Global Warming; Your Opinions?

Question

I personally believe that Global Warming is not caused by humans alone, but other natural causes that I will not go in depth in here. I would like to hear your opinions on Global warming; do you support it? are you against it? why? Share your opinions!

serious answers only please; don't answer if you have no idea what you are talking about.

Answer 1

My opinion on Global Warming is that it is happening now. Scientist have done so many tests and studies on this that have shown positive that the earth is warming up. If we don't do anything about it now, the next generation will suffer. I also believe that nature has contributed to Global Warming, but i think the main cause is us.

Answer 2

the sun is getting hotter, mars is getting hotter, the earth is getting hotter.......

i see a pattern here

Answer 3

the ice caps were smaller 500 years ago!

Answer 4

Top Russian Scientist have shown proof that it is the Sun, not man that is causing global warming.  And this period of warmth is almost over.  We're ready to enter into a long. cold spell.

Enjoy warming while it's here!

"Global warming results not from the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but from an unusually high level of solar radiation and a lengthy - almost throughout the last century - growth in its intensity," Abdusamatov told RIA Novosti in an interview.

"It is no secret that when they go up, temperatures in the world's oceans trigger the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations."

"Instead of professed global warming, the Earth will be facing a slow decrease in temperatures in 2012-2015. The gradually falling amounts of solar energy, expected to reach their bottom level by 2040, will inevitably lead to a deep freeze around 2055-2060," he said, adding that this period of global freeze will last some 50 years, after which the temperatures will go up again.

Answer 5

Humans have accelerated Global Warming the point is to slow down to usual rate. Instead Earth patterns disrupted in Seas .

Answer 6

What good is anyone's *opinion*?   How about some facts?

Here's something to chew on...  practices that will (probably) reduce global warming will also leave us with cleaner air (less asthma, less smog, less acid rain) and less reliance on middle eastern oil.

Dr. Jello, as expected, the cherry-picked scientist you quote who denies global warming is *not* a climatologist.  Peer-reviewed career climatologists are nearly in total agreement that humans constitute the largest contributions to GW.

Answer 7

Global warming is mainly caused by humans. even the natural pollution happen due to human activities.  For example volcanoes erupt due to the pressure on the surface of the earth. these are some in formations that I got from my science classes and watching news about the recent tsunami

Answer 8

Do yourself a favor. Compare the number of peer reviewed articles in reputable science journals which support the idea that global warming is anthropogenic versus the number of peer reviewed articles which do not. (I don't think there is a single peer reviewed article ina  reputable journal from a AGW denialist actually).

Then when you tally the numbers, sit back and ask yourself what magnitude of human arrogance and delusional self-righteousness you must have, as a lay person, to disagree with these people.

Answer 9

The earth is getting warmer partially because of a natural/uncontrollable process and will get a little warmer before it begins to reverse.  Humans are making it worse by using up underground resources from mining, drilling for oil, and manually controlling aqua firs.  

Here is a comparison I like to use; a physically healthy educated person knows that they are healthy because they eat healthy and get exercise.  They know genetics only account for part of their lives and that it is their responsibility to maintain healthy eating and exercise habits.  If you consistently bing eat you will get fat.  The human body is AMAZING in how it builds, repairs, and maintains itself.  Similarly, the earth has a process that it must maintain if we expect it to provide suitable living conditions.  Oil for example is organic matter that is incredibly old, eventually organic matter on the surface now will replace it.  Currently we are binging oil(carbon) and pushing it all back into the atmosphere at once.  

What affect is that going to have? I think more violent weather, warmer conditions globally, loss of certain habitats, etc.

We will probably be able to cope and survive in whatever future we are creating but, I would much rather live in one that is clean with plenty of wild habitat left for future generations.  There is no question in my mind that alternative sources of energy such as alcohol, solar, wind, hydroelectric, geo-thermal, etc. can replace fossil fuels.  People need to create the demand for change if its going to happen.  That would mean the biggest infrastructure overhaul imaginable, and in my opinion worth every penny of every second.

Answer 10

its mostly just humans, we are the ones burning fossil fuels and creating large amouts of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide

Answer 11

I think that women should take over!

Answer 12

Today here is what we know:  many of mankind’s advancements cause earth surface to warm, destroy the ozone layer, kill off endanger species, heat cities, and in some way cause more destruction.  Blacktop (roads and parking lots), buildings, air pollution (causes lung and other diseases), deforestation, duststorms (which increase hurricanes and cyclones and cause lung diseases), fires (cause pollution, mud slides, and deforestation), refrigerants (like CFC's), solvents (including benzene destroy the ozone layer raising skin cancer rates) and plastics; cars, airplanes, ships and most electricity production (causes pollution including raised CO2 levels) are human problems we need to fix to keep life on earth sustainable! The federal government needs to adopt a pollution surcharge to balance the field and advance new technologies. We must pay the real price of oil (petrochemicals) including global warming, cleanup and for health effects. But with that we must understand we have never seen what is now happening before. CO2 has never lead to temperature change, but temperature change has led to increases in CO2. The models have to be made as we go along with little evidence! The result is:  change is on the way, we just do not know what changes. But again adding a small amount of CO2 to the atmosphere enlarges the earths sun collection causing warming; increase water in the atmosphere and they form clouds cooling earth but causing flooding. Even natural events are warming earth and causing destruction. The sun has an increased magnetic field causing increases in earthquakes (more destruction), volcanoes (wow, great destruction), and sun spots. Lighting produces ozone near the surface (raising air pollution levels). But humans have destroyed half of the wetlands, cut down nearly half of the rain forest, and advance on the earths grasslands while advancing desertification which increases duststorms. The USA Mayor's have taken a stand and I believe are on the right track, we can have control and can have economic growth. With the peak of oil in the 1970’s, the peak of ocean fishing in the 1980’s, humans must stop procrastinating and make real changes to keep earth sustainable including in the energy debate, finance and regulation. The sun is available to produce energy, bring light to buildings and makes most of human’s fresh water. Composting is the answer to desertification. New dams are the answer to fresh water storage, energy and cooling earth by evaporation, we need many small ones all over (California needs 100 by 2012 and has not even started).

President Bush has made a choice of energy (ethanol) over food and feeding the starving people around the world; this is a choice China has rejected.

That is why I founded CoolingEarth.org, a geoengineering web sight where you can learn more about earth, the atmosphere, and how to sustain life on earth’s surface.

Answer 13

You're right, global warming is caused both by humans and natural cycles.

You need to consider that the human contribution to global warming is 99%, so most of the climate changes are related to human activity.

There's a strong link between CO2 levels and temperature. The CO2 level varies a lot, and causes the warm periods earth experienced in its history(the last one in the middle ages). Natural global warming(and global cooling) is very slow, and the current temperature rise is by far the fastest climate change ever in earth's history.

Answer 14

I don't have enough time to type out my ENTIRE opinion, but I'll try to summarize it.  Global warming is causing the unbelievable weather and climate changes.  It is causing global temperatures to rise drastically, as well as causing glaciers to melt (rising sea level).

Here's some videos that helped develop my more complex opinion:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7IBG2V98IBY

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0XMn_Ry3z6M

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ

Answer 15

Global warming and cooling has been going on since the beginning of earths birth. Geologically, 100,000 years is but a blink in the eye of the world.We have been here for a short time. The earth will warm up and cool again. In case anyone forgets we did have a mini ice age 500 years ago which caused the viking to leave the beloved greenland as it changed to a world of ice.

Answer 16

Why don't you give us some information on your personal beliefs?  You can believe whatever you want, if we don't know what causes you to believe that, we can't respond to it.

Answer 17

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...

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.