What counts as proof for global warming?

Question

Many people say that there is no actual scientific evidence to prove that there is global warming. If ice caps melting and the increase of temperatures around the world does is not scientific evidence, what is?

Answer 1

To the wannabe skeptics, nothing but hightide in their living room is going to constitute proof.

Answer 2

I drank a glass of milk and it started to rain, that means drinking milk causes it to rain right??

Answer 3

the melting of the ice caps IS proof, governments don't want to acknoldge it though because it would mean that they would have to force companies and the average person to chagne the way they live thier lives and they would ahve to change the way they run the country. and that would cost a lot of money that no one wants to spend.......you know it's true and you know it's serious when Bush is willing to admit he was wrong and global warming is occoring

Answer 4

2 words: natural phenomenon

it is a natural phenomenon, it is supposed to happen, it has happened before and it will happen again.

Answer 5

Haywire weather?

I'm in Norway. It hardly snowed all winter and snowing heavily now, in spring.

Answer 6

I would start with a full explanation of all of the different factors involved in weather and climate.  No one can explain that today.  If they say they can, they are lying because if they could, they could tell us what the weather will be like tomorrow or the next day or next year or 100 years from now.

If you can't explain the whole thing, you can't prove anthropogenic global warming.  And why should I spend money to change my lifestyle for something unproven during a cooling trend?

Answer 7

The problem is that we have proved that the average global temperature is increasing, but there are exceptions that others focus on.  For example, the average temperature in the United States has not risen or has risen insignificantly, and most debate that humans are not the cause of it.  Small fluctuations like la nina that bring cooler temperatures become focuses of their arguments, but these occurrences do not reflect overall trends.  In truth, this era is part of a natural warming trend that began a few hundred years ago.  The problem is that it is increasing more rapidly than it should, and people are to blame.  For conservative and interest reasons, many will always disagree

Answer 8

There are many basic scientific facts which can only be explained if the current global warming is being caused by an increased greenhouse effect due to carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere from humans burning fossil fuels.

For example, the planet is warming as much or more during the night than day.  If the warming were due to the Sun, the planet should warm a lot more during the day when the Sun has influence.  Greenhouse gases trap heat all the time, so they warm the planet regardless of time of day.  Another example is that the upper atmosphere is cooling because the greenhouse gases trap the heat in the lower atmosphere.  If warming were due to the Sun, it would be warming all layers of the atmosphere.

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

We know it's warming, and we've measured how much:

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science...

Scientists have a good idea how the Sun and the Earth's natural cycles and volcanoes and all those natural effects change the global climate, so they've gone back and checked to see if they could be responsible for the current global warming.  What they found is:

Over the past 30 years, all solar effects on the global climate have been in the direction of (slight) cooling, not warming.  This is during a very rapid period of global warming.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/62902...

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

A recent study concluded:

“the range of  [Northern Hemisphere]-temperature reconstructions and natural forcing histories…constrain the natural contribution to 20th century warming to be <0.2°C [less than one-third of the total warming].  Anthropogenic forcing must account for the difference between a small natural temperature signal and the observed warming in the late 20th century.”

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/104...

You can see this in the third graph here, where the dotted lines are just from natural causes, and the full lines are natural + human causes:

http://www.pnas.org/content/vol104/issue...

If that’s not enough to convince you the Sun isn’t responsible, consider the fact that no scientific study has ever attributed more than one-third of the warming over the past 30 years to the Sun, and most attribute just 0-10% to the Sun.

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

So the Sun certainly isn't a large factor in the current warming.  They've also looked at natural cycles, and found that we should be in the middle of a cooling period right now.

"An often-cited 1980 study by Imbrie and Imbrie determined that 'Ignoring anthropogenic and other possible sources of variation acting at frequencies higher than one cycle per 19,000 years, this model predicts that the long-term cooling trend which began some 6,000 years ago will continue for the next 23,000 years.'"

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

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

So it's definitely not the Earth's natural cycles.  They looked at volcanoes, and found that

a) volcanoes cause more global cooling than warming, because the particles they emit block sunlight

b) humans emit over 150 times more CO2 than volcanoes annually

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man....

So it's certainly not due to volcanoes.  Then they looked at human greenhouse gas emissions.  We know how much atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased over the past 50 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna...

And we know from isotope ratios that this increase is due entirely to human emissions from burning fossil fuels.  We know how much of a greenhouse effect these gases like carbon dioxide have, and the increase we've seen is enough to have caused almost all of the warming we've seen over the past 30 years (about 80-90%).  You can see a model of the various factors over the past century here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Clima...

This is enough evidence to convince almost all climate scientists that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming.

Answer 9

Since the temperature has been in decline for the last 10 years, melting ice is the closest thing to proof that is available.

Answer 10

Looney people going around humping trees !! The 60's Hippies blame it on the hippies .........

Answer 11

The temperatures have remained constant over the last 100 years per the data from NASA and the other two climate monitoring organizations.  Sooooo  get your facts straight.

Answer 12

I see Dana is still up to the old tricks still!

The ice melts in the summer every year!

The questions are how far, how fast, and will it continue?

This current period of 'global warming' began around 15,000 years ago, with a very rapid increase about 8,000 years ago(which is believed to have caused the extinction of the Great Mammoth).

We have had a couple of 'mini ice ages, since then.

The last 'mini ice age' was around 1850, although 1650 and 1700 were also times of colder climatic conditions.

Depending on how you wish to interpret the statistics and what you wish to use as your baseline for your answer, you could either say we are currently in a period of rapid global warming or cooling!

The fact is that no matter what 'Mother Nature' decides to throw our way, we can do nothing about it, nor could we affect or alter it!

If you wish to be one of those who is willing to accept the hype and BS that we hear and see everyday in the media without bothering to learn some basic science to help sort through the mess, then you deserve to reap what you have sown and suffer along with the rest of us!

I can only say that I am personally glad to be lucky enough to be living in a period of global warming conditions(if we are now).

With the high cost of energy I struggle to keep warm during the winter months(even as mild as they have been lately).

One good volcanic eruption could s***w this all up for me!

It is only man's arrogance and stupidity that makes us believe that we are so powerful that we could affect nature on a global scale.

The simple fact is that even though we are in a climatic warming period that this could all change rather suddenly(in earth's time frame at least).

Answer 13

2/3 of their (global warming 'believers)' predictions come true and the sun has to decrease in activity to its minimum while the earths temperature rises. And there has to be an explanation of why 98% of the icecaps in Antarctica is expanding.

Looks like I'm getting thumbs downs because they can't prove it lol.

Answer 14

the sky is falling!!