What reason could there possibly be why most all scientists agree man made global warming is real?

Question

Proof:

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

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

The wiki article is simply a collection of easily checkable facts, not opinions.

So why? The only alternatives I can see is that it's real, they're dumb, or they're engaged in a gigantic conspiracy.

We're talking thousands of scientists all around the world, most of who don't know each other. And the history of science is marked by the exposure of scientific frauds.

If this "conspiracy" just happened, why now, and never before? Why are most all world leaders buying into it? Surely they've heard about the "skeptics". Most corporate leaders too. Are they also dumb or in on the conspiracy?

Should right wing blogs be trusted more?

Or is man made global warming real? Seems like the ultimate no brainer to me.

Answer 1

The majority of scientists do not believe it, mostly those with political motivation say they do

Answer 2

We it is just a "theory" but there are some really good things to back it up and right now there is more proof that it is real as opposed to a hoax.

Answer 3

Most scientist believe or claim to believe in GW because they and/or their colleagues get paid to study it.

They either do not know the facts (not every scientist understands everything outside of their field of study) , or are afraid of being ostracized if they speak out.

Answer 4

I wouldn't call it a no brainer it just happens to be the best explanation.. but does that actually make it so.  There are good skeptic papers (very few and far between) and there are some AGW papers to hit home as well.  This is the best theory at the moment, but I'm sure something else will come up in the near future that will propose a different cause that everyone else will jump to.  I'm still not sold on the theory.  Also  you have to know that once a certain theory gets as much credit as the AGW theory then everyone has no choice but to jump on and agree.  Especially politicians and world leaders, they definitely have to jump on board or face harsh criticism and possibly be forced to change there point of views.  As far as the scientific organizations, well that must be there belief, but does it actually make it fact.  There's plenty of unsolved mysteries in the scientific world, science changes everyday, one theory that you have believed to be right for centuries can be found to be incorrect in a blink of an eye.  Also the problem with most scientist including myself, they can't fathom not knowing how something works, and there is still so much that we do not understand about the atmosphere and other physical aspects of the environment, that for once it may be in the best interest to say that GW at this time and age that some things just can't be explained.  But for the sake of pollution and being environmentally friendly, we should adopt these green ways to save money and energy, but I'm not sold on it curving the temperature.

Answer 5

Well the main reason is to cripple the US economy and put it on what they see as a 'level' playing field.  then they will have little trouble competing with us.  Hope you enjoy helping them out.  And if you think this is not so, do a bit of research on French Prd.  Sharak ( probably spelled wrong) and see his own words about this.

Answer 6

I challenge your contention that "most scientists agree...."  I have never seen a list of all scientists in the world showing how many believe in AGW and how many do not.

Of course, if you mean most scientists who are paid to study global warming and its effects, and/or to develop solutions to the "crisis", then I think it is pretty obvious why most of these would agree that it exists because if it didn't, they would be out of a job.

Answer 7

What happens when you start a car in a closed garage and just sit there in the car?   Now, just multiply that effect by a billion+ cars and other polluting factories in the world's closed atmosphere.  Are you going to say there is no effect?  You're right ... it IS a NO brainer!!

Answer 8

There are very few people that believe man has had no impact at all on global warming in the last few hundred years but this does not mean that without man's influence the planet would not have warmed anyway (probably to a lesser degree), it does not mean that CO2 is the only contributor and it does not mean that hybrid cars are the only answer.

Although most scientists agree that man has influenced GW, very few agree on their future temperature predictions, the amount of human influence and the steps to address the issue.

Ultimately the only reason to care about the cause of GW, is to identify the best solution.  If we proved it was NOT caused by human influence we still wouldn't want to just sit here and cook!

Answer 9

I hear ya, this forum is blowing my mind. I have never seen such organized misinformation in my life anywhere except for intelligent design proponents. What profound arrogance does it take for a lay person to think they can come up with a 5 second answer that trumps mounds of peer reviewed science journal articles. "Its cold outside", "have you ever heard of the sun" etc.... I am hoping these are teenagers or children who have borrowed daddy's computer.

Follow the money (as the denialists say). The one's who have the most to lose are the one's with the loudest voices- the right wing pundits and talk show hosts who champion corporate interests. They feel incredibly threatened by all this and can't speak a sentence without mention "Al Gore" with disgust, as if Al Gore single handedly invented the idea of global warming and hypnotized thousands of free thinking scientists to believe him will nilly.

No, all you see on the flip side is ignorance, distractions, character assassinations and purposeful misinformation. Even right wingers like Thomas Friedman and Newt Gingrich have publicly declared that the right wing's pointless denial of AGW is going to end up hurting them.

Let us just pause to remember that the U.S. has some of the lowest, if not THE lowest science and math scores in the developed world. This is perfect fodder for propaganda. Their minds are easily susceptible.

Answer 10

Hi Bob, i noticed you don't say 99%. Good job. Later bro.

oh, here is a repost on the "Conspiracy Theory" thingie.

Oh my you finally brought up the “conspiracy theory” in a question. So where do I start? You are talking to the same crowd that usually does not believe in conspiracy theories. Let’s face it the good theories like “The Luna landing was faked” and “Kennedy was shot by multiple people” are already taken by the left side of the fence. Usually they are the ones that are a little radical on the left side. The ones on the side of the fence, that don’t believe global warming is man made, are quite a different crowd. They are usually a little conservative and closer to the middle of the road. Do we believe scientists? Yes. However this whole thing is being blown out of proportion by the press, politicians, and bureaucrats. Do any of them lie to us? Only when their lips are moving! The press loves this because bad news sells, the politicians have a great political forum and the bureaucrats need their jobs. Do they lie, not necessarily; they just propagate off each other. It is pretty common. Now too many people have jumped on this bandwagon. People get all emotional about the issue which propagates it further. We have proof in society that this happens, Just look at the McCarthy and his which hunts, Americans became crazy with the anti-communist propaganda. Or how about how George Bush worked up the American public after 9/11, every one was so ready to accept the Patriot Act that they never considered the consequences. He was able to ride that wave of Patriotism from Afghanistan right into Iraq. That, my friend, is what is going on here.

Answer 11

because they could be afraid of being exiled in the scientific community.  There are probably more scientists that dont agree with it than we know.  I wouldnt use the IPCC's claims of " 2500 scientists agree" because a majority of the arent actually scientists.

Its hard to say.  I dont think they have all the info.  They look at past measurements, and try to determine a correlation.  But sometimes it doesnt stay that way.

Its like buying a stock in the stock market.  You cant buy one that has been going up and up and up because it cant be too far off from going down.  They really dont know what will happen in the future.

There isnt much evidence that it is actually getting warmer, other than melting ice ( but that doesnt prove WE are the cause).  My guess is that the global averages are thrown off by the urban heat island effect.  Urban areas radiate, and trap more heat because of the darker surfaces, and of course, the emissions in that area.  

Its all because we have cities covering a large portion of the northern hemisphere.

Answer 12

Wikipedia a source that makes Al Gore look reliable!!

Answer 13

I think there's a great summary of the consensus here:

http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/...

And I agree that the 3 possible explanation for this consensus among experts are

1) It is correct.

2) The scientific experts are dumb and wrong.

3) There is a vast worldwide conspiracy.

Let's examine these possibilities.

1) The scientific evidence supports this.  Even if you don't trust the scientists, you can go into their papers and look directly at the evidence.  The Achilles Heel of the skeptics is that they cannot explain the scientific data:

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

They can't even put forth scientific data to support their own plausible alternative theories:

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

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

2) I've worked with scientists for about 10 years now, and have yet to meet a dumb one.  Clearly the most intelligent answerers in this section (i.e. Trevor, gcnp, Keith, d/dx,  myself, Bob) are scientists.  It takes years of dedicated study and a sharp mind to get a PhD, and solid research to obtain grants.  Scientists are clearly not dumb, and for laymen who have spent essentially zero time studying the science behind global warming to think they know better than the experts who have spent their lives studying the issue is beyond absurd and laughable.

3) Also beyond absurd and laughable.

Scientific studies are constantly checked and duplicated, so unless tens of thousands of scientists are all colluding to falsify data in the same manner (and even the skeptics don't make this claim, with the possible exception of the Mann graph, for which the criticism is poor analysis, not falsified data), this is simply impossible.

Even ignoring the fact that people go into the sciences not for the money, but for the desire to learn and discover new things.  Even ignoring the fact that it's a scientist's job to gather and analyze data in an unbiased manner.  Even ignoring that millions of people would have to be in on this conspiracy for it to work, and it would just take one dissenter to unravel it.

Even ignoring all that, all you have to do is examine the data which is readily available, and this conspiracy theory unravels like a cheap sweater.

Answer 14

Basic law watered down:

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction =

Everything causes something

Who'da thunk burning billions of gallons of fossil fuel would've had an effect on the environment?

Answer 15

Same reason scientists used to agree that the earth was flat.  Or that the universe was filled with an undetectasble massless substance called "ether".  Or that every official investigation of the JFK assasination is wrong:  peer pressure.

Answer 16

(Bob) I read the first link in part and got a little bored.I don't really want to split hairs...not my thing.I noticed they didn't included individual or self selected scientist.The assessment factors had a wide variability, so much as to make it pointless.That was just a scan and I didn't go into depth.

For the gist of your question I've always agreed with the awareness factor.This also means checks and balances need to be placed...no argument there.But I also know

explaining interactions will take more then man has to offer.

Edit:(1) Yes I will agree with one mad self proclaim scientist. "It is laughable". One simple request from the rest of us...Being that you have these God like powers and arrogance above reproach....why don't you just make  another planet? I'll even make it simpler then that... create a blade of grass.

Edit:(2) This was directed at a poster and not you. I've read some really lame stuff from this individual.

Edit:(3) There's a lot of poster's that are confused about CO2 verses CO....big difference.

Answer 17

I would go for the gigantic conspiracy including UFO's, the masons, black helicopters, the CIA, the mob and mutant chocolate cookies.

Answer 18

not only man is the reason for global warming even animals like cows they produce a lot of methane and if we look back it is true we started it and we should also end it we are the only ones who could solve the problem.

Answer 19

8th grade geology -

Fossil fuels are the result of plants using sunlight to convert atmospheric carbon into into fixed carbon over a period of hundreds of millions of years.  

Simple fact -

We burn a million years worth of coal, oil and natural gas a year.

Simple fact -

The Mauna Loa graph shows atmospheric carbon increasing every year.

Simple conjecture -

How can it possibly be benign to release a hundred million years worth of carbon in the space of 150 years?

Don't need unequivocal science to the nth decimal place. (which we now have anyway)

Don't need conspiracies.

(which you can never prove or disprove)

Was a no-brainer for me in 1975.

edit:

Ha ha.  There's smart and dumb people in all walks of life, but saying that the likes of Bob and Dana et. al. get spanked here on a daily basis is a pathetic lie and actually the opposite of what happens.

Answer 20

Man made global warming is very real, look at the rising temperatures. How ever, most right wings are freaking out because they think we are not doing anything to solve it, which we are. Economic cars, better insulation in housing,  in big cities more people are car pooling or taking the bus to work. So it's not like we aren't making an effort, we just aren't doing it fast enough for the crazy zealots.

Answer 21

Frankly, I don't care how many scientists think global warming is real or not. I can see for myself something is having an effect on the environment. Whether GW is the whole truth or not, it is raising awareness on how our actions have impact on the world around us.

And the smog alerts don't get any more real.

Answer 22

Peer pressure :-)  oooh wikirikitaviencyclopedia again, yeehaw! Wiki's "facts" and their credentialing were slammed hard last year Bob. :-)

" I would go for the gigantic conspiracy including UFO's, the masons, black helicopters, the CIA, the mob and mutant chocolate cookies"

Didn't y'all use that excuse to explain how the Nobel Laureate didn't win in 2000?... lol

Answer 23

What about the scientists that believe its not happening. Don't most scientist receive funding through government and universities, I guess I would look for something that is going to bring in the big bucks, oh Al Gore is a politician, what a coincidence.

Answer 24

In 2003  two German environmental scientists, Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch conducted a survey of climatologists from all over the world.  Bray is a research scientist at the GKSS Institute of Coastal Research in Geesthacht, Germany. Von Storch is a climatology professor at the University of Hamburg and director of the Institute of Coastal Research. More than 530 climate scientists from 27 different countries provided numerical answers each time the survey was conducted. All responses were anonymous.

The question “do you agree or disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic (man made) causes?” Slightly more than half (55.8 percent) of climate scientists surveyed agreed, 14.2 percent were unsure, and 30 percent disagreed.  So it is not 99% as you have claimed in the past.

Of those that strongly agree only 9.4% strongly agree.  In other words on 9.4% are of the opinion that AGW is a no brainer as you have also stated in the past.

It is important to note that the heatland institute did not commission this study.  They are just interpreting the facts.  If you think they are misleading in their interpretation please state so, and do not attack the heatland institute.

http://downloads.heartland.org/2086111.p...