Why are we trying to combat Global warming when we don't know what's going on for sure?

Question

To be fair we have absolutely no idea what effect we have on the planet. For every argument that arises about global warming there's a counter argument.

Some people say we've tipped the scale and are going to heat up the planet; some say we've tipped the scale and are going to cool the planet and others say we're just in a natural cycle.

The only thing that we are sure about is that the world around us is changing, so why don't we cut out all the stuff between and start preparing for some changes?

Answer 1

a few years ago i would have been aghast by your question, surely everyone knows that we are causing the global warming. so i was surprise when some of my family and mates were not totally convinced. i decided to collect the evidences to show them the errors of their ways. at first glance i had all the evidences i wanted from the books, the tv, the net and of course al gore film. until i was told that i was bias and should restart my research again and sieve out all the hype. after a few months i was thrown off my high horse.

i was convince that scientists were always right until i read and article that it was believe back in the 70's some scientists were convined that in 30 years time we will be in an ice age. some of the scientist that were pro manmade global warming have turn skeptics. plus thousands of other scientists have sign petitions voicing there doubts, 270 of them are climatologists.

the al gore polictical envirnomental film was withheld from going to schools around britain as part of an enviromental awareness program, it was brought to an high court in london where the judge found 9 major errors that had to be corrected to give a less alarmist view. a total of 35 errors were found in all.

usa and china have back out of thte kyoto agreement both of them are the world main polluters, mainly because of econimic reasons and probably some doubt because the ipcc can't give them an 100% answer.

another thing that made me wary is the fact that all these scientific groups are getting heavily funded to find evidences to prove that man and woman are the cause of global warming.

the worst of them all for me has to be the alarmists and the media.

i'm still fairly sure that the climate is getting warmer and like you i think we should be spending our money in preparing for that.

this is only my prediction in twenty years time manmade global warming will be a thing to laugh at because there will be a lot of other things far more worrying such as a ever growing dependancy on nuclear power to give us our energy and an increase dependancy of gm corps to feed us.

i probably will get shot down for my views but i'm glad to see others are not afraid to voice there thoughts. your independent thinking is refreshing

Answer 2

Because we're 90+% sure (and that's a very conservative estimate, most scientists would say 99% sure).

And we know that, if the scientists are right, and we do nothing, the consequences, both economic and human, will be severe.

Do you want to make a longshot bet that the scientists are wrong, when your well being depends on it?  The world's leaders have decided that's a really bad idea.

Sarge - If there'es a mountain of evidence that disproves it, how come these guys don't think so?

The National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Chemical Society, the American Meteorological Association, the American Geophysical Union, etc.  EVERY major scientific organization says global warming is real, and mostly caused by us.

Are they ignorant, stupid, or engaged in a giant conspiracy?

What you say just doesn't make sense.

Answer 3

John McCaslin has a display at the Smithsonian that shows proof that the Earth has been in a period of Global Cooling for the last few decades.  Heating and cooling of the Earth are natural occurring cycles.  Our presence here contributes, but does not cause warming or cooling.  

Eventually, no matter what we do or don't do, the sun will become a supernova and totally destroy the Earth.  Prior to that time it will slowly grow larger and hotter, thus warming the Earth to the point that no life will be able to be sustained.  

This does not mean that we should not just sit back and do nothing.  We should recycle and use less fossil fuels.  This will enrich our lives and the lives of our children.  But we do not need to panic over "Global Warming".

Answer 4

The political Left has used the tactics of denigration, implying stupidity or insanity, denial of jobs, denial of financial support, refusal to publish opposing views and other forms of coercion to keep silent or put down those who disagree with them.  The Stalinists did the same, except they took  it one step further and actually imprisoned or killed those who persisted in voicing opposing views.  I have seen comments from GW supporters [including politicians]  who would use those tactics against those who disagree with man-made GW.  To the True Believer in GW there is no debate possible and therefore pointless, therefore all who disagree are fools, insane, and should not be allowed to teach, do research or argue their position.  They should be forced to SHUT UP!  This is completely in keeping with their political and social ideas of freedom of speech.  They want the freedom to silence everyone they disagree with.  Typically Leftist.

Bob - you don't need a conspiracy when people who just happen to all think like the Left {Transnational Progressives} get together and agree.  Every scientific organisation mentioned is totally dependent on government money so they are going to tell the Leftist politicians exactly what is expected.

Sarge 927 - has some good points.  However CO2 is not a pollutant and does not contribute to smog.

Research the climate of the past 10,500 years since the Ice Age ended.  For about 7,500 years the climate was warmer than now. Every cooling cycle meant less rain and the deserts got bigger and the frozen tundras came further south.  About 3000 years ago there was a cool period followed by a period even warmer than now about the year 1000.  That warming had nothing to do with people.  At that time the Vikings had farms and colonies in Greenland and grew wheat there.  By 1200 the Little Ice Age was starting and the Vikings abandoned Greenland as too cold.  Today you cannot grow wheat in Greenland because it is too cold.  The Little Ice age lasted several centuries and the planet slowly began to warm up all on its own.

Man is responsible for less than 4% of all the CO2 in the air and that is a result of breathing as well as having a civilisation.  Each person exhales about 2.5 lbs of CO2 daily.  The GW hysterics actually have a radio ad saying to wash your T-shirts in cold water because it will save 10 lbs of CO2 from being produced during the life of the T-shirt, the same as breathing for 4 days.  

Even if humanity died tomorrow the planet would still have climate change as long as it exists.  We do need to become more efficient in our use of energy and be cleaner and more efficient in production of energy, but not to the detriment of our civilization and standards of living.  Energy should not be more expensive just because it's "green".  Prices should be based on a free market, supply and demand, not on some laws passed to give the Left power, control and taxes.

Yes, we should be preparing for the changes in climate rather than wasting millions trying to stop the tide.  Dikes can be built around areas we do not want to abandon to coastal flooding and construction can be forbidden in areas where sea levels will rise.  Places can be prepared for people to go to live as the sea inches higher.  Rising at even an inch per year gives everyone time to walk away, so no one will be suddenly forced to learn to swim.  Supplies can be prepared for those who each year will have to relocate.

There are those environmentalist types who regard all change as bad and any man-made change as unmitigated evil and disaster.  Consider the positions of the loudest environmental groups, PETA, Sierra Club, ZPG, organics and vegans and look at which political party they run with.  Again the Left.

Yes, the Earth is undergoing climate change and is getting warmer.  Warmer means more plants and animals due to expanded habitat, wetter deserts and warmer northern regions.  The debate is about how much is natural and whether it is worth spending billions and destroying civilization in a futile attempt to stop it.

Answer 5

Its all a load of nonsense designed to panic people, raising taxes at the same time and to divert peoples attention away from the high prices we pay for such a useless government.

I remember (not very long ago) that we were heading for a major ice age.

Science is only MAN'S BEST GUESS.

Answer 6

Most of the scientists who've studied this are convinced that we're 90% sure that GW is real.

And no - we don't know everything there is to know about it.

But the reason that a lot of people put forth for taking action now is that this is a huge problem - and the expected damages that it could cause are just as huge.

And because all too much of the energy that the industrial world uses comes from fossil fuels -- meaning it produces the greenhouse gas CO2 - fixing the problem is going to be

(A) SLOW

and (B ) COSTLY.

Since we've got a big, big problem, and since fixing it will take a long time, and since the results of not fixing it could be disastrous, a lot of the experts are saying we need to start acting to solve the problem now - before it gets any worse than it already is, and before really bad things start to happen.

One of the biggest risk of global climate change, the scientists are saying, is that a warming world will go past certain "tipping points."

Tipping points are places where something major will snap in the natural world, and climate change will accelerate --- will go into overdrive, until it becomes almost uncontrollable.

One possible "tipping point," for example, concerns the melting of Arctic sea ice during the summer.  The Arctic sea ice floats, and if all of it melts, it won't raise sea levels by very much - that's not the risk.  

But the Arctic sea ice is mostly white, meaning it reflects the sun's rays back into space.  And the more of this ice that melts, the more it will expose dark blue (or green, etc.) ocean water beneath.  

And because it's darker, the exposed ocean water will absorb the sun's rays instead of reflecting them the way it does now.   So -- what?  So - the Arctic ocean will absorb much more heat than it does now, and that heat will speed up the heating of the planet.  

Meaning that the human race will have a lot less time than we've been planning on to change our ways, so as to head off really dangerous climate change.

Another possible "tipping point" in the climate system concerns the melting of the permafrost in Alaska and Siberia.

Alaska and parts of Siberia are heating up much more quickly than many other places on earth, already - right?

And the permafrost in these places in many cases covers up swamps, with long-frozen but dead vegetation lying below the surface of these swamps.  

Let the permafrost melt, and the dead vegetation in the underlying swamps will probably start to rot - giving off methane.  Methane unfortunately is about 20 times more effective as a "greenhouse" gas than CO2 is.

So if we melt a lot of the permafrost -- and some of it is melting right now -- we run the risk of having the underlying swamps release a huge slug of added methane into the atmosphere -- which will accelerate global climate change enormously.

A third possible "tipping point" has to do with the melting of the glaciers of Greenland and Western Antarctica.  

If all of these glaciers melt, the scientists expect the added water flowing into the oceans will raise ocean levels worldwide by up to 20 feet - a disaster for low-lying coastal areas, like much of Bengaladesh (Pop. around 140 million) and a catastrophe for such big coastal cities Miami, New Orleans, Los Angeles, New York, London and so on.

What's the good news about the Greenland glaciers?

Well, the good news is that they aren't melting all that fast, and the West Antarctica glaciers have been melting even slower.   That means we're not expected to see more than about a meter (3 feet) of sea level rise before 2100.

What's the bad news about the Greenland glaciers?

The bad news is that the rate of their melting is speeding up.  And worse, it looks like melt water from the surface of these glaciers is trickling down through holes in the ice -- called moulins -- and creating a sheet of water along the base of the glaciers, where they rest on rocks.

The results?  Huge Greenland glaciers like the Jacobshavn glacier are speeding up as they slide along the rocks towards the ocean.  

Meaning they're now dumping their meltwater into the ocean much faster than they were just 10 years ago.

Meaning that some scientists are now afraid of our reaching an absurdly dangerous "tipping point"  -- the tipping point where Greenland ice starts sliding into the sea at a literally unstoppable rate.  

And where we get a rise in the worldwide ocean levels of 10 feet or more in the next 100 years -- not between 1 foot and 3 feet.  

Meaning that we end up having to protect (or evacuate) places like London, New York, Los Angeles and Miami really, really fast.

The danger of our reaching "tipping points" and seeing the global warming process go hyper, way out of control, is the main reason that many of the climate scientists are saying we need to take action of the issue as soon as possible.

Answer 7

Sarge should explain it to the polar bears and the rest of the web of life that depends on polar ice caps to help distribute the solar energy from the sun.

Bob I applaud your efforts but the GW category has alot of psuedo-scientists hanging out posting nonsense. I know and you know I know the truth. The damage done by the Bush43 administration to scientific truth and scientific integrity will take years if not decades to repair.

If the deniers won't trust the experts (who have devoted a lifetime to studying the atmosphere its history and its physics) or even give them the benefit of the doubt based on a conservative approach to difficult Questions, maybe we deserve the full consequences of our stupidity. I won't be around to watch them suffer, but their kids and grandkids will!

Maybe the deniers could  care less what happens anyway bec, hey they think the man-made Apocalypse is coming! LOL3X. How Ironic?

I love this quote from Sir Francis Bacon about "Why Read"... thought you might like it too.

"Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider."

...found it while reading, "How to Read and Why" - Harold Bloom

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”

In which camp are you?, & lastly,

Answer 8

prevention is the best cure.. and it's true that the earth has never had so much co2 as it does now.. also whats wrong if we try to prevent somethign disastrous that could happen.. better safe than sorry right?

Answer 9

Humans are not the biggest reason for global warming, we have only contributed to it.

Prime examples of this is the organisms prior to our existance, larger creatures lived and roamed the earth some 100 million years ago, oxygen levels were at there peak and over millions of  years oxygen has been depleting, creatures needed huge diaphrams to process these oxygen levels hence there enormous sizes as oxygen has been depleting so has organism sizes.

PLANTING TREES IS THE ONLY WAY TO REVERSE THIS!!! if people say planting trees wont help thats totally utter bullshit!!! its a chain effect that affects everything from our ozone layer, climate conditions, magnetic field to the organisms that exist here.

Answer 10

Because we need to be prepared, if it is us and we say its natural and leave it there, we could cause alot of damage,also we could be aiding the affect of the earth heating up on its own.

Answer 11

Some of us do know what's going on, the climate is going to cool very rapidly over the next 30 years, there will be global food shortages, there will probably not be enough energy for many nations to comfortably endure the severe winters that will follow. There is however a window of time to model and prepare for this but nations are being mislead by idiots, refusing to believe in history.

That is the worse case scenario.

.

.

Answer 12

For 3 main reasons.

1) Almost all scientific experts agree that humans are the primary cause of the current warming and it will have very bad consequences if we don't stop it soon.

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

2) Even if they're wrong, it's possible that they're right.  Preparing for the worst case scenario is just the smart thing to do.  That's why people buy auto/home/life insurance, for example.  Your house probably won't burn down, but you buy the insurance because if it does and you're not prepared, you're screwed!

3) Fossil fuels are a non-renewable and limited resource anyway.  We don't know exactly when we'll reach Peak Oil, but we know it will happen sooner rather than later.  Eventually we're going to have to stop using fossil fuels, and the sooner we prepare for this, the easier the transition will be, and the longer our oil supplies will last.

Answer 13

we know what's  is going on with are atmespher. if we dont help up with cleaning up are world it will end very soon.

Answer 14

The first poster is wrong.  There is a mountain of verified scientific evidence that disproves global warming.  The bottom line is we really don't know what's happening, and even if we did there's no way to know with 100% certainty what to do about it -- if anything COULD be done about it.  That being said, however, the pro-global warming crowd is pushing a lot of incentives that make sense, like reducing carbon emissions (may not do a thing for global warming, but it'll reduce smog in more densely populated areas) and finding alternative fuel sources (we can't live on petroleum products forever, and we don't want to because the prices will continue to go up).  Yes, it makes more sense to simply start preparing for change, but one group is trying to whip everyone up into a panic -- that's one reason why I don't give any creedence to those who claim global warming is real.

Answer 15

And if I told you I'd just as soon go back to caveman living?  Actually, I would cause I know billions of polluters will never change in time and there will be world wars and probably everyone will die.  It's a promise.

Answer 16

Scientists can't ever PROVE anything.  You work on statistics.  Why should the FDA pull a drug from the market just because someone thinks it might be unsafe?  Shouldn't they demand full proof and understanding first?

Scientifically, there is very little debate about global warming.  Politicians can say what they want.

Answer 17

If 90% of the homes in your neighborhood have been robbed over the past 10 years, would you put stronger locks on your doors?  Even though you don't know for sure if your house would be robbed?

Of course you would.  And despite the misinformation you've apparently read, legitimate (i.e. not funded by partisan groups on either side) climate scientists from all over the world are about 90% certain that human activity has been responsible for most (> 70%) of the warming during the last half of the 20th century.  And if the warming continues, as expected, there will be some consequences that are a lot easier (and cheaper) to address now than after they happen (e.g. buying locks after being robbed doesn't help much).

Sarge - assertions mean little.  If there are "mountains" of scientific data proving AGW is wrong, then please link to some scientific journal articles that present that evidence.

Answer 18

very good question. Scientist are now 99% sure but only with  computer generated model. The North Pole Ice that had melted in 07 is actually back and thicker just like Al Gore's head which is actually believed to be a complete solid block of pure bone

Answer 19

What is the point in ruining the planet with pollution which may actually cause global warming too?

Why make two problems worse than they need to be?

If we can minimize the change then we don't have to prepare for anything.

Answer 20

We do know what's going on, it's the sun: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?F... http://solar-center.stanford.edu/images/...