Without bashing religion or evolution do you believe in Global Warming & why or why not?

Question

Without bashing religion or evolution do you believe in Global Warming & why or why not?

Answer 1

The physics makes sense.  We know that people are emitting gigatons of CO2 every year (about 100 times more than a volcanic eruption).  We can now observe some of the effects that were predicted 15 years ago (earlier greening of hi latitudes and elevations, accelerated melting sea ice and glaciers, accelerated sea level rise, a significant and continuing warming trend (0.6C this century), and a consensus among scientist that study the phenomenon.  

I pasted some links to some highly creditable scientific sources below - the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), US EPA, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  The NAS just summarized everything in a very clear and easy to read bootlet to try to may it less confusing.

Answer 2

Globally many indications point clearly at global warming:

- Global temperatures are measured as rising.  There are many data sets to choose from, but they all show the rise.

- Glaciers and ice sheets are retreating at an accelerating rate.  In one glacier the rate has been shown to be 42X the fastest rate in the past 13,000 years.

- Sea levels are rising at accelerating rates.

- CO2 is measured at the highest level it has been for the past 600,000 years.  Mankind's contribution to that rise is measured at over 32%.  All past natural warmings correlate with atmospheric CO2 increase (as a contributing factor if not always the triggering one).  

- NASA has measured that the radiation of energy from the earth is less than what it's receiving from the sun.  It's not in equilibrium, so something is trapping that extra heat: CO2.  This has been called the "smoking gun" proof that greenhouse gas heating is occurring.

- Measuremenents of troposphere and stratosphere temperatures correspond with greenhouse gas theory.

I've also personally witnessed many changes that are consistent with global warming:

- glaciers retreating (many of the small ones in the Sierras are gone now)

- largemouth bass surviving in Lake Tahoe,

- pikas disappearing from the elevations that they inhabited in the 1970s,

- bristlecone pine seedlings advancing to higher elevations than they've inhabited for the past 4500 years.

- ski season arrives several weeks later and ends sooner than it did in the 70s and 80s

- Fall camping season lasts several weeks longer, and I now can go in the Spring as early as March

- mountain passes seem to be opening sooner and staying open later

- The once massive salmon runs in the Sacramento River have recently declined by over 90%, and unfavorable ocean conditions due to global warming is one of the contributory factors being investigated.

- snowpack levels have declined, causing water shortages.

- pine beetles are having a field day ni Sierra forests (although fire supression plays some role there).

- California wildfire season is much , much longer and more dangerous. We've already had a fire in Southern California, and it's not even Summer yet. The fires last Fall were incredibly widespread, intense, and destructive.

However, in my opinion the scientifically accurate indications of global warming are being misused to promote schemes that can't work.  It's so blatant that there has to be an agenda behind it.

Here's some of the evidence:

- We're told to focus on reduction of CO2 by developed nations, yet elementary school math shows that growth in the 80% of the world population not covered by all curent and proposed treaties (including growth in China and India) will easily wipe out all potential CO2 savings in the remaining 20%.  The failure of the current approach is measurable: measured CO2 levels have increased in spite of Kyoto.

- Each person has an impact on the carbon cycle, from cooking fires to heating homes to transportation, yet population growth is never discussed as a factor.

- Mankind's black carbon soot air pollution, such as Asia's "brown cloud", has been determined to have as much as 60% as much warming influence as CO2.  The removal of black soot takes effect almost immediately while CO2 remains a warming force in the air for hundreds to thousands of years.  

http://www.igsd.org/docs/BC%20Briefing%2...

Yet CO2 is the poster child problem we're told to fix, instead of the easily addressed and proven step of cutting air pollution.

- The IPCC reports claim that human breathing is a "closed loop" that we should not be concerned with, because that CO2 comes from the crops we eat, which pulled that CO2 out of the air.  

http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html

However, those crops require cropland and land use changes as human population skyrockets.  Clearly with 6.6 billion people to feed today there has been a huge carbon cycle impact since 1970 when we only had 3.7 billion people on the planet to feed, or 1900 when we had 1.5 billion.  Here again the topic of population is avoided, hidden under the disguise of "land use changes", and we're expected to miss or ignore the cause of those changes.

So if a substantial portion of the problem boils down to population growth, and our most effective way of taking a first step would be to reduce black soot air pollution, why is the IPCC focusing so much on CO2, which we can't remove from the air and for which all current proposals result in a global increase in emissions(!)?  How stupid could we be?

I can't help but notice that the IPCC is a United Nations organization, and that population growth and black soot emissions (heavy industry and cooking fires) would require the third world to participate in a solution.  In fact, addressing CO2 clearly requires third world participation as well, but we're told to pay no attention to the guaranteed continued global CO2 increase behind the curtain.  The situation would be laughable if the consequences of climate change weren't so deadly serious.

The bottom line: current CO2-only, developed nation only proposals would be a fool's errand to pursue.  Claiming current CO2 treaties and tax proposals would address the problem is a blatant lie, one which needs to be exposed before we can get serious about addressing the problem.  By giving people false hope at a high financial cost, the U.N.'s designed-to-fail proposals may be more dangerous than the original problem itself.  

We have a shared, global responsibility for creating it, and only a shared, global effort will stand any chance of addressing it.

This is not a CO2-only issue; the current U.N. proposals only delay the day when all nations globally will recognize and work on reducing their share of the problem.

The U.N. nations that are exempt from CO2 treaties will enjoy lower manufacturing costs and stronger economies, and the U.N. politicians representing those countries are probably from the wealthiest local families that will benefit the most.  

In the U.S. we implement a new tax instead, so politicians can hand out the money to special interests in exchange for payoffs ("campaign contributions").

Corruption knows no boundaries.

In my opinion it's a grave tactical mistake to fight the science.  Let's stop wasting time and energy picking nits on the science, and see if we can agree to fight the blatant attempts to profit from absurd plans to target CO2 first, in developed countries only.

Answer 3

h**l no! the earth changes- not to bring god into the pic or anything (oh wait- yes! i mean to!) but god put everything on our earth for us to use.  now people are talking about global cooling too! d**n democrats: (and environmentalists) - make up your mind

Answer 4

The Bush Aminstration issued a report two days ago (Thursday) saying it is true.

From the Executive Summary

"Several lines of evidence, including those outlined in the following sections, point to a strong human influence on climate. Although these individual lines of

evidence vary in their degrees of certainty, when considered together they provide a compelling and scientifically sound explanation of the changes to Earth’s climate."

There's lots of pages in there, with graphs and charts detail temperature changes, precipitation, ice caps, etc.

Answer 5

I am a christian, and I believe global warming is very much a problem in the world. The good lord gave us this earth, but it is our responsibility to take care of it. He never said anything about keeping it from all disaster, and if we continue treating it the way we do (POLLUTION), it is very likely that one day we will very much regret our choices in the past regarding mother nature.

Answer 6

I don't "believe" in it.  It's been scientifically proven.

This is science and what counts is the data, not people's intuition.

"I wasn’t convinced by a person or any interest group—it was the data that got me. I was utterly convinced of this connection between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. And I was convinced that if we didn’t do something about this, we would be in deep trouble.”

Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)

Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut

Here are two summaries of the mountain of peer reviewed data that convinced Admiral Truly and the vast majority of the scientific community, short and long.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Ima...

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report....

summarized at:

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report...

There's a lot less controversy about this is the real world than there is on Yahoo answers:

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/a...

And vastly less controversy in the scientific community than you might guess from the few skeptics talked about here:

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

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

EVERY major scientific organization has issued an official statement that this is real, and mostly caused by us.  The National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Association, etc.

Good websites for more info:

http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/f101.a...

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/sci...

http://www.realclimate.org

"climate science from climate scientists"

http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...

Answer 7

There  is currently no evidence that man has made any significant contribution to climate change.

Some interesting facts.

1. During most of the past 2,000 years, the temp has been about the same or higher. Currently, we are barely over the average for the last 2,000 years.

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index....

2. During the medieval warm period (820 – 1040 AD), Greenland supported farming. Those areas previously farmed are now covered in glaciers. Obviously the melting and reformation of glaciers is a cyclical occurrence.

3. The earth experienced a little ice age which ended around the late 1860's or so. This is about the time man started recording temperatures. This would be like measuring a lake depth after a severe drought, then worrying about it flooding as it rose to normal levels.

4. The earth has been warming for the last 10,000 years, since the last major glacier time period. Also, for most of the last 1 billion years, the earth had NO glaciers or ice coverage.

http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/i...

5. The AGW theory states that CO2 is the primary driver of temperature. They arrived at this idea because they did not know of anything else which could cause it. But during the 70's and during the current decade, temperatures dropped while CO2 continued to rise. This means that natural occurrences are driving temp, not CO2.

6. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation and sun spots provides a much better correlation to earths' temperature than CO2 levels ever have.

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/200...

7. Polar Bears are experiencing a population boom. Coke sales in the arctics are through the roof. Polar Bears have been around for thousands of years, and remember, we are only at the average for the last 2,000 years. They lived through all the previously warmer climates.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/...

8. The glaciers have been melting now for over 10,000 years. the current rate of melting is similar to previous melting.

9. There is no consensus on AGW. This was a lie that has been propagated by the media.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckt...

10. Yes we emit CO2 into the atmosphere and it is a greenhouse gas, but, we only contribute about .28% of all the greenhouse effect. Water vapor makes up about 95% of the greenhouse effect. CO2 and other trace gases round out the greenhouse gases at about 5% for all of them. Of that 5%, only 3% is CO2, and most of that is natural. Again, our contribution to the greenhouse effect is a paltry .28%

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenh...

11. The spread of disease is not attributed mainly to temperature. If this were the case, Florida would be a giant festering disease ridden cesspool. Economic standing is the primary determining factor in the spread of disease. Poor cultures can not fight the disease or eradicate the pests like more successful nations.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12077886...

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.h...

12. Natural climate disasters (hurricanes, cyclones, etc) have never been scientifically linked to global warming (whether natural or man made).

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppa...

http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?i...

Answer 8

First of all Scooter, great picture there.  You made me smile right off the bat.

I'm not overtly religious, I do believe that religion and the theory of evolution can coexist, and yes, I believe human activities are causing what you refer to as global warming.  Lately I've come to call it global climate change, because that better describes the phenomenon.

Why do I believe?

To believe or disbelieve, I had to understand.  I relearned the basics of atmosphere and climate.  I began to look at sites, and was floored by the information I found on the university level alone. I was stunned that the U.S. had so many different agencies on task to research the subject, and impressed by the body of knowledge produced by the universities, the U.S. government, the United Nations and other entities.  

Based on what I learned, the fact that it was corroborated by so many reputable sites, and the fact that it is vastly apparent that we haven't taken very good care of a perfectly wonderful planet, I began to accept the theory as fact, and to act accordingly.  It is an adjustment I'm still struggling with, but I'll get there.

Answer 9

no

the only reason global warming is so popular is because it's a HUGE money maker. they guilt trip you "buy this new refridgerator  or you're not doing your part"

sure parts of the earth are getting warmer, but also some parts of the world are getting colder.

remember in the '80s the huge crisis was global COOLING now it's global warming, I think in a few years it'll go back to normal again

so no, I wouldn't say I beleived in global warming, just the earth going through its normal phases.

Answer 10

Global warming is happening, but it's a natural cycle of the Earth.  It's been going on since the Earth started and will continue even after we're stupid enough to stop all industries and "go green" meaning, paying more for products that are just as harmful to the environment as before.  

Unfortunatley we're always going the be at the mercy of the media and politicians whose sole purpose it seems is to find new ways to separate us from our money.  I have no doubt that the US economy is in the toilet because of self-fulfilling prophesies.  "The economy might take a nose dive this summer."  And people freak out and do stuff that causes the economy to tank and the media goes, "See?  We told ya!"  "Wow, this is it, folks, we're in for a rough ride!"

There's always some scare to keep the masses occupied.  First it was another ice age, then it was a brief flirting with global warming, then it was holes in the ozone, then it was acid rain, then Y2K, then terror alerts, now back to global warming, which having experienced it, is not that bad.  But have gone through several weeks of below zero temps just like we've had in the past tells me everything is just fine with the climate and if we have to enjoy a cycle of reduced sunspot activity, I'll take it.

Answer 11

No, I don't believe in global warming as a man made problem.  The way I see it is that the Earth has been here for 4.5 billion years.  It's going to be here for at least another 15 billion years.  "Man", (Homo Sapien), just like any other species, will have their time on earth and then become existent.  It is arrogant of "Man" to think that he has such power over the planet that he can actually change it's environment.

Global warming is nothing more than a natural progression in the life of the planet.