Global warming? Convince me!?

Question

Okay, for those who believe that humans, their automobiles, hairspray, etc. are all responsible for global warming, here's your ONE chance to convince me! I don't doubt that global warming exists, I just don't believe that we, as humans, have any control over it.

So, in order to convince me that we are the cause and the only cure for global warming, please explain to me how the planet made it out of the first ice age without our help? Without SUV's, Oil refineries, and aerosol sprays.

Answer 1

There's no doubt that the planet goes through natural cycles of ice ages and climate change.  No one is disputing that.

What we mean by "global warming" is that in the span of 200 years, mankind is going to extract 2,000,000,000 years worth of fossil fuels and burn them directly into our atmosphere.  The result of all of this combustion is that by-products such as CO2 are going to have a potentially dramatic effect on global climate.

Predictions are that this will result in more diverse and unpredictable localized weather phenomenon around the globe.  In some places, it will get cooler.  In others, there will be more droughts, floods, hurricanes, etc.

I encourage you to do your own research on the subject, because you'll be sure to get a lot of uneducated naysayers on Yahoo! Answers.

Answer 2

Climates have varied throughout geological history as there are many factors involved in the sensitive global carbon cycle, and there are Milankovitch cycles which affect the input of solar energy. Scientists well know this. Investigating the past is very important in wider climate science.

Climate changes over the past ~120,000 yrs are recorded in ice cores and, until recently, correspond neatly with Milankovitch cycles in the Earths orbit. These orbital cycles are regular and predictable and they are definitely not the cause of today's warming. Also, todays change is 10 times faster than anything shown in these cores.

We know the carbon cycle is very sensitive. We know it has been relatively stable and in balance for a long time. We know we are affecting it through CO2 emissions and land use changes. And we know atmospheric CO2 has increased extremely rapidly since the late 1800's.

Yes, the carbon cycle will eventually re-balance. But this has always taken 100,000 to millions of years in the past. It doesn't help us.

At the end of the day, the onus is really on you to either accept what the specialists in this field are overwhelmingly saying, or if you can't do that, research the whole field yourself in a LOT of depth.

Answer 3

As far as I know, global warming (really, it should be called global climate change) is related to the depletion of the ozone layer, which is caused by aerosol, cars, etc.  The world constantly goes through changes, and our interference, even when well intended, is not always ideal.  For example, wild fires happen.  We try to put them out, but some areas need to burn and regrow and we are messing with that natural process.  Not sure if that completely answered your question, but my main point is that I don't think you need aerosol and cars for mother nature to change (i.e. take us out of the ice age).  Some of that stuff happens all on it's own.

Answer 4

The short answer to your question is Milankovitch Cycles.  Here is the long version:

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 5

How did we get out of the Ice Age?  Solar radiation increased.

How do we know that's not what's happening now?  Simple, we measure the Sun.  Solar radiation has been DECREASING for more than 20 years, while temperatures increase.

"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar

climate forcings and the global mean surface

air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A

doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

News article at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.st...

Good websites for more info:

http://profend.com/global-warming/

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

http://www.realclimate.org

"climate science from climate scientists"

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