Global Warming, or Natural Causes?

Question

in the last period our earth warmed, and we had currently finished our series of ice ages, isn't the earth (by itself) warming up on its own, and not by the cause of Global Warming? Sure scientists, environmentalists and researchers so called "proved" it, but they haven't disproved the theory that the earth itself warms and cools naturally, what do you think?

Answer 1

Natural changes in solar radiation were involved at times in the past, but are inadequate to explain the amount of warming seen in past cycles.  

Like now, most of the warming came from greenhouse gases, although this is the first time that we've initiated a cycle:

"An important clue came from some especially good ice core records that showed a lag in the levels of CO2 and methane. They seemed to rise or fall a few centuries after a rise or fall in temperature. This confused many people, who thought the time lag contradicted the greenhouse theory of global warming. But in fact the lag was not good news. Scientists quickly realized that it strongly confirmed that the Milankovitch-cycle shifts in sunlight initiated a powerful feedback loop. Evidently the close of a glacial era came when a slight rise of temperature stimulated massive changes in gas levels, which drove the temperature still higher, which drove further changes in the gas levels, and so forth. Ice ages were thus the reverse of our current situation, where humanity was initiating the change by adding greenhouse gases. Once that began to warm the planet, would the feedbacks begin to drive things higher on their own?"

  

"It was now clear that not only the most obvious feedback, but also the most momentous one, was the connection between global temperature and greenhouse gas levels. Relatively straightforward analysis of the data showed that a doubled level of CO2 had always gone along with a rise of a few degrees in global temperature. It was a striking verification, with entirely independent methods and data, of what computer models had been predicting for the planet’s greenhouse future."

- Spencer R. Weart, Director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) in College Park, Maryland.

Answer 2

Global warming AND natural causes.

Global warming just means it is getting warmer, no matter what the cause.

Answer 3

People seem to forget there was a Holocene Maximum where the world was 4 - 5 degrees warmer, where were SUVs then? CO2 lags behind temperature by 800 years, it's freezing where I am (South West England ), we've had deaths and cars buried in the North and Scotland, It's -40 in Minnesota, some town in Oregon was under 13 feet of snow, China's frozen solid, and we're told by Al Gore that Global Warming causes snow. Maybe we should listen to the 19,000 scientists who signed this petition: http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p357.htm and the 400 scientists in this senate report: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?F... out of the 3,000 members of the IPCC, most aren't scientists.

Answer 4

i think it's both global warming & natural causes.

indeed the earth is getting on in years. just like nature, it'll get old. so, what i'm trying to say is that it's just natural for the earth to get warm, just like humans get old.

but to another extent, humans' activities do play some part. life is a cycle, what goes around, comes around. so, with technology and more inventions (e.g. to improve life), there'll be some negative effects too. just like for example, with the invention of engines, harmful gases are given out. greenhouse effect by humans, causing global warming.

conclusion: it's mainly both global warming and natural causes. a little bit of both. because life is a balance :)

Answer 5

both natural and we are speeding it up even if we don't do anything wrong it will still happen it is the earth's ways also it is not going up 1 degree

Answer 6

The debate continues.  Who knows if we will ever know for sure?

http://www.stuffintheair.com/global-warm...

See what I mean?

Answer 7

global warming, it is one of effect from pollution. went the earth became hot cause of green house, iceberg on north pole and south pole became fluid and the temperture become more hot.

so we must save our earth.

Answer 8

My view is it's caused naturally. If you look geologically you will note that heating up and cooling down has happened back and fourth since the Earth was formed billions of years ago. Before the industrial age man couldn't/didn't put out forest fires hmmmm.... thats a lot of pollution nature was causing! What about volcanos? One time the Earth was covered with highly active volcanos yet we still went into ice ages over and over again.

   What irks me is those who say it is defiantly caused by man and show the history of weather since we've been keeping records as their proof. Why is this bother some? Because as stated above the Earth is over a billion years (1000 million years) old, yet we've only been keeping track of the weather for 100 years and keeping global records of it for less than 50 of those 100 years at most!

I wish the environmentalist leftist would just shut up and deal with their own lives instead of trying to tell everyone else how to live their lives..... They whine about "Global Warming" and how its all man's fault, yet geologists, anthropologists, and biologists will tell you that when the Earth was mostly water, much hotter than man has ever experienced,  and with a fairly toxic atmosphere life started on this odd little planet.....

Earth was here before man was and it will be here after we go extinct as every species before us has.....

Answer 9

There's no scientific evidence that the Earth has warmed. That report is full of gross errors.

The direct measurements are limited to a period of time and a very very small area compared with all the Earth surface. The indirect measurements are theoretical in most cases and with errors. The values assumed for times and places where there were no measurements have significant error margins way above 1 degree C. When you put that all together and calculate an average, the error margin probably is above 2 or 3 degrees C. Surely more for the periods before 1900 when the measurements were rare and the instruments inaccurate. The result is smaller than the error margin. So it's totally irrelevant if the trend is going up or down. In fact, with that gap between the results and the error margin, it's a lot easier to make the trend go anywhere you want.

I understand that we HAVE to be more responsible in the use of resources. But I'm not buying this global warming scam.

Answer 10

the earth warms and cools natural but it needs a cause.

this cycle is normally trigged by the Milankovitch cycles (cycles in the earths orbit).

the current warming is not due to this because we should be slowly cooling.

"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."

J Imbrie, J Z Imbrie (1980). "Modeling the Climatic Response to Orbital Variations". Science 207 (1980/02/29): 943-953.

Answer 11

I think that there are both natural and anthropogenic factors involved. We can't do anything about the natural factors. If we don't control what we can, we will reach the tipping point that much sooner.