What do you think is causing global warming, and why?

Question

I have summarized some of the evidence which has convinced me that humans are the primary cause of the recent global warming here:

http://greenhome.huddler.com/wiki/global-warming-and-climate-change-causes

I would like to see if there are any valid counter-arguments, or pieces of information that I missed. If you think humans aren't causing global warming, what scientific evidence makes you think that, and vice-versa?

Note - I'm only looking for scientific arguments here. I don't need to hear political conspiracy theories. Nor do I want to hear people try to argue that global warming has stopped, because it hasn't. If you're convinced that it has, then explain to me what cause the planet to warm from the 1970s until whenever you think it stopped.

Answer 1

Gloabl warming is caused as a result of the discharge of dangerous gases like CO and other deadly gases into the atmospere and this as a result of its incomplete nature depletes the ozone of oxygen and thereby creating holes in the protective layer and then cause more sun rays to reach us here on earth. this causes the melting of ice in the north pole and causes the water level to rise causing alot of harm to mankind,.

Answer 2

FACTORIES, CARS, FIRE, BURNING F FOSSIL FUEL TO PRODUCE ELECTRICITY ETC. = SMOKE

SMOKE = THICKER BLANKET MADE BY GREENHOUSE GASES

Answer 3

that prometheus has a lot to answer for...

'What do you think is causing global warming'

the greenhouse effect.

80 - 90% from human activity;

releasing long buried carbon from fossil fuels and peat, increasing methane production from animals and farming, producing black smoke, tropospheric ozone, nitrogen oxides, cfcs etc, all of which act as greenhouse gasses.

releasing recently stored carbon and smoke from burning plant matter.

at the same time, decreasing the capactity of the biosphere to reabsorb the carbon;

by replacing forest with crops, which are then eaten or burned, re-releasing the carbon stored in a season.

degrading peat ecosystems so they become net emitters rather than sinks.

ploughing, use of artificial fertilizers, insensitive cultivation of fragile forest soils, leading to oxidation of carbon in soils.

why? because there are far too many of us, because the biblical idea of 'man's (sic) mastery over nature' has made us incredibly selfish and arrogant, because we have no long term thinking.

oh, you mean why do i think that's what causes it? because that's what's happening. physics. the evidence of my eyes.

Answer 4

I see no way it could be, here's why.

Look at fossils at the south pole, how did they get, only pate tectonics could do this.

Look at ices cores collected every where.  Since the land is moving, where was the sample deposited to begin with ?

Look at the great lakes, ice helped carve them out, ice was covering most of North America at the time.

Do we put too much CO2 in the atmosphere, I'm sure we do.  But doesn't water have more of an effect on weather and climate ?

On a planet where its time is measured in the BILLIONS of years, what is the norm, no one knows, not even you.

Answer 5

Too many people!

:-)

Answer 6

China Growth & Global Warming

This is easy to answer.  Global warming is caused by too many people on the earth, period!

If people didn't think they had to multiply like rabbits, if certain religions didn't forbid birth control and stopped encouraging families to be the size of tribes, we wouldn't have the problem.

You haven't seen any global warming yet to speak of.  Right now China only has about 22 million cars on the road. Just wait until all of the economic growth that China is undergoing right now matures and the remaining 80% of the people who can drive cars over there go out and buy one once they have the money to. China's population is now approx. 1.4 billion (1/5 of the world's population) vs. our 300 million. From The Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation: "If China had the same number of cars per person as we have in the United States, there would be more than 800 million cars on the road there."

The sad part of it all is that we are encouraging and supporting their economic growth (to our detriment) by purchasing the made-in-China dog f***s quality products that populate the store shelves in all of the x-Mart stores in the USA. It is not entirely the Chinese who are to blame though. Any country who has the technical ability to put a satellite in orbit (China) is obviously capable of building a quality product - it is just that American corporations specify that what they want to put in the x-Marts is a product that is cheap, to satisfy the American consumer's demand. The only reason that this low quality c**p IS there is because Americans still don't realize that there is no such thing as a free lunch, you get what you pay for, etc., etc. This is also coupled with our milk-toast attitude towards doing anything about it.  The Chinese ship us toxic waste in the form of leaded toys to poison our children, melamine spiked glutin in pet food to kill our pets, and they pirate our CDs and DVDs, injuring some of our own industries. Oh yeah, I forgot, once in a while on TV we see some Chinese police crushing a pile of CDs on a street corner, like this is really making a dent on what they illegally produce! The list of grievances goes on and on. What to we do - NOTHING! Were any punitive damages placed on the Chinese companies who did any of these things? The answer is obvious. What needs to be done is for this country to stand up and say, "I'm mad as h**l and I'm not going to take this anymore." You want a fix - put an embargo on Chinese products - period.  To send this message, stop their ships at the ports and turn them around.  OK, we all know that that is not going to happen, because the x-Mart driven economy and metality of this country would not allow it. Sometimes we don't want to hear the answer or the solution when it stares us in the face . . .

Answer 7

This is not an attempt to critique the entire article, but a couple thoughts on particular topics. I’m just kind of thinking out loud here.

Reference the paragraph:

“Might the current climate change be due to changes in the Earth's oribtal cycles?  The answer is no.  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."

Are we to infer that since we are in a 23,000 year cooling trend, that the current warming is a sign that the cooling cycle is “breaking” and instead taking an upward swing (warming)?

I don’t think we can safely make that assumption at this point in time since there remains 17,000 years in the cycle. In other words, if you were to chart the entire 23,000 years, there is no doubt in my mind that there may be several century-long periods that deviate dramatically from the trend line; but these anomalous “blips” would smooth out and all but disappear over the full period. It is difficult to accept that temperature increase in a shorter time frame indicates that the cooling cycle is broken.

In the section on AGW, there is a link to a Realclimate article that tries to ascribe all CO2 increase to human activity by charting conversion of 14C to 12C. But one item jumped out at me in that article, which was that the 14C to 12C conversion is catalyzed by cosmic rays, which are not even mentioned in the article (I read the more scientific one, not the “light” versions). In order to make a complete analysis and draw a valid conclusion, he would need to have also tracked cosmic ray activity during the same period; as it is part of the equation. I’m not saying that this reverses his conclusion, but it seems the research is incomplete.

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents on the referenced article. Always happy to help :-)

But to answer your main question, I think it is a combination of many factors, with any anthropogenic enhancement to the greenhouse effect being only a very small part of the equation.

Answer 8

Man made CO2 is causing the warming, along with any stray natural CO2 that's been released during the last 1-200 years.  I think that the melting of the polar caps is slowing the rise in temperature somewhat.  Deforestation is playing a larger role all the time, not just as regards CO2, but for the cooling effects forests have (cities create the opposite type of thermal air currents).  That's hard to assess right now.  There just aren't enough monitors.

As you and I have discussed before, I think when the glaciers and polar caps are gone, things will warm a lot faster.  I expect that point to come a lot sooner than predicted.  All of the changes with the ice we've been seeing have been coming ahead of schedule, and more so all the time.  Remember the ice shelf that collapsed a couple of weeks ago?  They had predicted it, but for decades from now, not weeks ago.  The main reason I believe this is so many factors have been excluded from the reports that make the predictions, both because of politics and our own ignorance.  I don't need to reiterate the politics.  By ignorance, I mean things like nobody expected the ice caps would detach from their bedrock and start sliding into the ocean as they are.  That gives you a lot faster melting than if they had melted in place.  There are examples of that type thing every where you look.

I think even the dullest of the pro-petroleum people would admit if pressed that there is some point with the oceans where the addition of any additional pollution will kill the whole ecosystem.  (well maybe half of the pro-petroleum people).  We don't know how far we are from that point, but we go right on dumping, and more every day.  We've now found farm chemicals like growth hormones, pesticides, and antibiotics in deep oceans fish.  It's likely that there are no more uncontaminated areas.  Thor Heyerdahl sounded alarm when in the 1980's he crossed the Atlantic in the RA and found small grape like objects all the way across.  These turned out to be made of Algae and petroleum.  That was 20 years ago.  There are now huge "dead zones" in the oceans that grow every year, and we don't know why.

Plastics are one of the worst issues.  Besides being made from petroleum, they pollute the environment in every possible way.  They kill millions of every species sea creatures every year.  They break down in salt water and accumulate in the food chain like DDT.  When the oceans are dead life on land is in serious trouble, including us.  How will that affect these timelines people smugly present, saying we are centuries or millenia away from even needing to think about AGW?  A lot I suspect.

Lakes and inland seas are drying up all over the world.  The people who have depended on them for thousands of years are at risk.  Small wars and skirmishes over water are breaking out.  Half the people on earth have no water supply of their own.  Financial analysts predict water will be the next brokered commodity.  If you look around, it's already happening.  Interestingly, the biggest players are many of the people in Government.  Just as with petroleum, they profit by the demise of the human race.  The glaciers in the Himalayas are melting (fast) for the first time since humans evolved.  They supply most of the water for Asia, including China.  The programs the current Administration has promoted (hydrogen and ethanol) are carefully constructed to fail.  They have also managed to kill many effective programs, such as the EV-1.

My argument is that the collapse of each important system, natural or technological, creates a larger requirement for burning fossil fuels, making things deteriorate faster.  If we don't begin to do things differently, people who think a crisis is centuries away are going to get a big surprise, real soon.  

Species go extinct at the rate of 3 per hour, 95% of them unknown to science.  Human created "monoculture" threatens the viability of larger and larger regions.  We are very close to fulfilling Phillip K. d**k's prediction, that we would create a world we are not adapted to live in.

Answer 9

There's too many men, too many people

Making too many problems

And there's not much love to go round

Answer 10

The biggest cause of global warming is the increase in volcanic activity which is a huge emitter of carbon dioxide and water vapor.  

Man made contributions are mainly caused by the United States of America, China, India, and the EU.  Between these four areas over 75% of all green house gases are created.

China has surpassed the United States in total emissions but not per person yet because of the size difference between the two.  India is not too far behind the output of the United States and the EU has been increasing their output again after seeing a dip when they shutdown the old Soviet power plants and dirty manufacturing plants for cleaner ones.

Answer 11

Global warming -- a gradual increase in planet-wide temperatures -- is now well documented and accepted by scientists as fact. A panel convened by the U.S National Research Council, the nation's premier science policy body, in June 2006 voiced a "high level of confidence" that Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, and possibly even the last 2,000 years. Studies indicate that the average global surface temperature has increased by approximately 0.5-1.0°F (0.3-0.6°C) over the last century. This is the largest increase in surface temperature in the last 1,000 years and scientists are predicting an even greater increase over this century. This warming is largely attributed to the increase of greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide and methane) in the Earth's upper atmosphere caused by human burning of fossil fuels, industrial, farming, and deforestation activities.

Average global temperatures may increase by 1.4-5.8ºC (that's 2.5 - 10.4º F) by the end of the 21st century. Although the numbers sound small, they can trigger significant changes in climate. (The difference between global temperatures during an Ice Age and an ice-free period is only about 5ºC.) Besides resulting in more hot days, many scientists believe an increase in temperatures may lead to changes in precipitation and weather patterns. Warmer ocean water may result in more intense and frequent tropical storms and hurricanes. Sea levels are also expected to increase by 0.09 - 0.88 m. in the next century, mainly from melting glaciers and expanding seawater . Global warming may also affect wildlife and species that cannot survive in warmer environments may become extinct. Finally, human health is also at stake, as global warming may result in the spreading of certain diseases such as malaria, the flooding of major cities, a greater risk of heat stroke for individuals, and poor air quality.

Climate change is very likely having an impact now on our planet and its life, according to the latest installment of a report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). And the future problems caused by rising seas, growing deserts, and more frequent droughts all look set to affect the developing world more than rich countries, they add. The report is the second chapter of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment -- the most comprehensive summary yet of research into the causes and effects of climate change. To read more, visit Effects of climate change tallied up.

Factors

Greenhouse Gases

The increase in greenhouse gases caused by human activity is often cited as one of the major causes of global warming. These greenhouse gases reabsorb heat reflected from the Earth's surface, thus trapping the heat in our atmosphere. This natural process is essential for life on Earth because it plays an important role in regulating the Earth's temperature. However, over the last several hundred years, humans have been artificially increasing the concentration of these gases, mainly carbon dioxide and methane in the Earth's atmosphere. These gases build up and prevent additional thermal radiation from leaving the Earth, thereby trapping excess heat.

Solar Variability & Global Warming

Some uncertainty remains about the role of natural variations in causing climate change. Solar variability certainly plays a minor role, but it looks like only a quarter of the recent variations can be attributed to the Sun. At most. During the initial discovery period of global warming, the magnitude of the influence of increased activity on the Sun was not well determined.

Solar irradiance changes have been measured reliably by satellites for only 30 years. These precise observations show changes of a few tenths of a percent that depend on the level of activity in the 11-year solar cycle. Changes over longer periods must be inferred from other sources. Estimates of earlier variations are important for calibrating the climate models. While a component of recent global warming may have been caused by the increased solar activity of the last solar cycle, that component was very small compared to the effects of additional greenhouse gases. According to a NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) press release, "...the solar increases do not have the ability to cause large global temperature increases...greenhouse gases are indeed playing the dominant role..." The Sun is once again less bright as we approach solar minimum, yet global warming continues.

GLOBAL WARMING HAS TO STOP BEFORE WE ALL DIE.

HUMANS MADE THIS MESS AND HUMANS ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT CAN CLEAN IT UP!

Answer 12

From your farts

Answer 13

global warming = bunk

why do you drive a car dana? do you heat and a/c your home? do you foul the environment with you bodily excretions and fill land fills with your garbage? i thought so. perhaps you would serve the world in a better way than posting your drivel  on websites like this, and your computer leaves a carbon footprint you know.  quit fouling the good earth, quit using your car and home heat, quit posting drivel in a vain attempt to scare people into believing what you believe.  to do other wise just makes you a phony and a hypocrite.

Answer 14

Angry liberals are causing it by all their hot air.  I wonder what it will take for you to admit you were wrong. In 10 or 20 years it will be funny to see you try to talk yourself out off all you said here.  By then you will be trying to make money from saying global warming is now causing global cooling and that if we don't punish the evil Americans then world will end.  Lucky for us most people don't fall for it.  I'm not sure why you are asking a question like this because I know you won't accept any facts that go against your "religion".

Answer 15

what i think is causing it is the chemicals in the air from factorys car gases and pollution in the air

Answer 16

The answer is that the answer isn't knowable with present knowledge and technology.  Sidhart and Dessy are typical products of the disinformation that global warming has caused.  There seems to be little interest in the truth or science.  I don't care if you can't come up with any other solution than the one you want.  Why don't you focus on what caused the Maunder minimum or the cooling in the 1970s and avoid incorrect assumptions such as sulfur emissions.  Just because you can't figureout alternatives, doesn't mean that yours is a scientifically derived solution.  It is important to acknowledge what you don't know but that seems to be a impossible task for an alarmist.

Answer 17

Global warming is but 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...

And then there is of course Global Warming lets say the Natural one

(Bob or Trevor can talk better about that )

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

Answer 18

my thoughts on global warming... there is no such thing now bio diesel has increased green house gasses it's all hoax. the earth has been changing for billions of years and will continue untill this planet dies out think about it there where no power plants when mamoths romed the earth and all that ice melted away. before them everything was covered with trees and forest unitll the heat went up causeing a drought and leaving dino's and it's mamals without any greens to eat before the "astroid" of corse but like i am saying us as animals we need to adapt to the earths way of life not the other way around .

Answer 19

The sun is causing global warming.

Answer 20

It's all my fault.  I did it and I'm gonna take over the world when it warms up just a bit more.  I'm like a turtle, I don't want to come out until it warms up.

Answer 21

Just like Y2K, global warming is a hoax being perpetrated by the media on an unsuspecting populous. Only a small segment of the earth’s overall data – about 130 years of the 4.2 billion year age of the earth – are being analyzed, in an effort to spin the information to match a gloom and doom prophecy. The earth’s atmospheric history is filled with large scale swings in temperature, which are self regulating throughout time.

Answer 22

Sun's Direct Role in Global Warming May Be Underestimated, Duke Physicists Report

"At least 10 to 30 percent of global warming measured during the past two decades may be due to increased solar output rather than factors such as increased heat-absorbing carbon dioxide gas released by various human activities, two Duke University physicists report."

http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2005/09/sun...

Fallacies about Global Warming

"...This paper explains the eight most common fallacies that underpin public discussion of the hypothesis that dangerous global warming is caused by human greenhouse gas emissions...."

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/sppi_o...

Video:

The Truth About Climate Change: http://tinyurl.com/3xeokp