Global warming, true or lie?

Question

Global warming, true or lie?

Answer 1

I think the main question is why would scientists lie about global warming? Are they just looking for a good laugh? What are skeptics thinking, scientists have nothing better to do with their spare time than come up with weird patterns on how the last 10 years have been some one Earth's hottest ever?

I believe that global warming is a real concern and that we should all do our part to stop it. No I'm not saying stop using energy or stop driving, but you should definately cut back.

Look at the facts!! Global warming is no scam, it's for real!

If you still have doubts I would recemmend reading Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. A lot has been said about the book and movie but after reading it you probably won't think the same things about it.

Answer 2

The earth has been warming and cool for millions of years, so  

it would  be heating up anyway. We are helping the process. So it is happening, you just have to decide whether you think it is all humans fault or not. I think that they are contributing but it would be happening anyway, we are just speeding up the process ( and making it worse)

Answer 3

The planet is currently going thru a warming phase, so that is true.  Is the warming caused by humans - well the jury is still out on that one, although we do know that pumping lots of carbon into the atmosphere can cause warming.

Answer 4

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer

30 minutes ago



WASHINGTON - A chunk of Antarctic ice about seven times the size of Manhattan suddenly collapsed, putting an even greater portion of glacial ice at risk, scientists said Tuesday.



Satellite images show the runaway disintegration of a 160-square-mile chunk in western Antarctica, which started Feb. 28. It was the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf and has been there for hundreds, maybe 1,500 years.

This is the result of global warming, said British Antarctic Survey scientist David Vaughan

.......

Answer 5

First thing you gotta do is think for yourself. I used to watch all the news and stories and doom and gloom stuff and i feared the worst. I knew humans were causing the warming...

Then i did some research...

so is global warming true?

No, the last 8 years have been about the same(if not cooler!)

The last decade (90's) we experienced a warming. But half century before the 90's we experienced a cooling...

500 years ago there was the "little ice age" and go back another 200 years and get a 100 year period that's warmer than today.

SO is global warming true?

IT DEPENDS

Answer 6

Sorry, but is this a sincere question or are you a global warming sceptic troll who already knows which answer they'll pick? I have to ask that because it's getting really common.

On the available scientific evidence at the moment, it's true.

The sheer massive volume of CO2 we're adding to the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning above and beyond what nature has ever done in such a short period is looking like making the problem much worse than it has to be.

Global warming and the supporting science has been around much longer than Al Gore, so people who say it's all a plot from him or the "left" (whatever that is these days) really don't have much of a clue.

Answer 7

the bottom line is true. and something really has to be done. but i belive that people really have to look at what is really important. we have more important things going on in the world. and i think that people really have to look at the big picture. if some people care as much as they say they do then stop driving you car everywhere take a train or bus or car pool.

Answer 8

Man made global warming, I'm still looking for answers and thinking of questions. So for right now, it is a lie to me. Natural is true.

Answer 9

Or other.

Global warming is happening. The cause, extent, and probable results are debatable. There appears to be a natural climate cycle of about 100 years. Previous warming periods include 800-1300  and 300BCE-250CE. Extensive flooding did not occur during these periods.

We appear to be 150-200 years into the natural warming cycle. Human activities are probably increasing the effect of the natural cycle, but how much is a guess. There are hundreds of model attempting to predict the effect, but they are not, and cannot be, validated.

Changes in weather patterns are probably pore important than any other results. Some arable lands will become unproductive. Some frozen of desert lands will become fertile. Massive migration in search of habitable lands will be a major political problem.

Answer 10

what do u think about that?

Answer 11

duh

its already been proven

check out the scienctist

Answer 12

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.

Answer 13

Dana,  don't they hate it when you give them facts?

Durmie,   You're saying that it has been cooler for the last ten years.    That is debatable, but more importantly, it is always used as a skeptic argument, because it chooses 1998 as the starting point.   1998 was the strongest El Nino of the last 100 years, a very warm year because of that cyclical phenomena.   That is known as cherry picking, using an anomaly, or statistical noise, as a yardstick for measuring against other data.  

"Cherry picking is about choosing data for the sole purpose of supporting a pre-conceived conclusion."

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11...

Skeptic argument:

"Global temperatures have been trending down since 1998. Global warming is over."

Answer:

"At the time, 1998 was a record high year in both the CRU and the NASA GISS analyses. In fact, it blew away the previous record by .2 degrees C. (That previous record went all the way back to 1997, by the way!)"

"According to NASA, it was elevated far above the trend line because 1998 was the year of the strongest El Nino of the century. Choosing that year as a starting point is a classic cherry pick and demonstrates why it is necessary to remove chaotic year-to year-variability (aka: weather) by smoothing out the data. "

"Clearly 1998 is an anomaly and the trend has not reversed. (Even the apparent leveling at the end is not the real smoothing. The smoothed trend in 2005 depends on all of its surrounding years, including a few years still in the future.) By the way, choosing the CRU analysis is also a cherry pick -- NASA has 2005 breaking the 1998 record, though by very little."

"Now, this is an excusable mistake for average folks who do not need the rigors of statistical analysis in their day jobs. But any scientist in pretty much any field knows that you cannot extract meaningful information about trends in noisy data from single-year end points. It's hard to hear a scientist make this argument and still believe they speak with integrity in this debate -- seems more like an abuse of the trust placed in them as scientists. "

"It has stopped warming" is only supported by selecting a single year out of context and using a seven-year window to look at multi-decadal trends in climate. That's a classic cherry pick."

Mid century cooling?  covered here

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11...

"None of the advocates of the theory of anthropogenic global warming claim that CO2 is the only factor controlling temperature in the ocean-atmosphere climate system. It is a large and complex system, responsive on many different timescales, subject to numerous forcings. AGW only makes the claim that CO2 is the primary driver of the warming trend seen over the last 100 years. This rise has not been smooth and steady -- nor would it be expected to be."

"If you look at the temperature record for the 1990s, you'll notice a sharp drop in '92, '93, and '94. This is the effect of massive amounts of SO2 ejected into the stratosphere by Mount Pinatubo's eruption. That doesn't mean CO2 took a holiday and stopped influencing global temperatures; it only means that the CO2 forcing was temporarily overwhelmed by another, opposite forcing."

"The situation is similar to the cooling seen in the '40s and '50s. During this period, the CO2 warming (a smaller forcing at the time) was temporarily overwhelmed by by other factors, perhaps foremost among them an increase in human particulates and aerosol pollution. Pollution regulations and improved technology saw a decrease in this latter kind of emissions over the '60s and '70s, and as the air cleared, the CO2 signal again emerged and took over."

"As the graph shows, in addition to aerosol pollution (the sulphate line), volcanic influences were increasingly negative during the period of global cooling, and solar forcing slightly declined. All forcings taken together and run through the model are a very good match for the observations."

"Rather than confounding the climate consensus, mid-century cooling is actually a good test for the climate models, one they are passing quite convincingly."

The medieval warm period covered here.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12...

"There is no good evidence that the MWP was a globally warm period comparable to today. Regionally, there may have been places that exhibited notable warmth -- Europe, for example -- but all global proxy reconstructions agree it is warmer now, and the temperature is rising faster now, than at any time in the last one or even two thousand years. "

"Anecdotal evidence of wineries in England and Norse farmers in Greenland do not amount to a global assessment."

"On its website, NOAA has a wide selection of proxy studies, accompanied by the data on which they are based. Specifically, they have this to say on the MWP:"

"The idea of a global or hemispheric "Medieval Warm Period" that was warmer than today, however, has turned out to be incorrect."

"With regard to the "grapes used to grow in England" bit, here is some fairly solid evidence that grapes are in fact growing there now, denialist talking points aside."

Answer 14

it is a lie, a complete lie

Answer 15

True, and mostly caused by us.

This is science and what counts is the data.

"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...

"There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know...  Global warming is almost a no-brainer at this point.  You really can't find intelligent, quantitative arguments to make it go away."

Dr. Jerry Mahlman, NOAA

Good websites for more info:

http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/f101.a...

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/sci...

http://www.realclimate.org

"climate science from climate scientists"

http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...

Answer 16

completly Fin fake and not true. if we are i good condition right now, then we caan keep it that way. God didnt give us the resouses and materials to hurt the earth. wat is huting the earth is the stupid people like Al Gore, who sucks and gets a prize from writting a book, wow anyone can do that.

Answer 17

Al Gore is sadly mistaken.  If it's caused by humans, then there are SUV's, Republicans,  and industry on a few of the other planets as well.  Just Google global warming on planets.  If and when they can prove it's man's fault I'll trade in my Jeep for a horse and buggy.

Answer 18

Climate change (not global warming) is real, but nothing we do, or don't do is going to change it.

On Dec. 13, 2007, 100 prominent scientists sent a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations disputing the UN's stance on global warming, I believe them. This is the first line of that letter:

"It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages."

They also stated in the letter:

Recent observations of phenomena such as glacial retreats, sea-level rise and the migration of temperature-sensitive species are not evidence for abnormal climate change, for none of these changes has been shown to lie outside the bounds of known natural variability.

The average rate of warming of 0.1 to 0. 2 degrees Celsius per decade recorded by satellites during the late 20th century falls within known natural rates of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years.

Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today's computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. That the current temperature plateau follows a late 20th-century period of warming is consistent with the continuation today of natural multi-decadal or millennial climate cycling.

You can read the full letter at the below link.