The Global warming issue...what or who is causing it?

Question

The Global warming issue...what or who is causing it?

Answer 1

Trevor,  where on earth did you get the data that lead you to make the ridiculous assertion that the current warming trend is 16 x faster than ever seen before and 100 x faster than the period prior to the industrial revolution?  Stupid statements like that are exactly why people are skeptical about global warming claims.  I always hear people say 'how can someone deny global warming when the science proves it?"  Exactly what science backs up your inane statement?

The scientific facts show that not only are your statements about warming being 16 times or 100 times faster than known just wild exagerations, but also that they are completely wrong!  See the attached link for a temperature reconstruction study based on ice core data from both antarctica and greenland.  In it you'll see that antarcitica temperatures have fluctuated by 2.5-3*C ABOVE and BELOW current temperatures over the last 10,000 years.  The rate of warming of 1*C over the last century is minute compared to the rate of warming that antarctic saw 400 years ago when it warmed around 2.2*C in one century.  The current warming is over 2 times SLOWER than that warming trend.

Also take a look at the greenland temperature trend for the last 10,000 years.  You'll see that greenland was warmer than present for MOST of the last 10,000 years.  You can also see some very rapid warming and cooling trends in greenland over the last 10,000 years that were more rapid than present warming.

Please stop making outlandish statements about global warming that have no basis in fact.

Answer 2

Each and everyone of us is contributing to this global catastrophe that is unfolding before us.

Answer 3

Anthropogenic Warming (A.W.)is not established to the extent many think. A consensus is not a substitute for a proven event. The probabilistic modeling used to predict climate changes are scenarios and only as good as the parameters & defined variables in the model. Case in point: The Sun, pro A.W. camp claims to have accounted for Sun's effect by measuring Radiant Output. They totally exclude on these models, the strength of the Sun's Magnetic Field which impacts on the ability of cosmic rays interacting with the Earth's atmosphere & the resulting generation of clouds in the atmosphere

Answer 4

Top 10 'Global-Warming' Myths

Compiled by Christopher Horner, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism" (Regnery -- a HUMAN EVENTS sister company).

10. The U.S. is going it alone on Kyoto and global warming.

Nonsense. The U.S. rejects the Kyoto Protocol’s energy-rationing scheme, along with 155 other countries, representing most of the world’s population, economic activity and projected future growth. Kyoto is a European treaty with one dozen others, none of whom is in fact presently reducing its emissions. Similarly, claims that Bush refused to sign Kyoto, and/or he withdrew, not only are mutually exclusive but also false. We signed it, Nov. 11, 1998. The Senate won’t vote on it. Ergo, the (Democratic) Senate is blocking Kyoto. Gosh.

Don’t demand they behave otherwise, however. Since Kyoto was agreed, Europe’s CO2 emissions are rising twice as fast as those of the climate-criminal United States, a gap that is widening in more recent years. So we should jump on a sinking ship?

Given Al Gore’s proclivity for invoking Winston Churchill in this drama, it is only appropriate to summarize his claims as such: Never in the field of political conflict has so much been asked by so few of so many ... for so little.

9. Global-warming proposals are about the environment.

Only if this means that they would make things worse, given that “wealthier is healthier and cleaner.” Even accepting every underlying economic and alarmist environmentalist assumption, no one dares say that the expensive Kyoto Protocol would detectably affect climate. Imagine how expensive a pact must be -- in both financial and human costs -- to so severely ration energy use as the greens demand. Instead, proponents candidly admit desires to control others’ lifestyles, and supportive industries all hope to make millions off the deal. Europe’s former environment commissioner admitted that Kyoto is “about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide” (in other words, bailing them out).

8. Climate change is the greatest threat to the world's poor.

Climate -- or more accurately, weather -- remains one of the greatest challenges facing the poor. Climate change adds nothing to that calculus, however. Climate and weather patterns have always changed, as they always will. Man has always best dealt with this through wealth creation and technological advance -- a.k.a. adaptation -- and most poorly through superstitious casting of blame, such as burning “witches.” The wealthiest societies have always adapted best. One would prefer to face a similar storm in Florida than Bangladesh. Institutions, infrastructure and affordable energy are key to dealing with an ever-changing climate, not rationing energy.

7. Global warming means more frequent, more severe storms.

Here again the alarmists cannot even turn to the wildly distorted and politicized “Summary for Policy Makers” of the UN’s IPCC to support this favorite chestnut of the press.

6. Global warming has doomed the polar bears!

For some reason, Al Gore’s computerized polar bear can’t swim, unlike the real kind, as one might expect of an animal named Ursa Maritimus. On the whole, these bears are thriving, if a little less well in those areas of the Arctic that are cooling (yes, cooling). Their biggest threat seems to be computer models that air-brush them from the future, the same models that tell us it is much warmer now than it is. As usual in this context, you must answer the question: Who are you going to believe -- me or your lying eyes?

5. Climate change is raising the sea levels.

Sea levels rise during interglacial periods such as that in which we (happily) find ourselves. Even the distorted United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports refute the hysteria, finding no statistically significant change in the rate of increase over the past century of man’s greatest influence, despite green claims of massive melting already occurring. Small island nations seeking welfare and asylum for their citizens such as in socially generous New Zealand and Australia have no sea-level rise at all and in some cases see instead a drop. These societies’ real problem is typically that they have made a mess of their own situation. One archipelago nation is even spending lavishly to lobby the European Union for development money to build beachfront hotel resorts, at the same time it shrieks about a watery and imminent grave. So, which time are they lying?

4. The glaciers are melting!

As good fortune has it, frozen things do in fact melt or at least recede after cooling periods mercifully end. The glacial retreat we read about is selective, however. Glaciers are also advancing all over, including lonely glaciers nearby their more popular retreating neighbors. If retreating glaciers were proof of global warming, then advancing glaciers are evidence of global cooling. They cannot both be true, and in fact, neither is. Also, retreat often seems to be unrelated to warming. For example, the snow cap on Mount Kilimanjaro is receding -- despite decades of cooling in Kenya -- due to regional land use and atmospheric moisture.

3. Climate was stable until man came along.

Swallowing this whopper requires burning every basic history and science text, just as “witches” were burned in retaliation for changing climates in ages (we had thought) long past. The “hockey stick” chart -- poster child for this concept -- has been disgraced and airbrushed from the UN’s alarmist repertoire.

2. The science is settled -- CO2 causes global warming.

Al Gore shows his audience a slide of CO2 concentrations, and a slide of historical temperatures. But for very good reason he does not combine them in one overlaid slide: Historically, atmospheric CO2, as often as not, increases after warming. This is typical in the campaign of claiming “consensus” to avoid debate (consensus about what being left unspoken or distorted).

What scientists do agree on is little and says nothing about man-made global warming, to wit: (1) that global average temperature is probably about 0.6 degree Celsius -- or 1 degree Fahrenheit -- higher than a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen by about 30% over the past 200 years; and (3) that CO2 is one greenhouse gas, some level of an increase of which presumably would warm the Earth’s atmosphere were all else equal, which it demonstrably is not.

Until scientists are willing to save the U.S. taxpayer more than $5 billion per year thrown at researching climate, it is fair to presume the science is not settled.

1. It’s hot in here!

In fact, “It’s the baseline, stupid.” Claiming that present temperatures are warm requires a starting point at, say, the 1970s, or around the Little Ice Age (approximately 1200 A.D to the end of the 19th Century), or thousands of years ago. Select many other baselines, for example, compared o the 1930s, or 1000 A.D. -- or 1998 -- and it is presently cool. Cooling does paint a far more frightening picture, given that another ice age would be truly catastrophic, while throughout history, warming periods have always ushered in prosperity. Maybe that’s why the greens tried “global cooling” first.

The claim that the 1990s were the hottest decade on record specifically targets the intellectually lazy and easily frightened, ignoring numerous obvious factors. “On record” obviously means a very short period, typically the past 100+ years, or since the end of the Little Ice Age. The National Academies of Science debunked this claim in 2006. Previously rural measuring stations register warmer temps after decades of “sprawl” (growth), cement being warmer than a pasture.

Answer 5

Very short answer.  Solid, verified, peer reviewed data.

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

Man, about 90%.  Sun, about 10%.

Answer 6

Human beings are causing it.  There is essentially no dispute among skeptics of that fact because there is just no reason to dispute it.

Answer 7

Well, the Earth naturally cycles through periods of warming and cooling. We are contributing to how quickly it is happening right now, but the more serious problem is that we are devastating our ecosystems. You should read the book "Fingerprints of the Gods" by Graham Hancock. Don't be intimidated by the thickness of the book. If you read the first two pages, you'll be hooked. It will blow your mind!!

Answer 8

What.......................... Chlorofluorocarbon(CFC) . Who........................... the well develop countries.

Answer 9

regardless who or what, it is clearly a problem when the fishing industry tanks due to polluted waters. That whales, dolphins and large marine animal carcasses are considered toxic waste. That landfills causes community upheavals and debates. It is without argument that we should all accept at some point that humans are damaging our own environment. We should not ridicule scholars, scientists and politicians who take a stance at protecting the environment.

Answer 10

No-one knows.

It is almost impossible to get research money to look at anything other than the contribution of CO2 - even though it is only present in the atmosphere at 30 parts in a million.

CO2 levels do not match temperature changes over the past 100 years, and going back further increases in CO2 ALL follow rather than precede climate warming. This makes for a flakey case.

Water vapour accounts for 95% of the greenhouse effect, but is often ignored in climate models.

But with all this uncertainty, what is a best guess?

Well, somewhere around 10% due to human CO2. Somewhere around 50% due to increased solar output. Somwhere around 40% due to other atmospheric changes (mainly water vapour - human contribution to this is less than 0.1%).

Answer 11

Natural weather patterns - take the grand canyon for an example, it was once full of water. Who caused this? no carbon emissions compared to now days as stated by professor Gore.

Answer 12

Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are drying, and wildlife is scrambling to keep pace. It's becoming clear that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our lives. There are many causes, not just one, and we may not know what all the causes are.  There are natural causes that we know very little about but we know they are there because geological evidence tells us that Earth's climate changes quite a lot -sometimes colder than today and

sometimes warmer.  Some have suggested changes in the sun's output of radiation, or changes in the amount of dust in the atmosphere from volcanoes or meteor impacts as natural causes.  For about 100 years there has been concern that the

burning of coal and oil in our industrial age might put enough carbon-dioxide and other gasses into the atmosphere to trap reflected sunlight and thus cause the atmosphere to heat upage Various means of controlling industrial and agricultural air pollution are being discussed by the world's governments.

Answer 13

Let me give you an answer, not one that's based on opinion or what I want you to beleive but one that's based on what we know.

The world has always warmed and cooled of it's own accord.  In the past it's been much hotter and much colder than it is now.  Ice ages have come and gone several times.  Humans weren't around when this was happening so there's no question that this is something entirely natural.  These changes occur over very long periods of time and are due in part to the way the earth moves and differences in the heat received from the sun.  

The most recent significant natural change began 18,000 years ago when the world began warming.  This caused the glaciers to retreat.  In terms of nature this was caused by a spectacular rise in temperatures - about one degree for every 1000 years.

For over 100 years we've understood how global warming works and the relationship between greenhouse gases, the greenhouse effect, global warming and climate change.  In simple terms, the more greenhouse gases the warmer the world becomes.  Some people claim this isn't so but these claims have no basis to them.  In fact, if the claims were true the planet would be so cold as to be uninhabitable.  You see, there's a lot of natural global warming which keeps our planet at a habitable temperature.

Nature is very good at dealing with things like carbon dioxide and there's a natural carbon cycle which is constantly releasing carbon dioxide whilst at the same time absorbing it.  Left to it's own devices nature is more or less in equilibrium.

If there's an increase in the levels of carbon dioxide then nature can't cope.  Putting numbers to it then nature can handle 3 or 4 billion extra tons of CO2 per year but last year alone we added 29 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere.  There's many other greenhouse gases as well including methane, nitrous oxide and a whole bunch with long, impressive sounding chemical names.

For more than 100 years we've been overloading nature and creating a surplus of greenhouse gases which have built up in the atmosphere.  These trap heat, the way they work is quite simple and if you look at some of my previous answers these explain the workings.

As levels of greenhouse gases have increased so too has the global temprature.  What we're seeing now is an increase in temperatures many times faster than anything that's ever happened before.

The full picture is a very complicated one and there are a great many factors at work but the bottom line is that nature warms and cools the planet, it's currently warming it but since industrialisation the rate of warming has gone up dramatically.

What we can't say for certain is how much humans are contributing to global warming. We can make an estimate based on the fact that the world warmed by about 1 degree Celsius in the last 10,000 years of it's own accord but since industrialisation we've seen a similar temperature rise but in just 100 years.  Temperatures are currently rising 16 times as fast as has ever before been known and about 100 times as fast as the period prior to industrialisation.

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EDIT:

To dsl67 (Below): You're talking about single countries, I'm talking about the world as a whole.  You're talking about weather, I'm talking about climate. Global warming is not single countries and it's not a short term event.

If you want to use short term examples you can find more extreme examples than those you've cited - Siberia for example, has warmed by 4 degrees in just a few years; much more dramatic than the Greenland and Antarctic variations you refer to.

In 1980 GLOBAL average temperatures were 14.14°C, in 2005 they were 14.53°C - a rise of 0.39°C in 25 years or 0.0156°C per year.  In the holocene temperatures GLOBALLY rose by 1.5°C - an average of 0.000129°C degrees per year.  In other words, temperatures are now rising 121 times as fast as the holocene.

If I wanted to distort the figures I could have excluded the recent temperature rises and taken the data back by say 9,000 years - by doing so it's possible to demonstrate the world was cooling as the temperature 9,000 years ago was 0.2°C higher than it was in prior to industrialisation in 1800.  Instead I opted to use the accepted norms of the holocene and mid 20th century means.  Anyone can distort statistics, I chose not to by using standard data ranges.

As for the 16 times rise.  Current annual temp rises 0.0156°C.  Glacial retreat spanned 8,000 years, GLOBAL temps during that period rose 8°C or 0.0001 per annum - one sixteenth of the current rate.  Again, I could have made it more dramatic by looking at temp rises over just the last few years and comparing them to the 18,000 year glacial retreat period.  Had I done that then the current temp rise would be 0.025°C compared to 0.0005°C thus giving the impression that GLOBAL temperatures were rising 50 times as fast as had been previously known.

As to where I got the figures from - my own 23 years of peer reviewed and published research.