Is Global Warming Real or Fake?

Question

There are 2 sides to this question. I want to see both sides of the arguement. Please elaborate and give me a website on the data.

Answer 1

Real.

Here's a nice summation of some of the evidence.  It's presented at a level most people can understand:

http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2007/12...

Here's another great summary of the history and current position of our knowledge (by Karry Emanuel, an MIT professor of meteorology):

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd...

If you read the 2 links above and you have an open mind, I suspect you'll at least start leaning toward the AGW sounds pretty likely side of the issue.

Answer 2

Real, mostly caused by us.  The proof is enormous, and it's in the links.

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://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...

Answer 3

As fake as Al Gore is Fakey

Answer 4

Real in my opinion

Answer 5

Completely real!!!!

global warming was caused by us.

Global temperatures have risen by 0.6 degrees Celsius in the last 130 years.  This rise in global temperatures leads to huge impacts on a wide range of climate related factors.Levels of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide gases are rising, mainly as a result of human activities.  Carbon dioxide is being dumped in the atmosphere at an alarming rate.  Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have been pumping out huge quantities of carbon dioxide, raising carbon dioxide concentrations by 30%.  The burning of fossil fuels is partly responsible for this huge increase.  This graph shows carbon dioxide emissions increasing over the last 130 years.      hope this is useful to you =)

Answer 6

Anthropogenic global warming is certainly real.  Almost all scientists agree on that.  See the latest IPCC report at the link below for the scientific analysis.

Answer 7

Real.  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...

A recent study concluded:

“the range of  [Northern Hemisphere]-temperature reconstructions and natural forcing histories…constrain the natural contribution to 20th century warming to be <0.2°C [less than one-third of the total warming].  Anthropogenic forcing must account for the difference between a small natural temperature signal and the observed warming in the late 20th century.”

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/104...

You can see this in the third graph here, where the dotted lines are just from natural causes, and the full lines are natural + human causes:

http://www.pnas.org/content/vol104/issue...

If that’s not enough to convince you the Sun isn’t responsible, consider the fact that no scientific study has ever attributed more than one-third of the warming over the past 30 years to the Sun, and most attribute just 0-10% to the Sun.

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

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 8

Yes, it’s real fake. At least the anthropogenic part.

If you understand the importance of the greenhouse effect – that without it we would all freeze to death and the planet would be uninhabitable - you understand that it raises the earth temperature by 33° C, from -18° C (-0.4° F) to about 15° C (59° F). Fact is that 99.88% of the greenhouse effect is due to natural causes. The remaining 0.12% may be due to human activity. In real terms this means that 32.9° C of warming is due to purely natural causes, and 0.1° C is due to human activity. So are humans overheating the planet? Hardly.

Answer 9

Of course it is real....sheesh....where were you in Science class ?  Every day as the earth moves, the sun causes real global warming....not fake.  Conversely, some days are cloudy, and the earth is not warmed as much, and the dust blowing in the atmosphere from great dust storms, ash from volcanoes also block the sun....oh, interesting...the presence of jet condensation trails actually has an effect, apparently noticed by some sharp "down under" scientists when air traffic was curtailed during September 11 time period...so, concisely: yes (Virginia) there IS global warming, AND, global cooling.....no wonder the orientals are so calm about our manmade panic.....

Answer 10

Read Bob and Dana's posts, their info is bang on.

You can usually tell how uninformed a denier is when they try to tell you what global warming isn't, like trying to tell you “it isn’t CO2” or even better that “man is too insignificant to change the climate.” After they are finished telling you what it isn’t, they won’t tell you what is.  The deniers of made man global warming that try to explain it will often tell you a multitude of reasons that the earth is warming, and it is in this clutter of reasons that should give you a clue that the denialists, in their confusion of explanations, don’t know or refuse to acept the real cause of this changing climate.  

In comparision, those that are warning you of a warming world do not have a multitude of reasons why the earth is warming the way the deniers do.  These scientists warn us that the primary reason of global warming is greenhouse gases, that’s it, only one, and we are the ones doing the damage.  

Deniers and sceptics try to get off easy by simply trying to tell you its cause is “natural”, but can’t tell you what that natural cause is.  Just saying that it is natural isn't an explanation.  It’s like saying somebody died of natural causes, when in reality a heart attack or cancer was the natural cause. There has to be a reason behind something that is natural.  Climate history is indeed full of natural climate changes, but there is nothing today that indicates that what we are seeing is a natural change, but we have overwhelming evidence of man made climate change.  Remember that past climates never had humans burning large amounts of fossil fuels, so what we see today can't be compared with past climate events.  

In desperation a denier might even throw in a red hearing such as global dimming, and to them is supposed to be a new thing and that “you heard it here first”.  People like that are clearly uninformed.  Global dimming is nothing new.  In fact I heard the term here http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/ first a couple of years ago, but it was studied long before that, and this paper talks about it in 1971 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ab...

Answer 11

Global warming is real, it is the cause that is debatable. The green nuts would have you believe it is because of human activity, but astronomers have discovered that the sun is getting hotter and heating all the planets in the solar system, not just Earth. You can hardly blame the warming of Mars, Jupiter, and the other planets on SUV's and smokestack emissions on Earth. The green brigade can't even get it straight as to which greenhouse gas is the primary cause of heat retention in our atmosphere. There is far more water vapor in the atmosphere than there is CO2, so it is ludicrous to say that CO2 levels are primarily responsible when it makes up a tiny, tiny minority of all greenhouse gases. Even if CO2 levels were the primary cause, the forests, jungles and oceans contribute far more CO2 to the atmosphere than human activity does. Watch the film The Great Global Warming Swindle to see how we're all being scammed.

Answer 12

real caused by us horrible humans who think the earth is a big landfill made just for us to fill it up

humans and our stupid overuse of elerticity and fossil fuels are causing global warming and EVERYONE knows it

Answer 13

Most definitely real... I do not have any proof to show that "it is not real" but plenty of evidence of Global Warming existing.  

Videos::

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7IBG2V98IBY

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0XMn_Ry3z6M

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ

^^that one is DEFINITELY worth the time^^

Also...

does the air look foggier than it used to?

does it seem that each summer gets hotter&hotter?

there are an unbelievable amount of questions i could ask you... but these are just a few to think about:)

Answer 14

real.

the movie" the day after tomorrow" is a good example

Answer 15

WHAT! {puzzuled}[confused]LOL!LOL!LOL!LOL!

Answer 16

yes global warming WAS real but not caused by man.

it is no longer real as we are now starting a cooling period.

now NASA is on both sides of the global ????? debate

http://www.spaceandscience.net/id16.html

when will Al Gore and the treehuggers start there global cooling campaign. and try to blame that on man.

someday people will get tired of these chicken little campaigns by the enviromentist. and tell them to stuff there trees where the sun don't shine

Answer 17

We were told that after the real warm year of 1998 the years would become warmer and warmer and probability says if global warming is happening then yes we should have had at least a few years warmer than 1998.

This hasn't happened though. But, it seems to me that the years are starting to go back to a cooling trend. A person that I worked with that studied climate change says that we can expect a substantial cooling trend in a few years.