What are your thoughts about this article on climate change?

Question

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9763

I'm only trying to learn... be nice.

Answer 1

I agree with the article in general except that we are still in an Ice Age this is just an interglacial period, and they misspelled Holocene.

Answer 2

The author starts it off with disinformation to try and fool you. He states...

"We hear consistently the one side of the debate, that climate change is caused by increased Carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, and that humans are the greatest contributor of this toxic greenhouse gas, and thus, the greatest contributor to climate change, and that there will be catastrophic consequences as a result. I hope to give voice to the other side of the debate."

No climate scientist will tell you that CO2 is the only cause of climate change. They will tell you that it can happen in many ways, such as solar output, volcanic activity, and so on. There's another group of people who do what he's doing (not telling the whole truth), and that is politicians. Omitting truths is equal to lying.

Here is a link to the National Academy of Sciences, and they are the preeminent scientists of our nation.

http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/clim...

Answer 3

I'll say this about global warming, I really don't believe in all this non-

sense that climate change is to blame for global warming.  But it's

about time that the big industrialists are now cleaning up the mess that

they created for so long.

Answer 4

A lot of nonsense.  I'll take on one, and point you to a source that refutes most of the rest.

"Simply put, the analysis of the ice core samples, published in Science Magazine, reported that CO2 increases lagged behind temperature increases by roughly 800 years."

CO2 can be either a cause of warming (greenhouse effect) or an effect (warming ocean waters will release CO2).  IN THE PAST CO2 lagged temperature, because it was mostly an effect.  THIS TIME IS DIFFERENT.  There is no lag because CO2 is mostly a cause.  This data actually proves global warming is mostly caused by us.

This, and much else in the article, debunked by scientists (which the author isn't) here:

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

By the way, for those who have praised this article for it's "science",

"Andrew Marshall is a 19 year old political science student at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia (BC)"

If you want to take his word over the vast majority of Ph.D. climatologists, I suppose you can.

Answer 5

I think climate change is natural (Ice Ages). However, we may be accelerating things a bit with pollution. Even if we are not causing the climate to change, we should still reduce the amount we pollute because pollution has more negative effects to us than just global warming.

None of the scientists know anything, it's all just educated guessing.

Answer 6

A 19 year old eh? A right wing blog. It's interesting that every article like this attempts to misinform the reader by making them think that the view taken by the author is respectable and well supported in the science community. Phrases like "the majority of the evidence clearly supports natural climate change"... says who? A 19 year old kid on a right wing blog? Who cares?  

Answer 7

Scientific consensus is not created in a vacuum, and it cannot be challenged in a vacuum. Consensus is created by an overwhelming amoung of real evidence, and it takes real evidence to challenge the consensus. This paper provides none. Indeed, the author seems to believe that Al Gore's movie constitutes the bulk of the evidence for anthropogenic global warming. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It has long been known, for example, that CO2 is both a feedback and a forcing agent in ice-age cycles. The fact that ice ages are triggered by orbital forcing and that the primary feedback is ice-albedo feedback is nothing new. So when Marshall says, "If CO2 increases lag behind temperature increases, it does not make sense that CO2 can be the cause of temperature increases," he's just full of it. Did he forget his own maxim that correlation is not causation? In fact, CO2 increase is both a cause AND an effect of climate change.

I was going to go into a catalog of mistakes Marshall makes (and there are a huge number, including some absolute doozies), but instead I'll address his major point, which is the mistaken belief that the current warmth is caused by an increase in solar radiation.

1. If the Sun is causing the current warmth, then we're getting more energy, and the whole atmosphere should be getting warmer. If it's greenhouse, then we're getting the same amount of energy, but it's being distributed differently: more heat is trapped at the surface, and less heat is escaping to the stratosphere. So if it's the Sun, the stratosphere should be warming, but if it's greenhouse, the stratosphere should be cooling.

In fact, the stratosphere has been on a long-term cooling trend ever since we've been keeping radiosonde balloon records in the 1950's. Here's the data:

http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/images...

2. If it's the Sun, we're getting more energy during the day, and daytime temperatures should be rising fastest. But if it's greenhouse, we're losing less heat at night, and nighttime temperatures should be rising fastest. So if it's the sun, the difference between day and night temperatures should be increasing, but if it's greenhouse, the day-night difference should be decreasing.

In fact, nighttime temps have risen about twice as fast as daytime temps during the last 100 years. Here's the data:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/gcag/GCAGdealte...

... and as a result, the daily temperature range has been decreasing throughout the 20th century. Here's the science:

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

3. Total solar irradiance has been measured by satellite since 1978, and during that time it has shown the normal 11-year cycle, but no long-term trend. Here's the data:

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/solar...

4. Scientists have looked closely at the solar hypothesis and have strongly refuted it. Here's the peer-reviewed science:

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

5. CO2 levels in the air were stable for 10,000 years prior to the industrial revolution, at about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv). Since 1800, CO2 levels have risen 38%, to 385 ppmv, with no end in sight. Here's the modern data...

and the ice core data, and a graph showing how it fits together:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3006/2615...

6. We know that the excess CO2 in the air is caused by burning of fossil fuels, for two reasons. First, because the sharp rise in atmospheric CO2 started exactly when humans began burning coal in large quantities (see the graph linked above); and second, because when we do isotopic analysis of the CO2 we find increasing amounts of "old" carbon combined with "young" oxygen. Here are the peer-reviewed papers:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1984JGR......

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mk...

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ab...

So what's left to prove?

Answer 8

I think it's too long!  :)

Answer 9

probaly the lest politically motivted information on the global warming topic i have seen. HAs some great points that make sense.  I dont need yahoo answer to tell me what i alreadyknow to be true. AGW is a scam , and GW is a natural cycle