Im doing a Global Warming project, can you help me decide which cause i should choose, human or nature?

Question

I need to decide weather humans are causing it, or weather nature is causing it. THANK YOU.

Answer 1

both

look at Bobs answer for scientific details

this is my answer fro natures side

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Answer 2

human cause seems more pertinant.  You could only really blame it on nature if there were a lot of volcanoes that went of recently, emitting a lot of carbon in the atmosphere.

Answer 3

you just need to blame it to someone........humans

Answer 4

Humans

to be honest we are soooooo destructive to this planet

we kill animal populations, burn down trees and pollute the earth

Answer 5

i think its 90% human 10% natural.

Answer 6

All of it is natural.

Answer 7

Nature's way of growing trees for carbon sequestration undoes all of nature's volcanoe's carbon dioxide emissions.  However, humans continue to cut down the rain forests, use fossil fuels and contribute in many more ways to climate change than nature.

Answer 8

nature- it's more logical and involves the use of actual science and common sense.

Answer 9

Evidence suggests nature:

Planet has been going through ice ages and global warming phases off and on in a repetative cycle throughout the planet's history.  Glaciers in Montana that were created in the last ice age are just now melting, suggesting that we are just now coming to the end of the last ice age.

People are rather new to the equation, and the planet has been cooling, warming, and cooling again long before we showed up on its surface.  We may be accelerating a natural process, but it would be likely to occur even without our presence.

Now, what worries me is those pesky fossils of sea creatures up on high mountain tops, so far away from the ocean.

Then, there is the little business about plate tectonics and moving continents.  Scientists are suggesting that melting polar ice caps at our flattened poles could redistribute pressure on the earth's surface, moving the plates far more than we'd previously though, which could lead to large scale volcanic activity, which could change the atmosphere even more than all of the people together, and where that might lead to, is still being debated.

I hold with the theory that the large scale volcanic activity and seismic activity are just now beginning.  I believe that they are related to the reduced pressure at the poles due to the melting ice caps.  News of larger earthquakes is on the rise, as is the news or supposedly dormant volcanoes reawakening.  It seems likely that redistribution of the continents on our surface is also do to pressure variations related to amounts of polar ice at the flattened poles.

Answer 10

human nature is causing it

Answer 11

I think humans have contributed a lot to the overall warming, but  there are cycles of life on this and every planet. Each time Earth goes around the sun, something has changed. Over time those changes become large enough to affect life on Earth.  Many would say that Global warming is a natural cycle of our planet, but that the cycle has been negatively affected by our use of fossil fuels.  We have changed the course of our planet by depleting its natural resources .  For example, The Large Sinkhole in Texas is considered a result of our oil wells.  We took out the oil, did not refill the space, and now the ground is collapsing. That little collapse has changed the shape of the earth by just a very little, but between the sinkholes, volcanos, cyclones, earthquakes etc, we are seeing huge changes in the shape of Earth. This alters the trip around the sun, our place in the universe in many ways, and our weather.

Answer 12

1) The planet has warmed and cooled many times through earths history.

2) It appears, through historical evidence that the last time the earth warmed significantly (medieval warm period) it was at least as warm or warmer than today's apparent warming.

3) What caused this warming? It was not SUVs.

4) The earth then went into a cooling phase for hundreds of years, until about 1850. This has become known as "the Little ice age."

5) The little ice age was a very bad time for human civilization. Ever heard of the dark ages? Famine and Pestilence. Millions and millions dead.

6) When the earth began to warm as it has done so many times before in 1850 notice what happened to human civilization.

7) Populations exploded, industrial revolution, prosperity for most of earth's inhabitants. Dieting to lose weight came into existence.

8) Hating themselves, some humans got to feeling guilty about their own greed and invented man made global warming.

9) People began to believe their lies, warming is bad when history and common sense told them it was good. anything that humans do is bad.  

10) Many people suffered because of a falsehood.

Answer 13

Blame it on the gods

Answer 14

Humans would be fairly straightforward, focusing on greenhouse gases (primarily CO2) and soot.

Nature would be a little tougher.  Volcanos can emit large quantities of CO2 and change climate (Such as the Siberian Traps aroudn the time fo the Permain Triassic extinction), but no major volcanos have erupted, so that leaves mankind responsible for recent CO2 warming.

Some soot is produced by forest fires, but mankind's sources currently overwhelm natural ones there as well.

Ocean current oscillations (ENSO, AO, PDO, etc.) play some role, but they seem to move heat around for a few years or decades rather than cause the planet to warm or cool on a long term global basis.

A good place to browse would be the American Institute of Physics, in the "Influences on Climate" section here:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/