Does global warming exist and is it cost effective to combat it?

Question

I am writing a 20 page paper and would like some opinions.

Answer 1

IT DOES EXIST CANT U TELL!!!

floods, weather changes etc

opinions

it needs to be helped

cars should be cut down

Answer 2

No, and no.  You'd be fighting figments of Algore's imagination, and all his followers.  God Bless you.

Answer 3

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/glo...

i don`t think cost effective comes into it if we are talking about Human survival in the long run.

because that is always cost effective

Answer 4

bob is on crack, the founder of the weather channel is suing al gore for the crock of fill in the blank he is enacting.  stand out and go the other way that your teacher obviously wants you to.  we have been 8 degrees below average for a while up here in maine.  we beat the record of snow in caribou maine at almost 200 inches this year.  the ice is melting in some other country, greenland maybe, but they are finding mining operations under the ice.  meaning it is just a cycle of the earth.  we have only been recording this information for so many years compared to the hundreds of thousands the earth has been around.  I cant give you any fancy navy credentials like bob did, but at least i wasn't told how to think

Answer 5

Global warming is a natural phase of Earth, caused by some Solar Activities by Sun. We human don't have to bother about it. Some of the environmentalist says that this is because of the CO2 we are emitting into the environment, but the reality is that we are just contributing towards 1% to 10% of actual global warming.

If the actual cause of Global Warming is CO2 emitted by the humans then why Global Warming occures on other planets. Just Google for "Global Warming on other planets" and see the results, there are no humans on other planets.

Having too little CO2 in the environment will cause for the plants to die more early, more over it also cools down the temperature on earth.

Having too much CO2 (obiviously, not caused by humans. Mostly generated in the Sea/Oceans) will lead to Green House effect and will lead in increasing the temperature on Earth.

So, the best is to plant more trees so that there would be a balance for the consumption of CO2 on the planet.

I personally think that instead of thinking on this baseless issue try to think on what if Nuclear War broke out in the world, it will destroy Earth more rapidly.

So, next time whenever somebody says you about global warming, just ignore it.

Answer 6

Bob, must you answer every global warming question with the same list of people and groups? You fail to point out that in most of these organizations, the global warming statement was never voted on or approved by it's members, just by "management". Sort of like the way the IPCC works. The scientists submit reports and studies, the IPCC selects the ones it likes, tweaks the numbers as needed, then publishes it's own summary of what the reports supposedly contained.

Whether or not Newt Gingrich believes in AGW carries as much weight with me as the fact that Al Gore does. None. If you can explain to me the mechanism by which CO2 will continue to cause warming past the saturation point for the infrared radiation it blocks, how it's effect is then amplified by water vapor and other factors, and yet the temp is not 1000C? As it warmed the ocean it releases still more CO2 presently stored there, which should cause a runaway warming effect that would have made the Earth uninhabitable millions of years ago.

CO2 does block certain wavelengths of infrared radiation, most of which originates with the sun, a small amount from the Earth's molten core. As the radiation tries to escape back into space it is instead "bounced back", but not permanently. And each additional CO2 molecule has less effect on warming than the one that preceded it. CO2 is the weakest of all the greenhouse gases, water vapor is responsible for nearly all global warming but it's not a gas, hence not a greenhouse gas.

Obviously the Earth has mechanisms to deal with excess CO2 to prevent this runaway heating, but we're not sure what all of them are. The oceans are massive CO2 sinks and so is most vegetation, but that can't be the whole story. What does cause warming is the sun, greenhouse gases only trap some of the radiation we receive from the sun. Obviously, the more the sun produces, the warmer we get. If it's not clear exactly what the truth is, first eliminate what can't be true.

The Earth had 10 times as much CO2 as today at a time we were having an ice age. And 20 times as much when the temp wasn't even 10C warmer. If all the ice on Earth melted, coastal areas would be flooded. Unless we decided not to let that happen and adopted some ideas from Holland which has dealt with the problem of low-lying land prone to flooding for centuries. It will take a long time for all that ice to melt, we'll probably be back into an ice age before it does.

It's never cost-effective to fight something that doesn't exist. The past year has been quite cool and this morning, the first of May, it snowed where I live. Anecdotal evidence but it's been a cold winter worldwide, following a cold winter in the southern hemisphere. The solar cycle we're now in, #24, so weak it's almost non-existent. If that goes in we may seen a plunge in temp that would last for a century or more. The last time the cycle was this weak for a prolonged period was the Maunder Minimum during the Little Ice Age.

The IPCC doesn't like to rely on real data, they prefer climate models even though they can't predict past climate with accurate numbers plugged into them, let alone future climate. They do give the results the IPCC wants, though, predicting ever increasing warming as CO2 rises.

For reference, the current bill under consideration in the US is s.2191, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Act. The EPA estimates that it will cost our economy $2.856 Trillion a year by 2050, with very little reduction in CO2 globally. China almost certainly won't act based on political pressure but the US might, given poor leadership. This doesn't include the impact of carbon taxes and other costs the bill would cause.

Answer 7

That depends on one big assumption.  What is going to be the effects of global warming.  There have been studies that say it is cost effective.  But they are making assumptions that hurricanes like Karina will become more common (which current evidence says not).

You might also be interested in researching the Copenhagen consensus.  It was a conference in which the world's top economists were asked to provide a cost benefit analysis based on the assumption that AGW is real.  They said no, it is not cost effective.

http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Defau...

Is it real?  I found a good paper that analysis the peer review data.  While it is not peer reviewed it is good because he explains things in layman's words that everyone can understand.  He backs up his position with references.

http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2007/09/t...

You might also want to note that the evidence coming out is that that PDO has shifted into its cool phase, calling many to say we are heading for cooling.  Explain in detail here:

http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2008/05/m...

Answer 8

This isn't the best place to get knowledgeable opinions.

I'll give you links to experts.

Global warming exists.

"I wasn’t convinced by a person or any interest group—it was the data that got me. I was utterly convinced of this connection between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. And I was convinced that if we didn’t do something about this, we would be in deep trouble.”

Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)

Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut

Here are two summaries of the mountain of peer reviewed data that convinced Admiral Truly and the vast majority of the scientific community, short and long.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Ima...

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report....

summarized at:

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report...

There's a lot less controversy about this is the real world than there is on Yahoo answers:

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/a...

And vastly less controversy in the scientific community than you might guess from the few skeptics talked about here:

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

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

EVERY major scientific organization has issued an official statement that this is real, and mostly caused by us.  The National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Association, etc.

It is definitely cost effective to reduce it some.  If we do nothing, the cost will be huge.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6096...

Reducing it some is way cheaper.  Here's the plan:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/worl...

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg3.h...