What's all this talk about global warming?

Question

Last time I checked, we had not emerged from the last ice age, yet.

Answer 1

Actually we did emerge from the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago, when the warming from that stopped.  Proof, with scientific sources listed at the end:

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

So the blip at the far right side of the graph is NOT natural, but comes from us burning fossil fuels and making CO2.

Did you really think scientists don't understand this?

Answer 2

Yea, now we're a scant 0.5 degs above average after being 0.5 degs below average for 130 years.  

It's just normal temperature variations.

Answer 3

Yes, there is lots of talk. speculation, and assumptions about global warming. I believe this is another attempt to introduce a non existant emergency to scare people into accepting higher taxes and more government controls over their lives. The earth has always warmed and cooled without human interference.

Answer 4

THe earth goes through natural cycles. for god sakes there has been ice ages and mini ice ages. I think what ever we do doesn't mean a thing what is going to happen is going to happen. it is just nature

Answer 5

well it is time to take another peek at the world around you

global warming is only part of the equation  that threatens us

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/glo...

Global warming is  a component, in a group of destructive forces at work such as ;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...

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.

What is a safer bet

to be or not to be

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

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

Answer 6

well according to Wikipedia it's a natural cycle that has been occurring for BILLIONS of years.

read for your self...........

Climate change is any long-term significant change in the “average weather” that a given region experiences. Average weather may include average temperature, precipitation and wind patterns. It involves changes in the variability or average state of the atmosphere over durations ranging from decades to millions of years. These changes can be caused by dynamic process on Earth, external forces including variations in sunlight intensity, and more recently by human activities.

In recent usage, especially in the context of environmental policy, the term "climate change" often refers to changes in modern climate (see global warming). For information on temperature measurements over various periods, and the data sources available, see temperature record. For attribution of climate change over the past century, see attribution of recent climate change.

Variations within the Earth's climate

Weather is the day-to-day state of the atmosphere, and is a chaotic non-linear dynamical system. On the other hand, climate — the average state of weather — is fairly stable and predictable. Climate includes the average temperature, amount of precipitation, days of sunlight, and other variables that might be measured at any given site. However, there are also changes within the Earth's environment that can affect the climate.

Glaciation



Percentage of advancing glaciers in the Alps in the last 80 yearsGlaciers are recognized as being among the most sensitive indicators of climate change, advancing substantially during climate cooling (e.g., the Little Ice Age) and retreating during climate warming on moderate time scales. Glaciers grow and collapse, both contributing to natural variability and greatly amplifying externally forced changes. For the last century, however, glaciers have been unable to regenerate enough ice during the winters to make up for the ice lost during the summer months (see glacier retreat).

The most significant climate processes of the last several million years are the glacial and interglacial cycles of the present ice age.[citation needed] Though shaped by orbital variations, the internal responses involving continental ice sheets and 130 m sea-level change certainly played a key role in deciding what climate response would be observed in most regions. Other changes, including Heinrich events, Dansgaard–Oeschger events and the Younger Dryas show the potential for glacial variations to influence climate even in the absence of specific orbital changes.

Ocean variability



A schematic of modern thermohaline circulationOn the scale of decades, climate changes can also result from interaction of the atmosphere and oceans. Many climate fluctuations — including not only the El Niño Southern oscillation (the best known) but also the Pacific decadal oscillation, the North Atlantic oscillation, and the Arctic oscillation — owe their existence at least in part to different ways that heat can be stored in the oceans and move between different reservoirs. On longer time scales ocean processes such as thermohaline circulation play a key role in redistributing heat, and can dramatically affect climate.

The memory of climate

More generally, most forms of internal variability in the climate system can be recognized as a form of hysteresis, meaning that the current state of climate reflects not only the inputs, but also the history of how it got there. For example, a decade of dry conditions may cause lakes to shrink, plains to dry up and deserts to expand. In turn, these conditions may lead to less rainfall in the following years. In short, climate change can be a self-perpetuating process because different aspects of the environment respond at different rates and in different ways to the fluctuations that inevitably occur.[citation needed]

Non-climate factors driving climate change

Effects of CO2 on climate change

Main article: Greenhouse gas



Carbon dioxide variations during the last 500 million yearsCurrent studies indicate that radiative forcing by greenhouse gases is the primary cause of global warming. Greenhouse gases are also important in understanding Earth's climate history. According to these studies, the greenhouse effect, which is the warming produced as greenhouse gases trap heat, plays a key role in regulating Earth's temperature.

Over the last 600 million years, carbon dioxide concentrations have varied from perhaps >5000 ppm to less than 200 ppm, due primarily to the effect of geological processes and biological innovations. It has been argued by Veizer et al., 1999, that variations in greenhouse gas concentrations over tens of millions of years have not been well correlated to climate change, with plate tectonics perhaps playing a more dominant role. More recently Royer et al.[1] have used the CO2-climate correlation to derive a value for the climate sensitivity. There are several examples of rapid changes in the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere that do appear to correlate to strong warming, including the Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum, the Permian–Triassic extinction event, and the end of the Varangian snowball earth event.

During the modern era, the naturally rising carbon dioxide levels are implicated as the primary cause of global warming since 1950. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2007, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 in 2005 was 379 ppm³ compared to the pre-industrial levels of 280 ppm³. Thermodynamics and Le Chatelier's principle explain the characteristics of the dynamic equilibrium of a gas in solution such as the vast amount of CO2 held in solution in the world's oceans moving into and returning from the atmosphere. These principles can be observed as bubbles which rise in a pot of water heated on a stove, or in a glass of cold beer allowed to sit at room temperature; gases dissolved in liquids are released under certain circumstances.

Plate tectonics

On the longest time scales, plate tectonics will reposition continents, shape oceans, build and tear down mountains and generally serve to define the stage upon which climate exists. More recently, plate motions have been implicated in the intensification of the present ice age when, approximately 3 million years ago, the North and South American plates collided to form the Isthmus of Panama and shut off direct mixing between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Solar variation

Main article: Solar variation



Variations in solar activity during the last several centuries based on observations of sunspots and beryllium isotopes.The sun is the ultimate source of essentially all heat in the climate system. The energy output of the sun, which is converted to heat at the Earth's surface, is an integral part of shaping the Earth's climate. On the longest time scales, the sun itself is getting brighter with higher energy output; as it continues its main sequence, this slow change or evolution affects the Earth's atmosphere. It is thought that, early in Earth's history, the sun was too cold to support liquid water at the Earth's surface, leading to what is known as the Faint young sun paradox.[citation needed].

On more modern time scales, there are also a variety of forms of solar variation, including the 11-year solar cycle and longer-term modulations. However, the 11-year sunspot cycle does not manifest itself clearly in the climatological data. Solar intensity variations are considered to have been influential in triggering the Little Ice Age, and for some of the warming observed from 1900 to 1950. The cyclical nature of the sun's energy output is not yet fully understood; it differs from the very slow change that is happening within the sun as it ages and evolves.[citation needed].

Physicist and historian Spencer R. Weart in The Discovery of Global Warming (2003) writes:

The study of [sun spot] cycles was generally popular through the first half of the century. Governments had collected a lot of weather data to play with and inevitably people found correlations between sun spot cycles and select weather patterns. If rainfall in England didn't fit the cycle, maybe storminess in New England would. Respected scientists and enthusiastic amateurs insisted they had found patterns reliable enough to make predictions. Sooner or later though every prediction failed. An example was a highly credible forecast of a dry spell in Africa during the sunspot minimum of the early 1930s. When the period turned out to be wet, a meteorologist later recalled "the subject of sunspots and weather relationships fell into dispute, especially among British meteorologists who witnessed the discomfiture of some of their most respected superiors." Even in the 1960s he said, "For a young [climate] researcher to entertain any statement of sun-weather relationships was to brand oneself a crank."[2])

Orbital variations

In their effect on climate, orbital variations are in some sense an extension of solar variability, because slight variations in the Earth's orbit lead to changes in the distribution and abundance of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface. Such orbital variations, known as Milankovitch cycles, are a highly predictable consequence of basic physics due to the mutual interactions of the Earth, its moon, and the other planets. These variations are considered the driving factors underlying the glacial and interglacial cycles of the present ice age. Subtler variations are also present, such as the repeated advance and retreat of the Sahara desert in response to orbital precession.

Volcanism

A single eruption of the kind that occurs several times per century can affect climate, causing c

Answer 7

'joe to go' deniers like to pretend that scientists predicting man made climate change think the climate is an unchanging thing, it isn't and no real scientist has ever said so. The Earths climate has changed many times, we are a new player in this adding our little bit, for a little change compared to some that have happen in the past.

Answer 8

It's a nature cycle of this earth. To think that mankind has anything to do with it is over stating things...there is no way that "we" started this warming cycle. h**l, just a few decades ago "they" said we were starting into an ice age.

Al Gore is a moron! Truly. When he lost the presidency he lost his mind. Grew a beard, gained weight, etc. He literally lost his mind. He tried to find a way to regain some sort of sense, but lost.  lol

Gore put too much into this BS of "global warming". True, we have been experiencing climate change, but we didn't cause it. It is natural and to be expected.

We are on a "living planet" after all. These things come and go; natural cycles.

Do you really thing that the last time this happened that the dinosaurs were driving SUVs?!  I don't think so.

What is happening is normal and will occur again and again.

Oh well. lol

Answer 9

If you ask ANY scientist that does not work for an oil company, global warming is real and humans are to blame.  The study of greenhouse gases is over 150 years old and scientists have agreed since the mid-nineties that this is happening.  We can thank the Republican party and their talking points memos for the confusion.  They coined the phrase "climate change" and they directed their members to put out the false assertion that there is a question in the minds of scientists that this is occurring.  There is no question.  The debate ended years ago and only Americans continue to question what is accepted science.  We are showing the rest of the world how backward and easily manipulated we can be.  Great job!

Answer 10

Natural occurance, not manmade.  Global warming/cooling has been going on for millions of years and will continue to do so.  There is nothing we can do, or should bother trying to do, to stop it.  100% natural thing.