I'm sure this has been asked a lot but...?

Question

How can a normal person like me decide who to believe when it comes to global warming?

I keep hearing two different sides to the story. The proponents of global warming show me land ice melting into the water over the recent years, and they talk about the massive amounts of carbon dioxide being put out into the atmosphere.

The opponents warn me that we're still in a"de-glacierization" period where it is normal for land ice to melt and for temperatures to rise.

Then there's the conspiracy theorists on both sides telling how much the other is lying through their teeth.

Personally I believe that humans are having an effect on the environment, but it's difficult for me to know how much of it is our fault.

Answer 1

That there is such disagreement, and contrary to the proponents of AGW, there is no consensus, that should indicate that the jury is still out.

Here is my take, this would be a minor question of concern to a few researchers, were it not for the efforts of a few well heeled and politically connected people.  They seem to believe they have the answers.  So look at how they respond.

Do they live in modest homes, and take publicly available transport like ourselves, or do they live in huge well appointed homes and travel by private jet?  Once you discard these people as self interested hypocrites who do you have left?

Then you have those with an anti-capitalist, neo-luddite view, it would be well to discard their opinions, basically they are broken clocks.

As you might guess I am extremely skeptical of the entire proposal.  This because I don't trust these people.  Also I've studied climate and weather, what has impressed me is how fast climate can change over periods of time and how many forces operate on climate.  

Answer 2

go with what the research and facts point to (not what liberal media says!!!)...which is that global warming is NOT real. the earth goes through stages of heating and cooling, its natural. why do you think there was an ice age? remember that al gore once said he invented the internet (which of course is ridiculous).

Heres an online artical from the Wall Street Journal Editorial: (look up the title if you dont believe me, i dont have the direct link)

BUSINESS WORLD

The Science of Gore's Nobel

What if everyone believes in global warmism only because everyone believes in global warmism?

BY HOLMAN W. JENKINS JR.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007 12:01 a.m.

The Nobel Committee might as well have called it Al Gore's Inner Peace Prize, given the way it seems designed to help him disown his lifelong ambition to become president in favor of a higher calling, as savior of a planet.

The media will be tempted to blur the fact that his medal, which Mr. Gore will collect on Monday in Oslo, isn't for "science." In fact, a Nobel has never been awarded for the science of global warming. Even Svante Arrhenius, who first described the "greenhouse" effect, won his for something else in 1903. Yet now one has been awarded for promoting belief in manmade global warming as a crisis.

How this honor has befallen the former Veep could perhaps be explained by another Nobel, awarded in 2002 to Daniel Kahneman for work he and the late Amos Tversky did on "availability bias," roughly the human propensity to judge the validity of a proposition by how easily it comes to mind.

Their insight has been fruitful and multiplied: "Availability cascade" has been coined for the way a proposition can become irresistible simply by the media repeating it; "informational cascade" for the tendency to replace our beliefs with the crowd's beliefs; and "reputational cascade" for the rational incentive to do so.

Mr. Gore clearly understands the game he's playing, judging by his resort to such nondispositive arguments as: "The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona."

Here's exactly the problem that availability cascades pose: What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged "consensus" arrived at their positions by counting heads?

It may seem strange that scientists would participate in such a phenomenon. It shouldn't. Scientists are human; they do not wait for proof; many devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses (especially well-funded hypotheses) they've chosen to believe.

Less surprising is the readiness of many prominent journalists to embrace the role of enforcer of an orthodoxy simply because it is the orthodoxy. For them, a consensus apparently suffices as proof of itself.

With politicians and lobbyists, of course, you are dealing with sophisticated people versed in the ways of public opinion whose very prosperity depends on positioning themselves via such cascades. Their reactions tend to be, for that reason, on a higher intellectual level.

Take John Dingell. He told an environmental publication last year that the "world . . . is great at having consensuses that are in great error." Yet he turned around a few months later and introduced a sweeping carbon tax bill, which would confront Congress more frontally than Congress cares to be confronted with a rational approach to climate change if Congress really believes human activity is responsible.

Mr. Dingell is no fool. Is he merely trying to embarrass those who offer fake cures for climate change at the expense of out-of-favor industries such as Mr. Dingell's beloved Detroit?

Take Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist working with Kleiner Perkins, a firm Mr. Gore joined last month to promote alternative energy investments. Mr. Khosla told a recent Senate hearing: "One does not need to believe in climate change to support climate change legislation. . . . Many executives would prefer to deal with known legislation even if unwarranted."

Mr. Khosla is no fool either. His argument is that the cascade itself is a reason that politicians can gain comfort by getting aboard his agenda.

Now let's suppose a most improbable, rhapsodic lobbying success for Mr. Gore, Mr. Khosla and folks on their side of the table--say, a government mandate to replace half the gasoline consumed in the U.S. with a carbon-neutral alternative. This would represent a monumental, $400 billion-a-year business opportunity for the green energy lobby. The impact on global carbon emissions? Four percent--less than China's predicted emissions growth over the next three or four years.

Don't doubt that this is precisely the chasm that keeps Mr. Gore from running for president. He could neither win the office nor govern on the basis of imposing the kinds of costs supposedly necessary to deal with an impending "climate crisis." Yet his credibility would become laughable if he failed to insist on such costs. How much more practical, then, to cash in on the crowd-pleasing role of angry prophet, without having to take responsibility for policies that the public will eventually discover to be fraudulent.

Public opinion cascades are powerful but also fragile--liable to be overturned in an instant when new information comes along. The current age of global warming politics will certainly end with a whimper once a few consecutive years of cooling are recorded. Why should we expect such cooling? Because the forces that caused warming and cooling in the past, before the advent of industrial civilization, are still at work.

No, this wouldn't prove or disprove a human role in warming, only that climate is variable and subject to complicated influences. But it would also eliminate the large incentive for politicians to traffic in doom-laden predictions--because such predictions would no longer command media assent and would cease to function as levers to redistribute resources.

Mr. Gore would have to find a new job.

Mr. Jenkins is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal on Wednesdays.

Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

And heres another one from the New York Times: (once again sorry about no link, but i feel strongly about this)

March 13, 2007

From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype

By WILLIAM J. BROAD

Hollywood has a thing for Al Gore and his three-alarm film on global warming, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' which won an Academy Award for best documentary. So do many environmentalists, who praise him as a visionary, and many scientists, who laud him for raising public awareness of climate change.

But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore's central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

''I don't want to pick on Al Gore,'' Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. ''But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.''

Mr. Gore, in an e-mail exchange about the critics, said his work made ''the most important and salient points'' about climate change, if not ''some nuances and distinctions'' scientists might want. ''The degree of scientific consensus on global warming has never been stronger,'' he said, adding, ''I am trying to communicate the essence of it in the lay language that I understand.''

Although Mr. Gore is not a scientist, he does rely heavily on the authority of science in ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' which is why scientists are sensitive to its details and claims.

Criticisms of Mr. Gore have come not only from conservative groups and prominent skeptics of catastrophic warming, but also from rank-and-file scientists like Dr. Easterbook, who told his peers that he had no political ax to grind. A few see natural variation as more central to global warming than heat-trapping gases. Many appear to occupy a middle ground in the climate debate, seeing human activity as a serious threat but challenging what they call the extremism of both skeptics and zealots.

Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, said he sensed a growing backlash against exaggeration. While praising Mr. Gore for ''getting the message out,'' Dr. Vranes questioned whether his presentations were ''overselling our certainty about knowing the future.''

Typically, the concern is not over the existence of climate change, or the idea that the human production of heat-trapping gases is partly or largely to blame for the globe's recent warming. The question is whether Mr. Gore has gone beyond the scientific evidence.

''He's a very polarizing figure in the science community,'' said Roger A. Pielke Jr., an environmental scientist who is a colleague of Dr. Vranes at the University of Colorado center. ''Very quickly, these discussions turn from the issue to the person, and become a referendum on Mr. Gore.''

''An Inconvenient Truth,'' directed by Davis Guggenheim, was released last May and took in more than $46 million, making it one of the top-grossing

Answer 3

The arctic ice cap used to extent to the NY/PA border, and the sea levels have risen a lot since people walked over a land bridge in the Bering Strait to come to America.

Just because those trends have continued off and on for 10,000 more years doesn't mean that a millimeter here or a chunk of ice there signals anything new.

Answer 4

I know it's hard to find out for yourself what's really going on, especially when there's so much complicated science involved, and all the politics. And it's taking so long for the effects of carbon dioxide to appear -- we have been burning coal ever since the industrial revolution, yet only now are we starting to see the ice melting, the planet warming, and the oceans expanding. I can't possibly explain everything here... so take a look at the website below. I read this book a few months ago and it really helped me understand what's going on with climate change.  

Answer 5

Politically, nothing is going to happen.

US climate policy was determined in 1997 by the US Senate.  We don't do anything if China, India and everyone else gets to keep emitting CO2.

China and India have said they are not going to worry about the issue, they have more pressing problems.

So the only countries doing anything in Europe, are just s******g themselves since their contribution is insignificant.

Even the most extreme climate changes predicted by global warming happen far too slowly for anyone to worry about.  We already are adapted to changes in daily temp of 30F and yearly seasonal changing temps of 100F.  So 3F over 200 years, if it happens at all, won't be a problem to adapt to.

As far as any link between CO2 and global temperature ... is not simple.  CO2 has risen over the past ten years, global temps have not.

Answer 6

Listen to what one of the worlds MOST respected Climatologist  Dr. Richard Lindzen has to say . None of the BS you speak of above ,  just the science put in a way that any person of intelligence can understand .  

Answer 7

Believe the experts - the climate scientists.  They're telling us that humans are the main cause of the current global warming, and it's going to have very negative results if we don't do something about it.

By the way, from 8,000 years ago until about 100 years ago, the planet's temperature was cooling.  The current warming is not natural.  Seee the link below for a summary of the scientific evidence.

Answer 8

You can go directly to the data yourself, graph it out and reach your own conclusions.

Global Warming proponents say that increased human emissions of CO2 are causing global warming. 96% of all atmospheric Co2 is natural, 4% is man made... but CO2 levels are definitely rising. Here is the data for atmospheric CO2 since 1958. http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/mlo.html

The Global warming proponents suggest that temperatures are rising quickly, that sea levels are rising, that the poles are melting, and that tornado’s are getting stronger and more frequent.

Here’s the Global Temperature from the British Meteorological office. No rise in the last 10 years.

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/dia...

Here’s the Global Ocean Temperature from NOAA. No rise in the last 10 years

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/NCD...

Here’s the Global Sea Level from Colerado University. Falling for 5 years

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_...

Here’s a graph of Tornado’s from NOAA. The incidence of strong tornado’s is declining.

http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/res...

The warmers say that the poles are melting. Here are web cam’s at the North and South poles. They’re still there.

http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/...

http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/sp...

NASA has 2 satellites that fly over the poles daily. Check out “Real Time” http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/

The global warming proponents say that increased CO2 concentration is causing global warming, so compare Temperature and CO2 over time, and Sea Level and CO2 over time. (1958 to present) You can draw your own conclusions.

There is little doubt that we as humans are doing things that adversly effect the world through our consumption and pollution... but anthropogenic CO2 is not causing enough climate impact to be even measurable.

Answer 9

Can you do math?  If yes, then you can verify that if the earth's atmosphere were divided up among all humans on the planet, we would have close to 1 million tons each.  Do you seriously think you could affect 1 million tons of anything?  And don't forget, a lot of CO2 is washed out by rain in the form of carbolic acid.  Even more is converted back to oxygen by plant life.

Can you accept the fact that the sun provides 15,000 times as much energy as the entire human race produces?  This happens every day.

I like this paragraph written by James Hogan, he has a website you should visit and study:

"UNBEARABLE?

Few generations of young people can have been so betrayed by the adult world that their natural instincts lead them to trust, and which they depend on for security and guidance than those of today. If they're not in parts of the world that are being bombed, looted, or exploited for cheap labor, they are cynically manipulated to become wage and tax slaves on the consumer treadmill and force-fed a diet of scare stories and politically correct ideologogies designed to instill fear, conformity, and subservience. The latest emetic that I read told of children coming home in tears after being told at school that we're wiping out the polar bears. Well, sorry, but the world was as warm in the 1930s as it is now, warmer in the late medieval period, warmer still in Roman times, a lot warmer a few thousand years before that when southern England was tropical, and the polar bears came through just fine. Actual studies of present populations show that they're again managing to thrive regardless--maybe because they don't watch TV."

By James Hogan 2008

Answer 10

Well, there is only one reasonable conclusion, and that is humans are having an effect on the environment, but it's difficult to know how much of it is our fault.  Wait a minute, I've heard that somewhere before recently...oh, YOU said it.

And you are correct, you have reached a reasonable conclusion.  People who speak in terms of absolutes-especially here, but in general anyone without a background in the sciences-are not reaching reasonable conclusions.  For goodness sake, the scientific community itself doesn't speak in terms of absolutes when it comes to predicting the outcome of mankind's influence on the climate, so how do people with few or no qualifications who proclaim GW/AGW to be nonexistent or a big conspiracy with such certainty KNOW?  The simple fact-and only conclusion you can reach is they don't.  They simply don't know.  Those are the people who react most strongly to being called deniers, but that is what they are.  By and large, there are three other groups:

Others-who may be predicting the imminent demise of planet earth and its inhabitants if we fail to act immediately and on a huge scale like banning automobiles or the use of fossil fuels entirely-are also failing to comprehend what is really going on with the environment, and are known as alarmists.  Environmental Luddites fall into this group.

Then there are the skeptics-those who feel that the science is inconclusive, or that the variables involved in long term climate trends are so difficult to predict that we have to be wary of taking any action that will impact humanity without being more certain of the outcome.  Many of them aren't opposed to alternative energy and taking the steps necessary to guard our environment both short and long term, they are concerned about the impact abrupt and draconian measures might have.

And finally, there are the AGW believers, also known as proponents; those who contend that mankind's activities are having an effect on climate, perhaps limited now in conjunction with natural processes, but long term, the cumulative effect on average global temperature could be catastrophic if not acted on in the near term by switching to alternative energy sources, legislating additional environmental protections, etc. etc.

If you dismiss the deniers and the alarmists-which includes not only many here, but most editorial commentary in the media-and look at the facts and research thus far, you may, as I have, come to the conclusion that global warming is indeed occurring, and that mankind's activities are affecting the climate.  Then you can make a decision, not so much based only on the science and research, but all the consequences both short and long term.  You can look not only at the environmental consequences, but also the economic and geopolitical consequences, and decide what the risks are and what you personally are willing to do and support to minimize those risks.

For me, it was simple to decide what I was willing to do immediately due to all of the issues, and I'll give one example.  The kind of work that I do requires a truck with heavy duty hauling capacity from time to time, but with the increase in fuel prices it got to the point that it didn't make sense economically to drive it every single day, especially if all I was hauling was a loaf of bread for dinner or something.  So I replaced it with a daily driver that gets almost three times the gas mileage.  The savings is enough to pay the cost of buying and maintaining a hauling truck for the two or three days a month I need it. An AGW proponent might not pat me on the back for it, but that's at least a step in the direction they would approve of; a skeptic might say it maybe won't make any difference long term, but it made a whole lot of sense for me to exercise my freedom of choice to do what I did.  The point is that at this time, there is a convergence between economy and environmental issues that benefited me personally as well as helps the environment (at least a little) and the economy.

So as the deniers shout at mock everyone in the most ridiculous fashion, and the true (and actually rare) alarmists rant, I listen with amusement and from time to time respond here.  I look at what the skeptics have to say and consider the consequences of their concerns-which are usually not so much rooted in the science of AGW as they are in terms of personal liberty and cost-and I carefully consider the data and research presented and linked to by the AGW believers or proponents.  The proponents and skeptics are often not THAT far apart and except for ocassional outbursts are primarily searching for common ground so that decisions can be made on how to proceed, much as you can observe in reasonable political debate.  If you do the same, you may come to the same conclusions I have about what really makes sense in the here and now.

Answer 11

I believe that humans are a huge part of global warming even though there are many natural disasters that can cause it. Yes the earth does go through the certain stages of heating and cooling once in a while. My brother believes that humans have absolutely nothing to do with global warming and that its the natural disasters that are causing it but I am the kind of person who is not afraid to stand up for what i believe in so we are constantly fighting. He blames the earth nd I blame humans. I blame the human race mostly because we are speeding the process by using cars, refrigerators, air conditioner when not needed, microwaves, hairspray, overuse of electricity and water, not recycling, use of plastic, waste, cutting down forests, and so much more. There is a lot that we can do but people always decide to take the easy way and cheat their way out  which by the way i think is disgusting  

Answer 12

in anyway it's better to stop oil, it causes land to go absolutely absurk

Answer 13

Global warming is the biggest hoax pulled over on the people of the world just to redistribute wealth.

Answer 14

well from my standpoint , yes they are telling us about it because we are the only species capable of doing anything about it. yes we may have caused a lot of it , but are we going to think animals are going to get organized to help, no they are not. Humans are the only ones capable of solution. and yes it is real.