Is global warming just the earth going through its cycles or are we the cause?

Question

I have seen both sides of the debate and I am really thinking that global warming is really hyped up, and that we are not causing it. I heard that like one volacano explosion causes more CO2 than we ever did. And that we only make like 5% of the earth's CO2, and they are not really sure if CO2 causes it. Like I still believe in conserving and in green energy because it creates less smog and stuff, but I think that this global warming thing is really over-hyped by the politions and enviromentalists.

So what should I believe, that we are the cause, or that this is just how the earth cycles?

Answer 1

You need some time learning about this, and looking at the data.  Instead of listening to crazy theories.  So this is going to be a little long, and you need to actually look at the links.

First, let me get rid of volcanoes.  What you "heard" is nonsense.  They make way less than we do.

http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoe...

The fact that we make only a small part of the CO2 is not important.  What's important is that we make close to 100% of the EXCESS CO2.

There are a great many natural sources and sinks for carbon dioxide. There is a natural "carbon cycle" that recycles CO2.  But it's a delicate balance and we're messing it up.

Look at this graph.

http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gall...

The little squiggles are nature doing its' thing. CO2 falls a bit during summer when plants are active, and rises during the winter. The huge increase is us, burning fossil fuels. The scientists can actually show that the increased CO2 in the air comes from burning fossil fuels by using "isotopic ratios" to identify that CO2.  The natural carbon cycle buried carbon in fossil fuels over a very long time, little bit by little bit. We dig them up and burn them, real fast.  That's a problem.

Finally, global warming.

"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 and the first Commander of the Naval Space Command

Here are two summaries of the mountain of data that convinced Admiral Truly, short and long.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Ima...

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

It's (mostly) not the sun:

http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/sgw_act...

And the first graph aboves shows that the sun is responsible for about 10% of it.  When someone says it's the sun they're saying that thousands of climatologists are stupid and don't look at the solar data.  That's ridiculous.

Science is quite good about exposing bad science or hoaxes:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/ATG/polywater...

There's a large number of people who agree that it is real and mostly caused by us, who are not liberals, environmentalists, stupid, or conceivably part of a "conspiracy".  Just three examples of many:

"Global warming is real, now, and it must be addressed."

Lee Scott, CEO, Wal-Mart

"Our nation has both an obligation and self-interest in facing head-on the serious environmental, economic and national security threat posed by global warming."

Senator John McCain, Republican, Arizona

“DuPont believes that action is warranted, not further debate."

Charles O. Holliday, Jr., CEO, DuPont

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://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fu... and:

"There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know - except maybe Newton's second law of dynamics.  Global warming is almost a no-brainer at this point,You really can't find intelligent, quantitative arguments to make it go away."

Jerry Mahlman, NOAA

Good websites for more info:

http://profend.com/global-warming/

http://www.realclimate.org

"climate science from climate scientists"

Answer 2

We can not be held responsible for something that does not exist.

Truth and Science Newsletter - The Facts About Global Warming

                                                      



In the movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” by Al Gore, it states:



1.  ÃƒÂ¢Ã‚€ÂœThe vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is real.”



Actually, over 19,000 scientists, including 72 Nobel Prize winners do not agree that we are experiencing global warning, and believe this is an extreme position on the environment.

  

2.   the “Glaciers are melting, global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet with the loss of shelf ice in Greenland and Antarctica, devastating coastal areas worldwide.”



The Greenland icecap is actually growing at the rate of 7.2 miles per year, not melting.  The East Antarctic Ice Sheet gained about 45 billion tons of ice between 1992 and 2003.  The ice sheets are several kilometers thick in places, and contain about 90% of the world's ice.  News articles have sighted glacier growth in Norway, Canada, Ecuador, Switzerland, Russia, New Zealand, the Himalayans, and 5 states in the USA.  



Global average temperature has increased 0.8 degrees F in the last century.  However, most of the temperature increase was before 1940, and most of the new carbon dioxide was added after 1960.  So are we to believe the effect came before the cause?  Actually, for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase, there was actually a slight decrease.



It's possible the government knows we are actually in Global Cooling?

Answer 3

I agree with you.  Look at the arguments people give to prove their case.  These experts agree, so you should agree as well.  No need to question the science.  But that just shows how inconclusive the evidence is.

If I were to say something stupid like the sun  revolves around the earth, nobody is going to use "all of the experts argument".  They are going to take me aside and show the errors in my ways.  Any arguments I have, they will have counter arguments, not with theories, but with proof. If the evidence is overwhelming, as they say it is, they should be able to make counter arguments. Let me give you an example;

despite rising co2 levels, temperatures from fell from 1940-1975.  A global warming blog I consulted stated that had to to with rising sulphates in the atmosphere that had a cooling effect by blocking the sun's rays. The clean air act of 1975 eliminated the sulphates and temperatures started to rise again.  The blog gave me a theory and wanted me to believe it with no proof. The real climate blog has no explanation.  Is there a study that shows sulphates have a cooling effect?  Is there a temperature reconstruction that shows the relationship between sulphates and temperature?  Maybe there is.  I have not found one.

Answer 4

The Fourth Assessment by the IPCC (released just this year) stated unequivocally that global climate change is happening and given the scientific evidence, there is a 90% chance that humans are responsible for it.

(See the source for the executive summary of the Scientific Basis part of the assessment.)

Answer 5

Its good you have looked into the issue, however a correction, your statement about volcanoes is not accurate.

The theory of man-made global warming is false.  Anyone who believes otherwise has not investigated the evidence or is purposely remaining ignorant to the legitimate opposition to global warming.  I have given up an one and a half hours to watch “An Inconvenient Truth” so I ask you to do the same and watch the movie detailing the opposition.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...  

And another video for those of you short on time: http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.ph...

Some more general resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warm...

http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.ph...

http://www.john-daly.com/

CO2 is not causing the globe to warm the opposite is true, the warming is increasing the atmospheric CO2.  When the world heats it gradually increases the temperature of the oceans which serve as the largest CO2 sink.  As the oceans heat up they release CO2 which is stored in them.  The information comes from the same data Al Gore uses, the temperature always goes up before the concentration of CO2 goes up.

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/artic...

CO2 makes up only .03% of our atmosphere.  Water vapor, another greenhouse gas, makes up 1-4% of our atmosphere, this gas is acknowledged to be the main greenhouse gas.  All human activities combined contribute only 6 Gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year.  Animals, through respiration, decomposition, etc contribute 150 Gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere.  So humans contribute only a small amount of CO2 to the atmosphere which is already in very small concentrations in the atmosphere.

http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/science.html This is where my data came from, it is an interesting site, it displays the same graphics as Al Gore in his movie but it tells how low the human contribution is.  So Al Gore is using the same data but coming to a different conclusion, who do you want to believe a politician with no scientific training or the NASA CO2 laboratory, a group of scientists who spend their entire careers studying CO2.

We know the greenhouse effect is real it is a necessary effect to keep our planet at a habitable temperature.  However if our current warming is due to greenhouse gasses it would cause warming in the troposphere , but the troposphere is actually getting cooler.

http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/temperature... That points to other explanations to our current warming.

So what is causing our current warming, it is the sun.

http://web.dmi.dk/solar-terrestrial/spac...

http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2003/s...

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/06...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/...

http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php...

The fact that only the earth’s surface is warming points to direct heating from the sun rather than heating due to greenhouse gasses.  Also other planets in our solar system are warming pointing to a common cause of warming, that common cause being the sun.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/0...

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

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/sola...

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/sola...

The global warming crowd says our glaciers are melting and animals will suffer this is another false claim.

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2Sci...

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA235.htm...

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/

The global warming crowd also claims a scientific consensus on the issue, this is wrong in two ways.  One, there is no consensus, this is a false claim to make you believe in global warming by suppressing the opposition.  http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

Second, even if there was a consensus it would mean nothing, science is not politics, you don’t vote on theories to determine their legitimacy.

Here’s 21 pages of websites that disagree with global warming.

http://www.climatechangedebate.org/docum...

The thought that the only scientists who disagree with global warming are paid by oil companies is simply a stupid statement with no reality.  This is the most illogical argument by people in support of global warming.  Aside from being completely false it begs another question: Who pays global warming supporters?  The answer is big environmental agencies that make millions off of global warming each year by teaching, publishing books, and selling environmentally clean products.  

The IPCC is the main supporter of global warming, their statements are defended blindly by people who don’t want to admit that global warming is not real.  People will claim that they took into account natural sources of CO2, they didn’t.  Take a look for yourself:

http://www.ipcc.ch/activity/srccs/index....  That is the latest IPCC report, read the entire report, do a search of the documents, there is absolutely no mention of natural sources of CO2.  The natural sources have been completely ignored.  Also people will claim that the IPCC took the sun into account in their report, this is not entirely correct, while the sun is mentioned the report it’s effects have not been accurately represented.

http://www.john-daly.com/forcing/moderr....  The IPCC did not take into account the Svensmark factor.  This would greatly reduce the effect of solar radiation on the earth.  Look back up to the solar resources to see the effect of the sun correctly represented.

Also allegations have been by IPCC scientists who disagreed with the IPCC statements.  They say that their research was censored or taken out of the IPCC report.  This is not the first time the IPCC has lied, they forged the famous “hockey stick” graph, which later resulted in a reissuing of the IPCC report.

Here’s another source that disagrees with the IPCC: http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/Sept1004Glo...

And another: http://www.sepp.org/Archive/NewSEPP/ipcc...

And another: http://www.john-daly.com/guests/un_ipcc....

Quotes form politicians, CEO’s, and others are not proof of global warming, they issue these statements to get votes and customers.  Scientists are able to get published and get time on the media by supporting global warming.  The IPCC continually lies and misrepresents data so they keep their jobs.  

In regards to the precautionary principle that says we can only help if we switch over to alternative energy, this idea is not correct.  While this may seem legitimate it only helps the first world, third world countries can not afford to switch to the more expensive energy options.  Also the US currently spends 4 billion dollars a year on global warming research which could be better spent on research for disease or to fight poverty.  For an excellent example of how the precautionary principle is harmful you do not need to look further than DDT.  This pesticide was cheap and incredibly effective but it was banned because of it harmful effects on egg shells.  Now thousands of people die every year in third world countries because of malaria, a disease that could be easily controlled with DDT.

I hope anyone who believes in global warming they will take a look at the resources I provided.  These resources should convince you that global warming is not man-made, it is caused by cycles in the earths climate.  If you are not convinced I hope you at least take a new look at global warming as an unproven idea.  Remember that global warming is big business for anyone who aligns themselves with it.

I could not go this entire post without mentioning global cooling.  

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

http://www.michaelkubacki.com/cooling.ht...

In the 1970’s it was claimed that there was a consensus on the fact that the world was headed into an ice age.  We have seen once before how damaging a false claim about our climate change can be to our world.  Most of the global warming crowd does not want you to know about this scare because it is so similar to the scare today.  Government panels were formed and claimed the world was headed to an ice age, evidence poured in supporting the claim, a consensus was claimed, then the whole issue just faded away.  That is what will happen with the false scare of global warming.