Is global warming a natural or man made cycle?

Question

Please provide reasons details and a source/website

Answer 1

this time around, man made.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/

Answer 2

Global warming, in my opinion, is a natural cycle........its all about the Sun. The Sun is the engine for all that is happening on Earth.

For millions of years Earth has changed his face...why not changing his face  in our days?

So Man cycle is only a secondary element who is interfering in many ways, good or bad!...thats all!.....I think.

Answer 3

Normally it's natural.  This time it's caused mostly by humans.  An explanation why is provided in the link below.

Answer 4

Either or doesn't cut it.   We are adding to something that would be happening SLOWLY anyway.

Answer 5

Alright look...

The earth goes through cycles, think about it. January-April its cold and gets warmer. May-September its very warm and gets cooler. October-December it starts to get cold again, its all a cycle. If you think about it, the earth goes in cycles of hot to cold to balance its self out. On a larger scale, it was really hot, then the ice age hit, now its getting warm again. What do you think will happen next...ice age! Check the weather right now, for 4-5 days it will maybe be in the range of 50-60 and then the next few days it will be warmer and then the week after that it goes down again.

The earth is just one big cycle, humans polluting the earth certainly doesnt help but this "going green" thing is a scam.

Answer 6

Global warming is but a component, in a group of destructive forces at work such as the effects of;deforestation,desertification,soil and water contamination ,irresponsible or wasteful utilization of bio resources , air pollution,Non sustainable Agriculture,over pumping carbon aquifers

all concepts which are definitely not part of the Natural Processes of the Natural world

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

WHICH WE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR,

The most prolific growth on this planet is part of the day in the mist and most of the time under clouds ,and the least growth is always directly in the sun .

To exchange the one for the other means changing local climates

We are exchanging Nature with Tar , concrete and open spaced mono cultures.

In 300 years half of the planets forests have gone ,and in the last 50 years half of the wet lands ,and rain forests

These Areas absorb heat during the day and release heat at night ,

Cause cloud formation(shade).humidifying the air on the surface as well as releasing excess water at the roots that keep rivers flowing ,which in turn brings more water into the Environment .

As well as contributing to absorbing carbon emissions as do the leaves of the trees together with the oceans .

All in all many factors which directly affect the local Environment .

The loss of the above resulting in rivers drying up ,less rain ,desertification,loss of habitat for many species and so on.

dryer and hotter surface environments which can manifest in different weather patterns such as tornadoes or bush fires

I may be stupid or Naive but somehow i believe that lots of these local environmental changes, can add up to affect global weather, If there are enough of them (and there are)

And then on top of that comes the story of the effects of pollutants released into Nature and especially the Air ,by MAN ,http://earthissues.multiply.com/photos/a...

And then there is of course Global Warming lets say the Natural one

(Bob or Trevor can talk better about that )

A cocktail of events and a lot of the ingredients have MAN written all over them

So it is safe to assume that we should look at ourselves ,just a teeny bit ,for possible improvements ,and rectifying Eco errors that are with in our powers.

Answer 7

Mostly man made.

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://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...

Nice Lady's wikipedia site actually isn't bad, although it gives a false impression of the actual numbers of "skeptics" in the scientific community.  They are few, but the article states their positions, and the responses of the community, well.

Answer 8

Natural.

Answer 9

Previous global warming cycles were natural.

Early 20th century warming was probably a combination of solar and human factors.

Last 50 years of warming are mostly attributed to human activities.

NASA Global Warming Q&A:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/G...

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research:

http://www.ucar.edu/news/features/climat...

Journal of Climate "Detection of Human Influence..."

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?requ...

"The estimated magnitude of the anthropogenic signal is consistent with most of the warming in the second half of the twentieth century being anthropogenic."

Answer 10

Anthropogenic.  

The current warming rate far outaces the natural rate measured over the last 5000-15,000 years:

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk...

"...the Pine Island Glacier has shrunk by an average of 3.8 centimeters annually over the past 4,700 years. But the Smith and Pope glaciers have only lost 2.3 centimeters of their thickness annually during the past 14,500 years. Satellite measurements taken between 1992 and 1996, though, show a loss of 1.6 meters in thickness per year on the Pine Island Glacier -- a figure that represents 42 times the average melt of the past 4,700 years."

Carbon dioxide levels have also been implicated as a major factor in past natural warmings (we simply happen to be driving the CO2 increase this time):

Climate Model Links Warmer Temperatures to Permian Extinction

http://www.physorg.com/news6003.html

"The CCSM indicated that ocean temperatures warmed significantly at higher latitudes because of rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. The warmer temperatures reached a depth of about 10,000 feet (4,000 meters), interfering with the normal circulation process in which colder surface water descends, taking oxygen and nutrients deep into the ocean.

As a result, ocean waters became stratified with little oxygen, proving deadly to marine life. Because marine organisms were no longer removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, that, in turn, accelerated warming temperatures.

"The implication of our study is that elevated [carbon dioxide] is sufficient to lead to inhospitable conditions for marine life and excessively high temperatures over land would contribute to the demise of terrestrial life," the authors conclude.

Answer 11

I suggest you read the following Wiki article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warm...

I personally believe that it's 99% natural cycles, but I'm willing to engage the topic, unlike those on the other side.

Answer 12

natural

http://www.iceagenow.com

Answer 13

Global Warming is a natural cycle that happens overtime, but we as people have increased the severity of it also overtime. So the answer to your question would be a little bit of both.

Answer 14

LOL, this time it is mad made...  LOL   All those other times...  Well, that's not happening now because we are here....  LOL  Yea!  I tend to think that alarmists simply hate human kind.  There is absolutely no correlation between man-made anything and weather.  They constantly tell us that as we are putting a shade over our head, that we are getting hotter from it.  Wow!  Then they throw in a bunch of algebraic equations, not considering the fact that CO2 at 385 parts per MILLION comes out to 1 2500th of our atmosphere.  Now take a pebble, weigh it and multiply its weight by 2500 times.  That is how significant CO2 is.  It has no thermal qualities whatsoever and its temperature is dictated by its environment and not the other way around.  You gotta be really far out there to show that CO2 can do anything other than feed plants.

Answer 15

marixs_t   says it is caused by the sun.

Lets see what actual climate scientists say about that.

"It's true that the earth is warmed, for all practical purposes, entirely by solar radiation, so if the temperature is going up or down, the sun is a reasonable place to seek the cause."

"Turns out it's more complicated than one might think to detect and measure changes in the amount or type of sunshine reaching the earth. Detectors on the ground are susceptible to all kinds of interference from the atmosphere -- after all, one cloud passing overhead can cause a shiver on an otherwise warm day, but not because the sun itself changed. The best way to detect changes in the output of the sun -- versus changes in the radiation reaching the earth's surface through clouds, smoke, dust, or pollution -- is by taking readings from space."

"This is a job for satellites. According to PMOD at the World Radiation Center there has been no increase in solar irradiance since at least 1978, when satellite observations began. This means that for the last thirty years, while the temperature has been rising fastest, the sun has not changed."

"There has been work done reconstructing the solar irradiance record over the last century, before satellites were available. According to the Max Planck Institute, where this work is being done, there has been no increase in solar irradiance since around 1940. This reconstruction does show an increase in the first part of the 20th century, which coincides with the warming from around 1900 until the 1940s. It's not enough to explain all the warming from those years, but it is responsible for a large portion. See this chart of observed temperature, modeled temperature, and variations in the major forcings that contributed to 20th century climate."

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12...

"Most studies suggest that before the industrial age, there was a good correlation between natural “forcings" – solar fluctuations and other factors such as the dust ejected by volcanoes – and average global temperatures. Solar forcing may have been largely responsible for warming in the late 19th and early 20th century, levelling off during the mid-century cooling (see Global temperatures fell between 1940 and 1980). "

"The 2007 IPCC report halved the maximum likely influence of solar forcing on warming over the past 250 years from 40% to 20%. This was based on a reanalysis of the likely changes in solar forcing since the 17th century."

"But even if solar forcing in the past was more important than this estimate suggests, as some scientists think, there is no correlation between solar activity and the strong warming during the past 40 years. Claims that this is the case have not stood up to scrutiny (pdf document)."

"Direct measurements of solar output since 1978 show a steady rise and fall over the 11-year sunspot cycle, but no upwards or downward trend ."

"Similarly, there is no trend in direct measurements of the Sun's ultraviolet output and in cosmic rays. So for the period for which we have direct, reliable records, the Earth has warmed dramatically even though there has been no corresponding rise in any kind of solar activity."

http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...

Answer 16

Yea prolly cause we drive cars and run factories and that is wat causes global warming