Why is global warming happening?

Question

why do you think are plant is chaning so fast, do you think this is supposed to happen?

like it did millions of years ago when we had the first ice age do you think that it will happen once more or is this all happening because of humans and the way we run our lives?

do you think if we changed like we stopped factoires and if we walk instead of driving everwhere what would happen would the world really change? would people give up there car to walk or give up factoires that make thing people like? hat would change if everbody went one day with out driving our cars or would people die without them. why do you think people our so in love with there cars, its killing them and us and they cant even go a day without there cars or why cant the factires close would people die without the factoires

Answer 1

There is a great deal of hot air emanating from the democrats and most of our media.

Answer 2

Cars are like powered armor.  They protect you from other cars, and allow the tremendous feeling of control one has from charging from place to place with lots of mass and high speeds.

Factories are owned by corporations, which generally are for-profit and legally obligated to provide a return (money) for their shareholders.  If they just shut down, they could be sued.  In particular, the decision maker (CEO, factory manager) may be held personally liable, and be punished with a fine.  

The world generally operates on the assumptions of neo-classical economics, which are shown to be incorrect in a new book called "Environmental Endgame" by Nadeau

Answer 3

There has been so little of a change over the last 100 years.  And even that is such a small period of time to record.  No one knows for sure.  Global warming is a THEORY not a PROVEN FACT.

Ms. Lady, The pittsburgh area had record snow fall this year.  Maybe your side of the state just lucked out this year.  And how old are you, again...recording over short period of time.

Answer 4

Changing fast?  At best its changed just 0.7degs over the last 100 years.

So-called "Global Warming" isn't happening.  No one knows if it will be warmer or colder 5 years from now.

Don't be so gullible.

Answer 5

If global warming goes too far, the ice caps will melt and the entire world will be flooded into one gigantic ocean with no life other than a few creatures that can survive in extreme cold and deep water. Global warming is happening because of humans. Smoking, overusage of gas, too many unclean factories with no scrubbers, this all could destroy our beautiful planet. We are the only planet with life, water, and an oxygen rich atmosphere, and anyone that at least doesn't try to recycle is abusing this planet. It may not be trouble for today's generation, but any kids that you have are going to have to figure something out unless we act now. Plant a tree. Take a walk along the beach while picking up garbage. Recycle to prevent landfills. Use cleaner and less factories. *People can live without Cheesedoodles.

     Global warming kills a lot of our food. It can destroy fruits and vegetables, wheat, sugar, and meat with extremely hot and cold weather. It will kill all of our pets and all of the beautiful animals that make up this beautiful world. Trees will die. Every organism on the Earth will die. If you want to prevent global warming, act now.

Answer 6

Science Has Spoken:

Global Warming Is a Myth

by Arthur B. Robinson and Zachary W. Robinson

Copyright 1997 Dow Jones & Co., Inc.

Reprinted with permission of Dow Jones & Co., Inc.

The Wall Street Journal (December 4, 1997)

--------------------------------------...

Political leaders are gathered in Kyoto, Japan, working away on an international treaty to stop "global warming" by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The debate over how much to cut emissions has at times been heated--but the entire enterprise is futile or worse. For there is not a shred of persuasive evidence that humans have been responsible for increasing global temperatures. What's more, carbon dioxide emissions have actually been a boon for the environment.

The myth of "global warming" starts with an accurate observation: The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising. It is now about 360 parts per million, vs. 290 at the beginning of the 20th century, Reasonable estimates indicate that it may eventually rise as high as 600 parts per million. This rise probably results from human burning of coal, oil and natural gas, although this is not certain. Earth's oceans and land hold some 50 times as much carbon dioxide as is in the atmosphere, and movement between these reservoirs of carbon dioxide is poorly understood. The observed rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide does correspond with the time of human release and equals about half of the amount released.

Carbon dioxide, water, and a few other substances are "greenhouse gases." For reasons predictable from their physics and chemistry, they tend to admit more solar energy into the atmosphere than they allow to escape. Actually, things are not so simple as this, since these substances interact among themselves and with other aspects of the atmosphere in complex ways that are not well understood. Still, it was reasonable to hypothesize that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels might cause atmospheric temperatures to rise. Some people predicted "global warming," which has come to mean extreme greenhouse warming of the atmosphere leading to catastrophic environmental consequences.

Careful Tests

The global-warming hypothesis, however, is no longer tenable. Scientists have been able to test it carefully, and it does not hold up. During the past 50 years, as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen, scientists have made precise measurements of atmospheric temperature. These measurements have definitively shown that major atmospheric greenhouse warming of the atmosphere is not occurring and is unlikely ever to occur.

The temperature of the atmosphere fluctuates over a wide range, the result of solar activity and other influences. During the past 3,000 years, there have been five extended periods when it was distinctly warmer than today. One of the two coldest periods, known as the Little Ice Age, occurred 300 years ago. Atmospheric temperatures have been rising from that low for the past 300 years, but remain below the 3,000-year average.

Why are temperatures rising? The first chart nearby shows temperatures during the past 250 years, relative to the mean temperature for 1951-70. The same chart shows the length of the solar magnetic cycle during the same period. Close correlation between these two parameters--the shorter the solar cycle (and hence the more active the sun), the higher the temperature--demonstrates, as do other studies, that the gradual warming since the Little Ice Age and the large fluctuations during that warming have been caused by changes in solar activity.

The highest temperatures during this period occurred in about 1940. During the past 20 years, atmospheric temperatures have actually tended to go down, as shown in the second chart, based on very reliable satellite data, which have been confirmed by measurements from weather balloons.

Consider what this means for the global-warming hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts that global temperatures will rise significantly, indeed catastrophically, if atmospheric carbon dioxide rises. Most of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has occurred during the past 50 years, and the increase has continued during the past 20 years. Yet there has been no significant increase in atmospheric temperature during those 50 years, and during the 20 years with the highest carbon dioxide levels, temperatures have decreased.

In science, the ultimate test is the process of experiment. If a hypothesis fails the experimental test, it must be discarded. Therefore, the scientific method requires that the global warming hypothesis be rejected.

Why, then, is there continuing scientific interest in "global warming"? There is a field of inquiry in which scientists are using computers to try to predict the weather--even global weather over very long periods. But global weather is so complicated that current data and computer methods are insufficient to make such predictions. Although it is reasonable to hope that these methods will eventually become useful, for now computer climate models are very unreliable. The second chart shows predicted temperatures for the past 20 years, based on the computer models. It's not surprising that they should have turned out wrong--after all the weatherman still has difficulty predicting local weather even for a few days. Long-term global predictions are beyond current capabilities.

So we needn't worry about human use of hydrocarbons warming the Earth. We also needn't worry about environmental calamities, even if the current, natural warming trend continues: After all the Earth has been much warmer during the past 3,000 years without ill effects.

But we should worry about the effects of the hydrocarbon rationing being proposed at Kyoto. Hydrocarbon use has major environmental benefits. A great deal of research has shown that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide accelerate the growth rates of plants and also permit plants to grow in drier regions. Animal life, which depends upon plants, also increases.

Standing timber in the United States has already increased by 30% since 1950. There are now 60 tons of timber for every American. Tree-ring studies further confirm this spectacular increase in tree growth rates. It has also been found that mature Amazonian rain forests are increasing in biomass at about two tons per acre per year. A composite of 279 research studies predicts that overall plant growth rates will ultimately double as carbon dioxide increases.

Lush Environment

What mankind is doing is moving hydrocarbons from below ground and turning them into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with twice as much plant and animal life as that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the industrial revolution.

Hydrocarbons are needed to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe. This can eventually allow all human beings to live long, prosperous, healthy, productive lives. No other single technological factor is more important to the increase in the quality, length and quantity of human life than the continued, expanded and unrationed use of the Earth's hydrocarbons, of which we have proven reserves to last more than 1,000 years. Global warming is a myth. The reality is that global poverty and death would be the result of Kyoto's rationing of hydrocarbons.

Arthur Robinson and Zachary Robinson are chemists at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.

Answer 7

There are many basic scientific facts which can only be explained if the current global warming is being caused by an increased greenhouse effect due to carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere from humans burning fossil fuels.

For example, the planet is warming as much or more during the night than day.  If the warming were due to the Sun, the planet should warm a lot more during the day when the Sun has influence.  Greenhouse gases trap heat all the time, so they warm the planet regardless of time of day.  Another example is that the upper atmosphere is cooling because the greenhouse gases trap the heat in the lower atmosphere.  If warming were due to the Sun, it would be warming all layers of the atmosphere.

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

We know it's warming, and we've measured how much:

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science...

Scientists have a good idea how the Sun and the Earth's natural cycles and volcanoes and all those natural effects change the global climate, so they've gone back and checked to see if they could be responsible for the current global warming.  What they found is:

Over the past 30 years, all solar effects on the global climate have been in the direction of (slight) cooling, not warming.  This is during a very rapid period of global warming.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/62902...

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/pro...

A recent study concluded:

“the range of  [Northern Hemisphere]-temperature reconstructions and natural forcing histories…constrain the natural contribution to 20th century warming to be <0.2°C [less than one-third of the total warming].  Anthropogenic forcing must account for the difference between a small natural temperature signal and the observed warming in the late 20th century.”

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/104...

You can see this in the third graph here, where the dotted lines are just from natural causes, and the full lines are natural + human causes:

http://www.pnas.org/content/vol104/issue...

If that’s not enough to convince you the Sun isn’t responsible, consider the fact that no scientific study has ever attributed more than one-third of the warming over the past 30 years to the Sun, and most attribute just 0-10% to the Sun.

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

So the Sun certainly isn't a large factor in the current warming.  They've also looked at natural cycles, and found that we should be in the middle of a cooling period right now.

"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.'"

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

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ab...

So it's definitely not the Earth's natural cycles.  They looked at volcanoes, and found that

a) volcanoes cause more global cooling than warming, because the particles they emit block sunlight

b) humans emit over 150 times more CO2 than volcanoes annually

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man....

So it's certainly not due to volcanoes.  Then they looked at human greenhouse gas emissions.  We know how much atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased over the past 50 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna...

And we know from isotope ratios that this increase is due entirely to human emissions from burning fossil fuels.  We know how much of a greenhouse effect these gases like carbon dioxide have, and the increase we've seen is enough to have caused almost all of the warming we've seen over the past 30 years (about 80-90%).  You can see a model of the various factors over the past century here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Clima...

This is enough evidence to convince almost all climate scientists that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming.

Answer 8

Where?

It is the first day of Spring, yet the low in Sunny Southern California is 38 degrees.

Where is all of this warming?

The purported global warming has to change its name as does the minds of global warming enthusiasts.  They say its getting hotter..  When it is proven that it isn't getting hotter, they say, "Ahh, well we meant that the weather is changing.  That's what global warming REALLY means."

DUH!!!!!!!  Hasn't weather, climate and all of the above always changed?  AGAIN DUH!!!!!

Answer 9

I live in Southeastern Pennsylvania and when I was younger, the leaves would change drastically on the trees in autumn. It would get crisp and cold and it was my favorite season because I loves to watch the leaves change. We used to have heavy snowfall every year during the winter. I remember quite a few blizzards, and snowday after snowday because we couldn't get ourselves shoveled out. It was nice living in a place where you could see the seasons so distinctly changing in front of you all year long.

Now things are different here. Autumn is very warm... like a continuation of summer, and so the leaves don't change and bugs think it's spring and hatch unexpectedly, then die when it finally gets cold. The cold takes a while to come, but when it does, it's sudden, and it's still not like it used to be. This year we had about six inches of snow... not all together, either. Mostly, it was too hot to snow, so it just rained. Parts of February felt like a spring day. Blossoms bloomed, thinking it was spring, and then froze because temperatures rise and fall like crazy. Maybe the rest of you aren't feeling the effects of global warming, but people around here always talk about it, because we are living it. I'm envious to the people who still have weather that is characteristic of your region because we don't. I don't think I'll be living here after a while... I want to live in a place where I can see the seasons change and this isn't it anymore.

I think the planet is changing, and whether or not it's supposed to happen, it is. Fact: Humans have an impact on the earth. People are naive to think that we don't and that global warming is a myth. We polute, we chop down the rainforest, we kill animals, we put a hole in the ozone layer. Do you think these things will not negatively affect the planet? And now it is in the form of global warming. This has been an issue for decades and people ignore it because they are greedy and don't want to give up money.

If the factories changed their ways (they wouldn't even have to close, they would just have to cut down on gas emissions), it would cost them money that they don't want to give up. If people switched from gas to something more eco-friendly, gas companies would lose money and go bankrupt. And now that we're starting to use ethanol, farmers are growing corn instead of wheat, and wheat prices are up, so food prices are up. Plus, since corn is grown in the middle of the country and ethanol is needed mostly in the big cities of the atlantic and pacific coasts, ethanol is shipped via giant truck to the coasts... which is even worse for the environment.

The reason people won't change is because they don't want to lose money. It's sad but true.

Answer 10

haha.. Global warming is stupid! In the 70's they thought they were going to have another ice age! Its just the Earth's natural ways and the government's retarded for trying to scare us with it...

Answer 11

Define fast, decades, even centuries, and all for a typical warming and cooling cycle.

Answer 12

It isn't anymore. We just had the largest recorded change ever in the past year.... It was in the downward projection.

And billions of people would die without industrialization you idiot.