Who still thinks Global Warming is due to humans?

Question

Are there STILL people out there that buy this BS??

Global Warming is happening, and it will happen whether or not humans are here, that is fact.

Answer 1

Okay: the greenhouse effect exists independent of human activity, and the oscillation between ice ages is driven by three separate cycles called Milankovitch cycles, relating to the effect of the movement of the earth in its orbit upon global climate.  This much is true.

The problem is that human activity and its repercussions add additional greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, nitrogen oxides) which are throwing this natural variation out of whack, liberating naturally stored carbon from coal and oil, and threatening to raise global mean temperatures to a level unknown during the period of widespread human habitation. The problem is the speed of change, much faster than geological time, faster than most species and habitats can adapt.  As a species we have only been able to develop and expand agriculture during an 8-10,000-year period of relative climatic stability.

The whole ‘Scientists were wrong about the ice age in the 70s so climate change is just a fad’ argument is not supported by history. Relatively few reports came out in the 70s that we were due for a new ice age: 7 predicted cooling, 42 predicted warming – but the ‘new ice age’ story was picked up by the media and sensationalized. The difference with contemporary climate science is that for the last two decades we’ve had an international body of over  2500 scientific expert reviewers, over 800 contributing authors, and more than 450 lead authors  ( the IPCC ) dedicated to assessing the published scientific literature,  whose findings have been endorsed by the Scientific Academies of every major country without exception.

I can only quote George Monbiot on this:

“If you reject (human-caused) planetary warming, you should ask yourself the following questions:

    1.  Does the atmosphere contain carbon dioxide?

    2.  Does atmospheric carbon dioxide raise the average global temperature?

    3.  Will this influence be enhanced by the addition of more carbon dioxide?

    4.  Have human activities led to a net emission of carbon dioxide?

If you are able to answer ‘no’ to any of them, you should put yourself forward for a Nobel prize.  You will have turned science on its head.”

Answer 2

J.S.  -  Where exactly in the troposphere have we found and measured the greenhouse signature ?  Oh ... thats right , we haven't .  

edit :

J.S. -  Nice read ,  still theoretical  though and nothing about a clear measurable greenhouse signature . Greenhouse warming in the lower troposphere should match ground based warming . This would be clear evidence that recent warming was in-fact greenhouse forcing . The fact that the lower tropo DOSN'T  match means ... This Greenhouse signature can't be found . Do your own research , it's not my job to provide links for something so simple.

edit :

entelechy -  I have asked myself those questions , here are the objective answers I concluded .

1. Yes

2. No . You will not find one temperature reconstruction in which C02 raises Global temp .

3. No , Co2 has a diminishing effect .

4. Yes , insignificant .

I want my Nobel prize !

Answer 3

Well what I find most interesting is that the faithful are no longer trying to get any scientists that are not politically safe to research the subject. It seems that they have lost thousands of research scientists to the skeptics because as they researched the material they found no material that supported the consensus opinion and joined the skeptics in calling it a hoax or con. Most of them came down on the side that the whole AGW thing is a deliberate con for financial and political power.

Answer 4

I am

Answer 5

Has some new breaking scientific discovery been made since the IPCC report of 2007?  Or since the US Climate Change Science program put out their analysis in 2008?

If not, then why on earth would anyone change their mind and disagree with the scientific consensus on AGW?

Maybe you should consider reading some scientific literature on the subject. You might be surprised at what you find.

Answer 6

its all because of humans and stupid gas!

Answer 7

We don't know, but chances are the climate will go its own way no matter what we do.  

Answer 8

Well pollution on our planet today i believe is a magor contribution in the footprint of green house gas's which in turn is escalating the effects of global warming. If we ar'nt to blame than who or what is? . The damage has been done and will continue until gov'nts and industrys are ready to invoke policies and spend the needed money's to combat the problem. If humans no longer lived on this planet  the polution factor would not be an issue , but would global warming continue , I think not  .

Answer 9

Thankfully more and more scientist are coming around to the natural dynamics of the climate.

"Global Warming" is a political concept, not scientific.  Now reasonable scientist are being heard.  It won't be until we get the political scientist like Hansen out of his job and free up the research grants so everyone has a chance to study the climate, not just like minded thinkers.

Answer 10

Many people still believe the theory even though it remains unproven. Even the IPCC acknowledged in the science report that its an unproven theory, until the statement was removed by request from political and independant groups. (this is well documented)

Amazing as it seems many believe the theory without quiestion regardless of other non politically driven scientific organisations pointing out the man made co2 may have at best a minor effect.

Co2 never has been the main driver of the climate as certainly does not account currently for 22 degrees of warming - that directly contradicts our understanding of the greenhouse layer and its energy balance. Co2 is a weak greenhouse gas that reflects almost as much energy as it absorbs and accounts for only 0.052% of the greenhouse layer, of which 3% is from man (thats 0.00162% man made co2). The 95% of it thats a strong greenhouse gas is water vapour which drives the greenhouse layer, and thats natural.

There isnt even a warming of the troposphere (as predicted by the IPCC and common sense) to confirm co2 drives the atmosphere.

It is proposterous the attribrute ALL of the recent warming to man.

The IPCC will say this as its their objective to prove a link, not independently review the available data as the NIPCC does, hence why they get two very different answers.

Feedback and model projections are not based in fact as they are only un-validated assumptions.

Co2 is not a pollutant either as many mis informed people seem to think, its actually beneficial to the environment. Targetting co2 is a waste of resources when we could be targetting real pollutants.

The effects of warming are also generally beneficial so everyone should relax and hope it doesnt cool any further!

Answer 11

Everyone in the reality based community does.

Answer 12

It has nothin to do with the humans!!

Answer 13

No one with an iota of brains!!

Answer 14

Dr. Steven Hawking

Answer 15

Well it depends on how much you are willing to base your beliefs on a fundamentally un-falsifiable theory.

Since anthropogenic warming is for the most part a theory waiting to be proven, the emergence of a number of competing theories (also waiting to be proven) has given many people pause who originally falsely believed what they heard on the news to be not only the single theory of climate, but a statement of proven fact.

I wouldn't say that it is necessarily BS, but it certainly is not gospel, considering the variety of theories which seem to more closely match the data in a number of areas of the field (sun activity is more correlated to temperature than CO2 concentration is, for example)

J.S. - I don't have hours to sit around like you writing bibliographies on Yahoo! answers, but since you say you've never heard of even one peer reviewed contrarian study, I should point you to the Oregon Petition - a widely supported and peer reviewed collection of studies that periodically updates in response to the field and is quite contrarian.

Answer 16

I do

does this happen on its own?

http://therawfeed.com/pix/beijing_smog.j...

The least we can do is take this oppertunity to clean up our act.

Answer 17

Human caused Global Warming is a bunch of BS. In the 70's we thought we were all going to die from a massive global ice age. Now 30 years later we know that was a load of c**p. Global warming is happening, but humans are not the cause. The earth goes though cycles and there is nothing we can do about it. Politicians are using it to further their own agendas and get rich. Do you think Al Gore worries about his carbon footprint when flies in his private plan to give a speech about how you should buy carbon credits and drive a more efficient car. Give me a break, they are going to be the death to the american way of life.  

Answer 18

Everyone who has a basic science education, including some physics:

- Greenhouse gas warming contributes roughly 32 degrees Celsius to the current temperature of the earth.  (The relative temperatures of Mars and Venus confirmed this long before anyone started talking about global warming.)

http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oce...

- The concentration of CO2 has increased by about 100 ppm (i.e., from 280 ppm to 380 ppm). The first 50 ppm increase took place in about 200 years, from the start of the Industrial Revolution to around 1973; the next 50 ppm increase took place in about 33 years, from 1973 to 2006.

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphic...

- Since fossil carbon sources have different carbon isotopes than naturally circulating carbon in the carbon cycle, we can easily confurma nd measure through carbon isotope analysis that mankind's burning of fossil fules is the source of the additional carbon.  

- NASA has measured the radiation defecit to confirm experimentally that the earth is receiving more energy than it radiates.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2005/Imbal...

There is a lot of finer detail underneath it all, such as the additional contribution of black soot air pollution to global warming, so it's important to study the entire system to understand where we can and can't have an influence, but the high level facts are pretty darned simple.

There's no law against being uneducated though, so people can believe whatever they want.  

The whole discussion on global warming really doesn't matter unless or until we get China and India to stop building dirty coal power plants.  Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.  It may be most prudent to bring on the negative effects as fast as possible before world population gets any greater and before developing countries adopt a lifestyle ("standard of living") that the rest of us on the planet can't survive.

Edit -

aceking52 -  That's the beauty of denial isn't it, you simply say "no it isn't" and run... no need for any facts, because denial is the opposition and avoidance of rational, factual discussion.

The signature of global warming is confirmed in the paper "Earth's energy imbalance: Confirmation and implications" by Hansen et al., published in Science and available from the NASA GISS website:

http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2005...

It's explained in less technical terms here:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2005/Imbal...

If there is anything wrong with this paper that was missed by both the panel of authors and the panel of peer reviewers before it was published in 2005, you fail to offer a link to the contrary paper published in the meantime offering a different conclusion.

On a much broader scale, where are any valid peer-reviewed papers supporting the so-called skeptical contrarian view?  Isn't someone claiming that there is some kind of debate in science?  Exactly where is any evidence of that debate in science?  I can't find it.  Apparently no one on Yahoo Answers can produce any evidence of the supposed "other side" in any sort of scientific debate.

Here's a synopsis of carbon science from the American Institute of Physics if you'd like to educate yourself:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.h...

If you read my post carefully you can easily deduce that I am opposed to all current and proposed plans to control carbon dioxide while the largest sources China and India are not committed to limits, but I can't join ExxonMobil or the Republican Party in a disingenuous and uneducated emotional rant against valid science.

grovesmuk -

Thank you for encouraging me to re-check my facts.  The greenhouse effect warms the earth by 32 degrees Celsius (not 22 as I stated off-the-cuff... I've corrected my text and added links to reputable sources).  

Water vapor is a naturally occurring greenhouse gas and even though it is only about 0.3% of atmospheric mass (vs. about about 0.06% for CO2 as you point out) it accounts for the largest percentage of the overall greenhouse effect, between 36% and 66%:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=1...

So what's your point?  It's not as if scientists don't know and consider water vapor!

The Clausius-Clapeyron relation establishes that warmer air can hold more water vapor per unit volume. Current state-of-the-art climate models predict that increasing water vapor concentrations in warmer air will amplify the greenhouse effect created by anthropogenic greenhouse gases while maintaining nearly constant relative humidity. Thus water vapor acts as a positive feedback to the forcing provided by greenhouse gases such as CO2:

Held, Isaac M. & Soden, Brian J. (2006), "Robust Responses of the Hydrological Cycle to Global Warming", Journal of Climate

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/reference/bibli...

It is amazing that such small quantities of these trace gasses can produce so much warming, isn't it?  

Unfortunately you've offered no links to scientific evidence to dispute my assertion that CO2 has grown by about 1/3 from pre-industrial levels and you offer no links to reputable claims that CO2 is not a strong greenhouse gas.  

I've supported my position; it's not worth my time addressing random unsupported claims.  I respect your right to believe whatever you want.