Why in the past years every one is worried about global warming?

Question

well...... its not going to happen for a loooooooooooooonnnnnnnggggggggggg time right ?

Answer 1

Hope this helps

Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess

By PATRICK MICHAELS

April 18, 2008; Page A17

President George W. Bush has just announced his goal to stabilize greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025. To get there, he proposes new fuel-economy standards for autos, and lower emissions from power plants built in the next 10 to 15 years.

Pending legislation in the Senate from Joe Lieberman and John Warner would cut emissions even further – by 66% by 2050. No one has a clue how to do this. Because there is no substitute technology to achieve these massive reductions, we'll just have to get by with less energy.

[Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess]

Getty Images

Disko Bay, Greenland: Temperatures on the island are no warmer than they were in the mid-20th century.

Compared to a year ago, gasoline consumption has dropped only 0.5% at current prices. So imagine how expensive it would be to reduce overall emissions by 66%.

The earth's paltry warming trend, 0.31 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the mid-1970s, isn't enough to scare people into poverty. And even that 0.31 degree figure is suspect.

For years, records from surface thermometers showed a global warming trend beginning in the late 1970s. But temperatures sensed by satellites and weather balloons displayed no concurrent warming.

These records have been revised a number of times, and I examined the two major revisions of these three records. They are the surface record from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the satellite-sensed temperatures originally published by University of Alabama's John Christy, and the weather-balloon records originally published by James Angell of the U.S. Commerce Department.

The two revisions of the IPCC surface record each successively lowered temperatures in the 1950s and the 1960s. The result? Obviously more warming – from largely the same data.

The balloon temperatures got a similar treatment. While these originally showed no warming since the late 1970s, inclusion of all the data beginning in 1958 resulted in a slight warming trend. In 2003, some tropical balloon data, largely from poor countries, were removed because their records seemed to vary too much from year to year. This change also resulted in an increased warming trend. Another check for quality control in 2005 created further warming, doubling the initial overall rate.

Then it was discovered that our orbiting satellites have a few faults. The sensors don't last very long and are continually being supplanted by replacement orbiters. The instruments are calibrated against each other, so if one is off, so is the whole record. Frank Wentz, a consulting atmospheric scientist from California, discovered that the satellites also drift a bit in their orbits, which induces additional bias in their readings. The net result? A warming trend appears where before there was none.

There have been six major revisions in the warming figures in recent years, all in the same direction. So it's like flipping a coin six times and getting tails each time. The chance of that occurring is 0.016, or less than one in 50. That doesn't mean that these revisions are all hooey, but the probability that they would all go in one direction on the merits is pretty darned small.

The removal of weather-balloon data because poor nations don't do a good job of minding their weather instruments deserves more investigation, which is precisely what University of Guelph economist Ross McKitrick and I did. Last year we published our results in the Journal of Geophysical Research, showing that "non-climatic" effects in land-surface temperatures – GDP per capita, among other things – exert a significant influence on the data. For example, weather stations are supposed to be a standard white color. If they darken from lack of maintenance, temperatures read higher than they actually are. After adjusting for such effects, as much as half of the warming in the U.N.'s land-based record vanishes. Because about 70% of earth's surface is water, this could mean a reduction of as much as 15% in the global warming trend.

Another interesting thing happens to the U.N.'s data when it's adjusted for the non-climatic factors. The frequency of very warm months is lowered, to the point at which it matches the satellite data, which show fewer very hot months. That's a pretty good sign that there are fundamental problems with the surface temperature history. At any rate, our findings have not been incorporated into the IPCC's history, and they probably never will be.

The fear of a sudden loss of ice from Greenland also makes a lot of news. A year ago, radio and television were ablaze with the discovery of "Warming Island," a piece of land thought to be part of Greenland. But when the ice receded in the last few years, it turned out that there was open water. Hence Warming Island, which some said hadn't been uncovered for thousands of years. CNN, ABC and the BBC made field trips to the island.

But every climatologist must know that Greenland's last decade was no warmer than several decades in the early and mid-20th century. In fact, the period from 1970-1995 was the coldest one since the late 19th century, meaning that Greenland's ice anomalously expanded right about the time climate change scientists decided to look at it.

Warming Island has a very distinctive shape, and it lies off of Carlsbad Fjord, in eastern Greenland. My colleague Chip Knappenberger found an inconvenient book, "Arctic Riviera," published in 1957 (near the end of the previous warm period) by aerial photographer Ernst Hofer. Hofer did reconnaissance for expeditions and was surprised by how pleasant the summers had become. There's a map in his book: It shows Warming Island.

The mechanism for the Greenland disaster is that summer warming creates rivers, called moulins, that descend into the ice cap, lubricating a rapid collapse and raising sea levels by 20 feet in the next 90 years. In Al Gore's book, "An Inconvenient Truth," there's a wonderful picture of a moulin on page 193, with the text stating "These photographs from Greenland illustrate some of the dramatic changes now happening on the ice there."

Really? There's a photograph in the journal "Arctic," published in 1953 by R.H. Katz, captioned "River disappearing in 40-foot deep gorge," on Greenland's Adolf Hoels Glacier. It's all there in the open literature, but apparently that's too inconvenient to bring up. Greenland didn't shed its ice then. There was no acceleration of the rise in sea level.

Finally, no one seems to want to discuss that for millennia after the end of the last ice age, the Eurasian arctic was several degrees warmer in summer (when ice melts) than it is now. We know this because trees are buried in areas that are now too cold to support them. Back then, the forest extended all the way to the Arctic Ocean, which is now completely surrounded by tundra. If it was warmer for such a long period, why didn't Greenland shed its ice?

This prompts the ultimate question: Why is the news on global warming always bad? Perhaps because there's little incentive to look at things the other way. If you do, you're liable to be pilloried by your colleagues. If global warming isn't such a threat, who needs all that funding? Who needs the army of policy wonks crawling around the world with bold plans to stop climate change?

But as we face the threat of massive energy taxes – raised by perceptions of increasing rates of warming and the sudden loss of Greenland's ice – we should be talking about reality.

Mr. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and professor of environmental sciences at University of Virginia.

Answer 2

this is now a problem we cant ignore, we have to act now! the future of this world is in our hands!

notice the changes! here in south florida its supposed to be spring and it s like super cold 50-60 degrees farentheit and here is usually 76-90 degrees.

its now wen we have to do soemthing or else tomorrow might never come.

Answer 3

yup...well probably be dead by the time it starts happening anyways...and we really can't do anyhting to stop it so just stop worrying about it

Answer 4

There have been over 30 years of research on global warming. My friends and I were talking about it around 1975.  It has taken this long for it to take root in the public consciousness.  The same can be said for environmental problems in general.

In the last few years, as we all know, there has been much more media attention to global warming, including Al Gore's movie.  A concerted campaign is underway to make people more aware of it.

And of course it has become something of a bandwagon with being green now politically correct.  And sure, some try to capitalize on the trend.  And we have the phenomena of "green washing", where even the heaviest polluting industries want to be seen as concerned.  Which is not to say that some of them aren't.

This may annoy some, but it is a big improvement from 30 years ago, when not many people understood that we are endangering the ecosystems of the earth.  Man cannot survive, seperate from those ecosystems.

We and everything else in nature are interdependent  parts of an interconnected web.  

Understanding that basic concept goes a long way toward understanding our responsibility, as individuals and groups and as a species, both to ourselves and the rest of life on earth.



As for Rockpile's comments about Al Gore:

Skeptic argument:

Al Gore got it wrong.

"An Inconvenient Truth was criticised by a high court judge who highlighted "nine scientific errors":

"The film claimed low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls "are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming" but there was no evidence of any evacuation

It spoke of global warming "shutting down the ocean conveyor". The judge said according to the IPCC, it was "very unlikely"

Gore claimed two graphs plotting C02 and temperature showed "an exact fit". The judge said "the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts"

Gore said the disappearance of snow on Mt Kilimanjaro was attributable to humans. The judge said that could not be established

The drying of Lake Chad was used as an example of global warming. The judge said: "It is apparently considered to be more likely to result from ... population increase, over-grazing and regional climate variability"

Gore ascribed Hurricane Katrina to global warming, but there was "insufficient evidence to show that"

Gore referred to a study showing polar bears that drowned. The judge said "the only scientific study indicates four polar bears recently drowned because of a storm"

The film said that coral reefs were bleaching because of global warming. The judge said separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing and pollution, was difficult

The film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future. The judge ruled that this was "distinctly alarmist"

Source: The Guardian

Answer

"What the science says...

"It's worth pointing out that Al Gore is a politician, not a climate scientist. Debunking Gore does not disprove anthropogenic global warming. Nevertheless, it is instructive to look at the purported errors in An Inconvenient Truth as it reveals a lot about climate science and the approach of his critics."

What Al got right

"Retreating Himalayan Glaciers

Contrary to James Taylor's article, the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate never said growing glaciers are "confounding global warming alarmists" - that's a quote from the Heartland Institute website written by... James Taylor. He's actually quoting himself and attributing it to the AMS! To put the Himalayas in context, the original AMS study is not refuting global warming but observing anomalous behaviour in a particular region, the Karakoram mountains. This region has shown short term glacier growth in contrast to the long term, widespread glacier retreat throughout the rest of the Himalayas due to feedback processes associated with monsoon season. Overall, Himalayan glaciers are retreating - satellite measurements have observed "an overall deglaciation of 21%" from 1962 to 2007. In essence, the Karakoram glaciers are the exception that proves the rule."

Greenland gaining ice

"Re Greenland, a big clue is the study's title: Recent Ice-Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland. The study finds ice mass in the interior due to heavier snowfall - an expected side-effect of global warming - and doesn't factor in all the melting that occurs at the edges of the ice sheet. Overall, Greenland is losing ice according to satellite measurements."

Antartica cooling and gaining ice

"Antarctic cooling is a uniquely regional phenomenon. The original study observed regional cooling in east Antarctica. The hole in the ozone layer above the Pole causes increased circular winds around the continent preventing warmer air from reaching eastern Antarctica and the Antarctic plateau. The flip side of this is the Antarctic Peninsula has "experienced some of the fastest warming on Earth, nearly 3°C over the last half-century". While East Antartica is gaining ice, Antartica is overall losing ice. This is mostly due to melting in West Antarctica which recently had the largest melting observed by satellites in the last 30 years."

Hurricanes

"The dispute isn't that global warming is causing more hurricanes but that it's increasing their severity and longevity."

What Al got wrong

Mount Kilimanjaro

"Indeed deforestation seems to be causing Mount Kilimanjaro's shrinking glacier so Gore got this wrong. In his defence, the study by Philip Mote came out after Gore's film was made. But Mote puts it in perspective: "The fact that the loss of ice on Mount Kilimanjaro cannot be used as proof of global warming does not mean that the Earth is not warming. There is ample and conclusive evidence that Earth's average temperature has increased in the past 100 years, and the decline of mid- and high-latitude glaciers is a major piece of evidence."

Dr Thompson's thermometer

"Al Gore refers to a graph of temperature, attributing it to Dr Thompson . The graph is actually a combination of Mann's hockey stick (Mann 1998) and CRU's surface measurements (Jones 1999). However, the essential point that temperatures are greater now than during the Medieval Warm Period is correct and confirmed by multiple proxy reconstructions."

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Answer 5

The Earth's climate changes in response to external forcing, including variations in its orbit around the Sun (orbital forcing),[14][15][16], changes in solar luminosity, volcanic eruptions,[17] and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. The detailed causes of the recent warming remain an active field of research, but the scientific consensus[18][19] is that the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases due to human activity caused most of the warming observed since the start of the industrial era. This attribution is clearest for the most recent 50 years, for which the most detailed data are available. Some other hypotheses departing from the consensus view have been suggested to explain most of the temperature increase. One such hypothesis proposes that warming may be the result of variations in solar activity.[20][21][22]

None of the effects of forcing are instantaneous. The thermal inertia of the Earth's oceans and slow responses of other indirect effects mean that the Earth's current climate is not in equilibrium with the forcing imposed. Climate commitment studies indicate that even if greenhouse gases were stabilized at 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) would still occur.[23]

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere

    Main articles: Greenhouse gas and Greenhouse effect

The greenhouse effect was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824 and was first investigated quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896. It is the process by which absorption and emission of infrared radiation by atmospheric gases warm a planet's lower atmosphere and surface.

Existence of the greenhouse effect as such is not disputed. Naturally occurring greenhouse gases have a mean warming effect of about 33 °C (59 °F), without which Earth would be uninhabitable.[24][25] On Earth, the major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect (not including clouds); carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26%; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9%; and ozone, which causes 3–7%.[26][27] The issue is how the strength of the greenhouse effect changes when human activity increases the atmospheric concentrations of some greenhouse gases.

Human activity since the industrial revolution has increased the concentration of various greenhouse gases, leading to increased radiative forcing from CO2, methane, tropospheric ozone, CFCs and nitrous oxide. Molecule for molecule, methane is a more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but its concentration is much smaller so that its total radiative forcing is only about a fourth of that from carbon dioxide. Some other naturally occurring gases contribute very small fractions of the greenhouse effect; one of these, nitrous oxide (N2O), is increasing in concentration owing to human activity such as agriculture. The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and CH4 have increased by 31% and 149% respectively since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the mid-1700s. These levels are considerably higher than at any time during the last 650,000 years, the period for which reliable data has been extracted from ice cores.[28] From less direct geological evidence it is believed that CO2 values this high were last attained 20 million years ago.[29] Fossil fuel burning has produced about three-quarters of the increase in CO2 from human activity over the past 20 years. Most of the rest is due to land-use change, in particular deforestation.[30]

Recent increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). The monthly CO2 measurements display small seasonal oscillations in an overall yearly uptrend; each year's maximum is reached during the Northern Hemisphere's late spring, and declines during the Northern Hemisphere growing season as plants remove some CO2 from the atmosphere.

Recent increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). The monthly CO2 measurements display small seasonal oscillations in an overall yearly uptrend; each year's maximum is reached during the Northern Hemisphere's late spring, and declines during the Northern Hemisphere growing season as plants remove some CO2 from the atmosphere.

The present atmospheric concentration of CO2 is about 385 parts per million (ppm) by volume.[31] Future CO2 levels are expected to rise due to ongoing burning of fossil fuels and land-use change. The rate of rise will depend on uncertain economic, sociological, technological, and natural developments, but may be ultimately limited by the availability of fossil fuels. The IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios gives a wide range of future CO2 scenarios, ranging from 541 to 970 ppm by the year 2100.[32] Fossil fuel reserves are sufficient to reach this level and continue emissions past 2100, if coal, tar sands or methane clathrates are extensively used.Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-twentieth century and its projected continuation.

The average global air temperature near the Earth's surface increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the hundred years ending in 2005.[1] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations"[1] via the greenhouse effect. Natural phenomena such as solar variation combined with volcanoes probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 and a small cooling effect from 1950 onward.[2][3] These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least thirty scientific societies and academies of science,[4] including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.[5][6][7] While individual scientists have voiced disagreement with some findings of the IPCC,[8] the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change agree with the IPCC's main conclusions.[9][10]

Climate model projections summarized by the IPCC indicate that average global surface temperature will likely rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century.[1] The range of values results from the use of differing scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions as well as models with differing climate sensitivity. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming and sea level rise are expected to continue for more than a thousand years even if greenhouse gas levels are stabilized. The delay in reaching equilibrium is a result of the large heat capacity of the oceans.[1]

Increasing global temperature will cause sea level to rise, and is expected to increase the intensity of extreme weather events and to change the amount and pattern of precipitation. Other effects of global warming include changes in agricultural yields, trade routes, glacier retreat, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors.

Remaining scientific uncertainties include the amount of warming expected in the future, and how warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe. Most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there is ongoing political and public debate worldwide regarding what, if any, action should be taken to reduce or reverse future warming or to adapt to its expected consequences.

Answer 6

Sheep following Al Gore.

Answer 7

shut up stupid 2012 people!

SO STUPID...

WELL ACTUALLY, GLOBAL WARMING IS SPEEDING UP FASTER THAN PREDICTED, CAUSING A CHAIN EFFECT...... BECAUSE OF HUMANS USING FOSSIL FUELS AND WARMING THE EARTH,THE OCEAN  IS GETTING WARMER TOO, MELTING AWAY FROZEN METHANE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN...THAT METHANE GETS TO THE SURFACE AND GOES INTO THE ATMOSPHERE...METHANE IS A HAZERDOUS GAS AND IS I THINK LIKE 7 TIMES WORSE THAT FOSSIL FUEL...

AND PLUS, IT WILL AFFECT OUR CHILDREN'S CHILDREN'S CHILDREN OR WHATEVER....

Answer 8

because earth might warm up more than 11 f and oceans might rise up more than 3 feet in 2012

Answer 9

Two things.

The data coming is has now proven beyond a reasonable doubt that it's real and mostly caused by us.

It's like a rock rolling downhill.  If you stop it when it first starts rolling, it's not too hard.  If you let it get going it rolls right over you.

Sure, we won't see big impacts for at least 20 years.  But it will take longer than that to make the changes needed to get way from our total dependence on fossil fuels.

Answer 10

AL Gore!  His book/movie the "inconvenient truth" "conveniently" a great deal of the facts wrong.  He has even admitted as much.  As for the assumption that "the vast majority" of scientists that humans are the cause of global warming, a good many scientists names are added to the list of those that agree because the institutions that they work for placed their names on "the list" and refuse to take them off.  More scientists are coming out everyday to disagree with the assumption that humans have anything to do with global warming.  Take a look at the list on Schnitt's web sight for a very extensive list of discussions and arguments.

Answer 11

Listen up all of you right wing evangelicals in disguise. If you had actually attended a real school instead of being home schooled on that evangelical BS, you would have the answers to all of your questions already. You see, you can pray all you want but the only thing that is gonna solve problems in this world is science and technology. So just let the overwhelming majority of scientists that agree that anthropogenic global warming is real solve the problem and you stop confusing the issue by believing right wing driven, jesus-camp sponsored groups like the Heartland Institute. Go back to reading your bible and being ignorant and let the real people (AKA, scientists) solve the problem. I can guarantee you, scientists will solve the problem faster than your "god" who is just about as real as ceiling cat, the flying-spaghetti monster and the invisible pink unicorn deity.

Answer 12

Ask Al "The Blimp" Gore.

Answer 13

well just because of the simple reason that peoples resources are not being sufficient enough

Answer 14

no, the world is going to end in 2012.

it kinda blows.

Answer 15

who knows? time flies

people who DON'T worry have gotta have brain problems

Answer 16

dude its hapening but dont listen to any end of the world things ok there just loons how belive the mians were right ok

Answer 17

Wrong. It's happening NOW. The  Ice Age happened a loooooooooooooopong time ago. It's a natural cycle of the earth but it just so happens were in the part of the cycle that's hot. Watch An Inconvenient Truth.

Answer 18

well people are worried because while global warning is coming but uit takes it time, temperature is changing through the years. In ney york it took a while to get winter because it felt like it was spring. Many animals are diying throught the years because of all the polution. So it's better to save earth and not kill it because we are the youngest specie in earth and people havent existed for a long time. People want to live more but fore what the people do the world is coming to an end. they said the world will end in 12/21/12 which is in december ,22, 2012, its probably not the end maybe a meteroite.

Answer 19

watch the news.signs everywhere.from glaciers melting to polar ice caps melting.people who think its all bs will be the first to whine and cry when things really happen.