Ice age is a fact Warm age ? Global warming is still a theory... Natural cycle ? Theory or Fact ?

Question

Ice age is a fact Warm age ? Global warming is still a theory... Natural cycle ? Theory or Fact ?

Answer 1

First of all, the so-called "skeptics" show their total ignorance of real science every time they say "global warming is just a theory"  implying it isn't proven.

FYI: in science an unproven idea is a hypothesis. A theory is an explanation that has been shown (proved) to be correct.  Global warming is a theory--a proven one.

Now--as to the BS about ice ages and natural warming cycles.  Do those occur? Sure.  Did it ever occur to these dimwit "skeptics" that scientists who have spent years of study and research on climate might, jsut might, have thought of that ? And checked to see if it might be the cause of our current global warming?

Oh, duh, maybe they did?

Well they did.  This is not a natural cycle. There are no natrral forces at work that can account for the rising levels of CO2.  That are coming from human activity. Nor is the current global warming behaving anything like a natural cycle--those take thousands or tens of thousand s of years. This is happening in decades.

Answer 2

Fact.

This is science and what counts is the data, not people's intuition.

"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...

EVERY major scientific organization has issued an official statement that this is real, and mostly caused by us.  The National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Association, etc.

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 3

We are currently experiencing an interglacial period, interglacials have multi-decadal ebbs and flows of peak temperatures. Humanity has increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere as well as other trace gasses. We have a good record of the climate that dates back millions of years, and it does not show any sensitivity to CO2, so it is unlikely that it will start now.

The warming over the last thirty years of the atmosphere in the tropics, based on the AGW theory should have warmed much fast than the surface temperatures, it did not however, and can be easily explained by ocean currents and solar activity. The surface thermometers located around the worlds airports cannot be trusted, the satellites however are not biased by concrete and asphalt, and they indicate there has been no warming for many years now. In fact the Earth appears to be cooling.

http://www.ssmi.com/rss_research/climate...

Answer 4

The White House says AGW is real and is to blame for the floods and tornadoes lately!

http://www.yahoo.com/s/903298

Answer 5

That's a fact.  Ice ages have occurred several times, natural cooling (ice can't form if the temp.is above freezing).  Natural warming melted the mile-thick glaciers and forced them to recede nothwards.

There is a bit of fact to global warming.  Since about 1900, the earth has warmed by .6 of one degree, and most of that warming occurred in the first few years.  However, since 1998 there has been absolutely no global warming, so it has essentially stopped.  Scientists are beginning to think we're in line for a gentle climatic cooling again.  Such things are natural and occur all the time.  

Man made global warming remains a weak theory, and cannot be supported by any factual data.  It has nothing to do with science because it's a purely political issue.

Answer 6

This question is weirdly worded, but I'll take a stab at it.  I don't know what you mean by the first part: "Ice age is a fact a Warm age?" Sorry.  But the rest: global warming is a theory, but I'm not sure if you are clear on what theory means in scientific terms (most people aren't).  In scientific terms, a theory is a widely accepted and tested explanation for something.  So global warming is a theory, but in the scientific community, it is widely accepted as being true.

Answer 7

I am not sure exactly what you're asking, but there have been ice ages and warm periods in the past, due to various natural causes.  Currently the earth is heating up at an alarming rate, and it can't be explained by natural causes this time.



Also, as one answerer already pointed out, "theory" and "fact" are not exactly opposites or mutually exclusive.  The basic steps of the scientific method are: make a hypothesis based on previous knowledge, make a prediction based on the hypothesis, and test the prediction to disprove or strengthen the hypothesis.  A hypothesis becomes a theory after being tested and proven to result in accurate predictions many times.

Answer 8

Global warming could be said to be a theory in the same sense gravity is a theory, however it is a fact objects drop to the floor as it is also a fact that the worlds temperatures are rising. No climate scientist claims the world is not warming up. However debate occurs about the cause of this rise, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which include all the worlds leading climate scientists) stated in 2007 that it was "very likely" Global warming was due to human action.

It is not the world we should worry about, it can survive shifts in climates like the last ice age, the problem is can we survive?