties or commissions. No G8 summits on the dangers and possible solutions. No institutional pronouncements. You could find broader "consensus" on a coming alien invasion."

"Quite simply, there is no comparison. "

How many times a day are the skeptics going to bring up these absurd arguments that have no basis in reality.  It's not like they don't get answered everyday here.  Nonetheless, the skeptics keep hammering away at nonsense as if it were in the least bit truthful.

You want to talk about evading criticism?  right

In fact all of the skeptics arguments have been studied for years by thousands of scientists, and it hasn't changed squat.

Answer 9

Could be.  In that case, we had better start colonizing other planets.

Answer 10

I believe that it is caused by humans. Does Mars have issues with it's ozone? I realize that it's not the same as our planet, but it goes to show that we have to be doing something to ours to cause so many things to go wrong. I believe that birth defects, asthma, allergies, cancer, etc... are all happening because of pollutants that humans put into the air, water, ground. It is no longer possible to escape these pollutants. I do believe that there would be some sort of diseases regardless of our pollutions. Just not to the extent that we have them now. I truly feel that if we could fix it that these things would eventually go back to rare instances.

Answer 11

It is caused by liberal politicians and Hollywood celebrities spewing hot air.

Answer 12

Well there's still people on both sides of the issue although its doubtful that'll be true much longer.  Here's a little Jewel from the local news here in Missouri.

Answer 13

According to scientists it's "a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages. Geological, archaeological, oral and written histories all attest to the dramatic challenges posed to past societies from unanticipated changes in temperature, precipitation, winds and other climatic variables."

So it's nature, not us.

Answer 14

Almost entirely humans.

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.

Answer 15

I think humans do not realize that our presence alone contributes to global warming. Our bodies generate heat. Our cars, lawnmowers, ships, planes, factories, etc. all generate heat. The mass of concrete and black asphalt causes our more populated areas to absorb heat from the sun. All of this and more accounts for our direct impact on temperatures. There's still the issue of greenhouse gases. And how about deforestation? There's all kinds of contributions we make to global warming. The real questions should be how much of an impact do we make and if our impact is a bad thing. Can the Earth take care of itself despite our influence? We simply don't know, so we make guesses. Some are better or more educated than others, but no one knows for sure.

Answer 16

I think it's are fault that is happening so quickly, but nature would have eventually, like hundreds of years, created it on its own. And because it's happening quickly it's worse than it would have been.

Answer 17

Evidence links greenhouse gasses to climate change in the past.  

We simply happen to be responsible for the release this time intead of volcanos, outgassing from ocean warming (triggered by solar cycles), and so on.

So it's a natural process that we're setting in motion this time around.  That's not good news... it's happening at an unprecedented rate, the planet has never proven that it can carry the current world population through this sort of change.

Answer 18

When a controversial issue in science is politicized and seems to become a fad, does an ordinary person have the tools to judge whether it is likely to be good science, or junk science carried along by scare headlines and politically-correct institutional group think?

Well, the ordinary person has some advantages that academic scientists often lack — such as common sense, a disinterested objectivity, and freedom from peer pressure or political agenda. He does not need to worry about rejection of his doctoral thesis or denial of tenure if he says something heretical to establishment science. The ordinary person is not trained in the currently prevailing paradigms of institutional science, and he is able to see things that the intensely specialized graduate studies and tightly focused paradigms of the academic world tend to filter out.

With that in mind, let's take a look at global warming. First, we shall consider a "smell test" that an ordinary person can employ with the help of common sense. Then, if the global warming movement does not pass the smell test, we shall build upon scientific facts that are available to a bright college freshman to evaluate whether the global warming theory is likely to be valid.

The Smell Test

Liberal syndicated columnist Nicholas D. Kristof was once an enthusiastic environmentalist, but says, "I'm now skeptical of the movement's I-have-a-nightmare speeches." He said in a recent column, "The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that environmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they have lost credibility." He recalls the warnings in the seventies that the Alaska oil pipeline would decimate caribou herds. The herds have increased five fold since then. Kristof also recalls panicky warnings in the seventies of global cooling and the disasters this would bring to the world. Allegedly, the meteorologists were nearly unanimous in their predictions of global cooling. Kristof mentions other scare warnings that did not come true, such as disastrous overpopulation in Asia, famines, nuclear winter, and radical changes in the weather. The things that disillusioned Kristof give us a simple smell test: 1) scare warnings of impending disaster; 2) assertions that scientists are unanimous; and 3) politicalized groups that have a bad track record in their predictions.

Let us add a fourth item to the smell test. When the conventional view is challenged, do the proponents refuse to answer the facts and logic of the challenge? One of the founding principles of empirical science is to attempt to falsify every hypothesis and accept only those hypotheses that cannot be refuted. The mark of good science is the willingness to discuss the intelligent criticisms of a hypothesis. The refusal to consider and discuss intelligent criticism based upon facts and logic is the mark of group-think junk science. The evasion of criticism is invariably accompanied by changing the subject.

As a fifth smell test, look for the following kinds of ploys of redirection: a) "You are not qualified to question science," b) "All scientists say X; therefore, anyone who questions X is not of science," c) "You must be motivated by political loyalties, economic vested interests, or religious beliefs if you question X," d) "You must be ignorant or lacking intellectual honesty if you question X," e) You desire a personal insult that demonizes you and casts you in the role of a monster, an enemy, or a fool. This is how Hollywood answers her critics: cast them as a demon or a crank in the next movie. It is an old cartoonist's technique that goes back to Michelangelo who is alleged to have painted the face of Pope Paul III on the devil in The Last Judgement.

Readers who wish to try the smell test might go to any Environmentalist or Global Warming interactive web site with an intelligent criticism and see if they can get an intelligent answer. If the Global Warming advocates flunk the smell test, should one join with Horatio and say "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark"? Not at all. If we jump to hasty conclusions, we become just as bad as the partisans of junk science. If we fail to make a solid case of our own and manipulate science just to confute the junk science partisans, we acquire a bad smell of our own. The smell test is merely a warning signal that we need to investigate further. How shall we proceed? Start with the known facts and ask serious questions. What follows is my attempt to do just this with facts readily available to any college freshman.

The global warming theory is based upon the concept of a greenhouse effect. In brief, the greenhouse effect occurs when the ground is heated from sunlight and radiates the heat into the air, and the escape of heat into the stratosphere is slowed by elements in the lower atmosphere. Global warming theory holds that the increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air due to automobile exhaust and industry emissions has intensified the greenhouse effect and is causing global warming.

A few scientific basics about the atmosphere are needed before we can think intelligently about the greenhouse effect. Our atmosphere consists mainly of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and dust. All these elements are directly or indirectly necessary for plant and animal life on earth. Each of these six elemental substances is taken from the air and replenished to the air in a regular cycle.

Nitrogen cycle: 78% of the air consists of nitrogen. Bacteria fixate nitrogen gas from the air and form nitrogen compounds. Tiny insects consume the bacteria, and these in turn are eaten by larger animals and birds that digest the nitrogen compounds and use it in organic tissues. Animal f***s and the decay of dead animals goes through a process of putrefaction in which ammonia is produced. Ammonia, which has a strong odor, releases some nitrogen into the air and returns some nitrogen into the soil. Plants use nitrites in the soil as a nutrient. Dead plants putrefy, produce ammonia and release nitrogen to the air and the soil. Atmospheric nitrogen is an inert, colorless, odorless gas, and has no known influence on the greenhouse effect.

Oxygen cycle: Animals breathe oxygen in the air, and it is brought by the circulatory system to the cells of the body, where oxidation of food produces energy that supports body activity. Plants use carbon dioxide and sunlight in a process called photosynthesis, which produces living plant tissue that can be consumed by animals. A byproduct of photosynthesis is oxygen. Plants use a small part of the oxygen for oxidation of energy in their own tissues and release the remainder of the oxygen into the atmosphere. Oxygen levels are stable in spite of deforestation and industrial consumption of oxygen. 90% of oxygen replenishment for the air is produced by green algae in the oceans. Oxygen supplied by increased agricultural productivity has compensated for oxygen lost from deforestation and oxygen consumed by forest fires and industrial use. Oxygen is a colorless, odorless gas that has no known influence on the greenhouse effect.

Carbon dioxide cycle: Plants consume carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere in the process of photosynthesis. Carbon is removed from the CO2 and is processed into plant fibre. When a tree is burned, the charred wood and ashes consist mostly of carbon. Animals eat plants and integrate some of the carbon into their bodies. Life on earth is carbon-based, and the source of that carbon is carbon dioxide in the air. CO2 in the air is replenished by the exhalations of animals as they breath, by plants as they release gases, by forest fires that release CO2 along with carbon ash in smoke, and by the fumes from the rotting of dead plants. Volcanic eruptions and industrial processes also add CO2 to the air. Atmospheric carbon dioxide seems to have increased during the last century from some combination of volcanic eruptions, forest fires, and industrial processes. The relative importance of these three as causes of increased CO2 is not clear. Whether increases in CO2 in the air boost the yield of farm plants is a topic of study and debate. Like nitrogen and oxygen, CO2 is a colorless, odorless gas.

Although neither nitrogen or oxygen has an influence on the greenhouse effect, for some reason CO2 is assumed by environmentalists to influence the greenhouse effect so as to cause global warming. We are all waiting for an explanation of how CO2 differs from nitrogen and oxygen in its influence on the greenhouse effect. Until such explanation is forthcoming, it seems reasonable to suspect that the theorists are failing to differentiate between wholesome CO2 and poisonous CO1 (carbon monoxide) and other toxic gases that accompany CO2 in industrial pollution. Why are the global warming theorists singling out a wholesome gas that is necessary for life on earth as the culprit of the impending disasters they are predicting?

Water cycle: Water exists in the atmosphere mainly in the form of water vapor and water mist. Water droplets gather into mist and mass as clouds and fogs. Warm mist air rises to meet cool higher air and condenses as water droplets in clouds, which fall to earth as rain. Fresh water is essential for life, and most plants and animals consist of over 70% water. Water on the land runs into the oceans and the evaporation of ocean water replenishes water vapor in the atmosphere. Industrial processes and forest fires release water vapor, but not in amounts that are significant relative to ocean evaporation. Water vapor is a colorless, odorless gas and has no influence on the greenhouse effect.

However, water mist formed into cloud cover does retain some of the heat radiated from earth that is warmed by the sun, and does appear to produce a greenhouse effect. As we shall see in this an