What are your principle conclusions regarding global warming?

Question

1) Is the planet warming? If yes, continue. If not, go look up a global temperature graph like this one before answering.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif

2) Are humans the main cause of this recent warming? If no, continue to A. If yes, B.

A) What is the main cause of the warming over the past 30 years? Please provide scientific data to support this claim. Something more concrete than 'the planet has warmed before.'

B) Do you feel the global warming predictions of scientists have been alarmist, accurate, or too conservative? Please explain why you think this.

Answer 1

the planet is warming and humans are the main cause of global warming. No, i dont think scientists have been alarmist the IPCC (intragovernmental panel on climate change) has said that global warming is unequivical and is caused by 90 % anthroporogenic causes. Im a firm believer that global warming is happening and it is our (first world) faults

Answer 2

I like lower heating bills,son rode his motorcycle last week,sorry about Low beach front property.

Answer 3

its happened before but this time humans and pollution is speeding up the process

Answer 4

1) No the planet is not warming the surface temperatures have a bias, they are wrong. The satellites show a cooling trend that started in 2003.

http://www.ssmi.com/rss_research/climate...

2) = NO

A) The oceans of planet Earth have at least a thousand times more heat retention capability than the atmosphere, it would only be reasonable to assume the PDO and Atlantic Oscillation have played a dominate role in the warming of the Northern Latitudes, since the most anomalous warming began in the mid seventies which magically coincides with the beginning of the PDO warm phase.

EDIT KEN:

Ken did you ever question why the GLOBALLY averaged mid-troposphere temperatures have been cooling since 2003? None of the scientist that are convinced that the surface warming is Anthropogenic can explain this. It is a major problem with the AGW theory and has been since it's inception. I showed the tropic because theAGW theory demands that the mid troposphere in the tropics warm at a rate at least 1.5 times the surface. A cooling trend in the tropics over the last five years is a major nail in the coffin of the AGW theory.

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http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/res...

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Answer 5

I feel that scientists are being too conservative in their estimates of the severity of the issue due to the pressure put on them by political bodies. Nobody expected the north pole to melt so fast last year, yet there seems to be a very staunch voice trying to suppress concern about GB especially in America. One need look no further than the armchair denialists on forums like this who have no science background, let alone climate science background, who merely parrot the beliefs of those they want to believe. This phenomenon is identical to evolution denialism. But this is alot more dangerous than that.

Answer 6

Tomcat - did you ever ask yourself why the chart you linked too is only dealing with temperatures in the Tropics (20N - 20S latitude)?  And not the Global temperature?  It's because the warming is much less near the equator so this graph hides the warming still occurring further north and globally.

This chart shows the warming at various latitudes, and yes near the equator there's a very small down-turn (it's way to early to declare an end to Global warming from this sub-set of data), but the global temperature continues to increase:

http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2008/0...

As for the questions:

1) Yes the planet is warming.  Virtually every climate scientist I've read (even those still somewhat skeptical of the human component or whether or not we can do anything to prevent it) acknowledge that the planets warming.

2) If your definition of "recent warming" is the 2nd half of the 20th century, then my answer is yes. The explanation I've read for earlier warming was attributed to known solar factors.

B) The scientists predictions haven't been alarmist, but some news reports have.  Scientists are by nature conservative and they hate to be wrong.  So when they publish something (putting their entire reputation and possibly career out before the scientific community) they tend to be very careful.

Pseudo scientist who write popular books are often more motivated by book sales (e.g. $) than a desire to be accurate, so in that realm, there has been excessive alarmism.  But in the professional journals and reports coming out of NASA, NOAA, the IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences (US and other countries), and similar agencies there hasn't been anything I'd consider alarmist.

Answer 7

1. Yes, the planet warmed in the last half of the 20th century but not as much as the surface temperature record indicates.  The land based record has a warm bias due to poorly sited weather stations. See http://surfacestations.org to see photos.  Some of these thermometers are positioned on top of parking lots!  The sea surface temp record has its own warm bias from instrument changes.  Up to half of the observed warming may not be real but an artifact of these biases.

2.  Are humans the main cause?  Probably not.  

A.  Natural climate variation is probably mainly responsible.  The Earth warmed just as quickly from 1910 to 1940 as it did from 1975 to 2005.  CO2 played virtually no role in the first warming.  CO2 can cause some warming, but negative feedbacks such as the Infrared Iris Effect hypothesized by Richard Lindzen and observed by Roy Spencer over the tropics is one big negative feedback.  Due to a 2007 paper by Stephen Schwartz, we now know the climate is only about one-third as sensitive to rising CO2 as we once thought.

For extra credit, I will answer B as well.

B.  No, the predictions have not been accurate.  Hansen made a prediction in 1988 and he dramatically overpredicted global temperatures in his Scenario B.  

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2602

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2630

Answer 8

Hey Dana!

My conclusions:  The preponderence of the evidence is that the planet is warming up.  The preponderence of the evidence is that humans are playing a role in this happening.

But let's say for a moment that humans ARE NOT helping increase global warming, just forget about it for one moment.

Let's simplify the situation a little bit and ask a new (or is it an old) question.

Is pollution from humans effecting the Earth at all?  Well, that is a proven YES!  Next question:  Is it getting any better?  The answer is yes and no.  In some areas the answer is yes, like autos, which make up 5% of the pollution in the air.  The no, is the coal fired power plants, which are belching out pollution at an alarming rate!  This is being caused by the increased use of electricity in the US.  You may think then, that electric vehicles will make the problem worse, but no, because a power plant can be cleaned up, with the equivalent of making thousands of cars cleaner.

Actually, Diesel trucks and buses were the big polluters for years, and as of 2007, the diesel in the US has been reformulated to remove the sulphur, a big improvement.

Carbon monoxide turns to CO2 over time, so there you have that.

Does Man have a hand in global warming?  Most likely.

Is there a problem with pollution that will harm us?  Definitely!

If a smoking alcoholic is dying from liver damage, does it matter about his lung cancer?  This is what asking if global warming is hurting the Earth.  Something is!  And pollution is not helping!

Remember the ozone problem?  It was fixed.  The same scientists that revealed the cause of the ozone damage, are the ones warning us about global warming, and they have a track record!

So there you have it, my 2 cents!  The pollution cannot be good, so it might be warming the Earth, what does it matter, if we already know it is harmful!  Does this make any sense folks?

Answer 9

Humans are not the casue of global warming!

Answer 10

1.   Yes

2. No

A.  Natural cycles.  Please go to the following link and download as much paleoclimate data as you wish.  You will have to graph them yourself, but you should know how to do this.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/c...

Once you have done this you will clearly see that:

i.  The current warming trend started right on schedule, about 10,000 years ago.

ii  Current temperatures are still about 3 degrees Celsius below past maximums.

The obvious conclusion is that the current short term warming trend is just part of the larger cycle, which has not yet reached its natural maximum.

B) All of the above, depending on which scientists you pick and what there particular agenda is.

Answer 11

you can find the info at http://globalwarmingheartland.org

Answer 12

Carbon pollution is just one more example of the results of our egregious over-population and over-consumption.

Anyone who can't see what we are doing is either blind, ignorant, confused, delusional, evil or some combination of the above.  

I'm just a lay person with an above average interest in the truth.

I've spent a lifetime studying the sciences.  Science is the only independent truth we have.

The incompetent lack the cognitive ability to recognize their own incompetence.  The more competent you are, the more you question yourself.  

This leads to a situation where the less reflective among us forge ahead while the wise hesitate.

In the before times, this did not present a problem because ritual and taboo limited the fallout.

In the present, our society is like an engine without a governor.

Competent scientists always are conservative in their estimates.

My gut feeling is that some part of this chaotic system will deal us a hand that no one is anticipating.

And it will be all in, and we will be caught short.

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Answer 13

Human are almost certainly the primary cause of our recent global warming. Some individuals have alarmist views, but scientific opinion by nature is usually conservative. Only time will tell if climatologist's predictions on global warming are accurate or conservative.

A wise person would hope for the best, while preparing for the worse. For the same reason, people carry insurance polices, and buckle up in the car.  Steps can be taken to mitigate the most severe of the possible consequences of global warming. The most important thing that humans can do is to reduce our sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gases

Answer 14

I think that we've done to much ignoring of this issue and intentionally putting are head in the clouds. Unfortunatley still no one has put up much of a solution and no ones really trying to do so. Instead were just looking up at the sky hoping a solution will come down from the heavens its rather stupid really.

Answer 15

The scientist predictions for the most part have been pretty accurate.