Is Global Warming a man made issue or a natural phenomenon?

Question

I want to know what the general consensus is out there. I think scientists are beginning to come to the conclusion that yes global warming is a natural thing and it is supposed to happen, but it has been elevated to a dangerous level by man made greenhouse gasses. I think the ‘global warming debate’ is really more of an idea spread around by the media taken from a small group of scientist. Does anyone have any scientific information or a concrete and respectable group that can vouch for global warming not being a problem that we can still do something about? Please let me know.

Answer 1

global warming... a topic of confusion...

man made or natural...

either way it is happening...

many of the things man has done has opened the hole for global warming and though nature may be continually opening this circle man has made this a rapid transformation...

Answer 2

Global warming and Climate change are natural phenomenon.  Scientists have been keeping accurate records for the last 50-70 years.  I mean really accurate.  1/10 of a degree accurate.  The estimated climactic cycle of earth is 30,000 years.

The truth is, we don't know what is going to happen.  We can only guess, based on fossil records.

The best estimates are; man-made pollution has raised the average global temperature by 7/10 of a degree in the last 100 years.  When the Pinatubo volcano blew up in the Philippines a couple of years ago, it lowered the temperature by 6/10 of a degree.  Bottom line: People are having a very minimal effect on the environment.

We are polluting and messing up the ozone, and that has got to stop.

But climate change?  No, it's not us.

Answer 3

Global Warming is a natural cycle. The man made theory is a political cycle. Wait 30 years and we will be back to global cooling.

Answer 4

Prepare for the useless banter and the meaningless links!!!

Hey Mr. Malasada, 4 of your links do not work.

Answer 5

Both! Today here is what we know:  many of mankind’s advancements cause earth surface to warm, destroy the ozone layer, kill off endanger species, heat cities, and in some way cause more destruction.  Blacktop (roads and parking lots), buildings, air pollution (causes lung and other diseases), deforestation, duststorms (which increase hurricanes and cyclones and cause lung diseases), fires (cause pollution, mud slides, and deforestation), refrigerants (like CFC's), solvents (including benzene destroy the ozone layer raising skin cancer rates) and plastics; cars, airplanes, ships and most electricity production (causes pollution including raised CO2 levels) are human problems we need to fix to keep life on earth sustainable! The federal government needs to adopt a pollution surcharge to balance the field and advance new technologies. We must pay the real price of oil (petrochemicals) including global warming, cleanup and for health effects. But with that we must understand we have never seen what is now happening before. CO2 has never lead to temperature change, but temperature change has led to increases in CO2. The models have to be made as we go along with little evidence! The result is:  change is on the way, we just do not know what changes. But again adding a small amount of CO2 to the atmosphere enlarges the earths sun collection causing warming; increase water in the atmosphere and they form clouds cooling earth but causing flooding. Even natural events are warming earth and causing destruction. The sun has an increased magnetic field causing increases in earthquakes (more destruction), volcanoes (wow, great destruction), and sun spots. Lighting produces ozone near the surface (raising air pollution levels). But humans have destroyed half of the wetlands, cut down nearly half of the rain forest, and advance on the earths grasslands while advancing desertification which increases duststorms. The USA Mayor's have taken a stand and I believe are on the right track, we can have control and can have economic growth. With the peak of oil in the 1970’s, the peak of ocean fishing in the 1980’s, humans must stop procrastinating and make real changes to keep earth sustainable including in the energy debate, finance and regulation. The sun is available to produce energy, bring light to buildings and makes most of human’s fresh water. Composting is the answer to desertification. New dams are the answer to fresh water storage, energy and cooling earth by evaporation, we need many small one all over (California needs 100 by 2012 and has not even started).

President Bush has made a choice of energy (ethanol) over food and feeding the starving people around the world; this is a choice China has rejected.

Answer 6

Answer to question 1:

There is compelling evidence on both sides. (not fact)

The problem is that scientists on both sides that have very different opinions. Both sides all generally agree that the earth is definitely still warming now. They just strongly disagree on who and/or what is causing it.

Global warming is the prediction from a large number of Scientists that Humans are causing the earths climate and GHG's to climb beyond what would occur naturally. They generally contend that it will lead to the Destruction of our Planet from AGW(Anthropogenic Global Warming).

There is also a large number of Scientists that predict that the earth is simply in a warming cycle and that we humans have a small effect (if any) on the climate changes. They generally do not refer to this warming as Global Warming.

Even though technically it is.

They do not claim the doom & gloom but both sides agree we MUST recycle when possible and conserve our natural resources and preserve our natural habitat.

The term global warming is more of a political term and is misleading. For the most part everyone agrees that we are warming up gradually the big and I mean big question is why and what and/or who is causing it?

ANSWER TO YOUR LAST QUESTION:

There is a lot of scientific information available. There is evidence that the earth is warming, but no real scientific fact to support why it is.

Most articles from both sides are just articles that base little on fact and more on short term evidence.

I think for the most part, the discussion on (Global Warming) is much like our modern day court system. Both sides just try to prove their side with hundred of websites all claiming to disprove the other, or no real proof. Both sides have extreme activists. Money and politics are major players, and the right thing or the moral thing to do is not high on the priorities list.

The only difference from our court system is that the global warming issue has no short term answer that would be equivalent to jury and /or Judge.. only time holds our future or fate.

I would keep in mind that either side may be found to be wrong.

I believe we have a responsibility to conserve energy, preserve our environment and recycle everything that is feasibly possible.

I do not believe that we are causing a doom & gloom warming catastrophe. I do know that we need to prepare now by conserving energy, preserving nature and preparing for the next climate change (whether it continues to heat up or we start into another cooling cycle).

You can generally tell the AGWers apart they tend to use terms like never, always, refuse, destroy and disaster. The use of these terms show a very closed minded person.

Answer 7

The current global warming is almost entirely man-made.

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 8

http://www.thepacificanonline.com/conten...

follow the link and then read the happy comments from all the jerks out there- it doesn't matter whether ones believes or not- no matter what we do it will not affect this particular few generations- but the next few- but thats what we do best as humans- push our problems on the next generation - good job guys keep denying it- don't you think scientists would love to say it's not actually happening? oh wait all you conspiracy theorists say it's a ploy by the government- ok follow this link and that should answer that question http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/3...

Answer 9

nether we are going into a ice age.

http://www.iceagenow.com

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...

http://www.poe.com/?p=478

Answer 10

It is man made if you consider Al Gore a man.

To those who don't believe in global warming and just sit back and take this nonsense. Stop and think. What is this hoax costing you? As a conservative estimate about a few thousand dollars a year. Ok, so you are rich you can afford it!. Well what about the children in third world countries who can't afford it? Oh well if we can lower earth's temperature .00000001 degrees (a big if) that does not concern you. Will it concern you if your children grow up living in a world similar to the 19th century?! Ask any economist and you will discover that if all the environmental  wackos' proposals ever are adopted this is the most likely scenario!!

So next time your local Congressman on Senator caves into this hoax let them know your feelings. Let's get back to worshipping God and not worshipping earth.

Please note that another argument for global warming has bit the dust. Scientists just discovered that the reason for the loss of ice sheets on 2% of Antartica is due to a volcano deep underneath the ice. It erupted abount 2,000 years ago and is most likely erupting now. This makes the CBS report mentioned below look stupid because if the ice is melting it is caused by a volcano and has nothing whatsoever to do with man. Unless of course you want to try and prove that burning fossil fuels causes volcanoes.

Answer 11

I think that global warming is a real issue that should be a concern to us all now and is only going to get worse, rapidly.

However, I think that people are getting confused by the expanding population, the planets inability to support us, the wiping out of the fish stock, the extinction of flora and fauna, coral bleaching, expanding desert, arctic ice melting, third world debt, poverty and starvation, illeagal logging, multi drug resistant TB, and all the other issues facing humanity and then pushing them all together and labeling it as "global warming". Some of these issues are a result of man made climate change and some are the result of 6.5 billion people destroying the environment.

And then they see the problem as to big to start fixing, so, therefore there is no point to do anything about it as no one else is, etc. However all these issues can be broken down and we ,collectively, could go someway to solving them. However, unfortunately, we are human and historically, when ever there has been a time to band together for the good of all, we have choose to bomb, kill, invade, and attack and take what ever we wanted from are neighbors. *Sigh*.

Check this out its really cool and puts things into perspective. click on the now button and it will all zero.

http://www.peterrussell.com/Odds/WorldCl...

and have you watched this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDsIFspVz...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/a...

http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/...