Would more people accept the notion if global warming if.........?

Question

the buzz words were only "climate change." It seems to me that the naysayers of global warming always refer to a personal situation in which they have experienced a record cold snap to support their dismissive beliefs.

Answer 1

janet

One problem with global warming is that the concept is so vague in the minds of the people. The critical interpretation is basically how it’s explained in school and the news. However most of the public see global warming connected with the ozone and pollutants which cause harmful greenhouse gasses, etc. therefore investigating and fighting for things like alternative energy (ie. Solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol, biodiesel, etc)

Greenhouse gases are real and do contribute to global warming. Think of the different gas layers like ozone (o3) that circumference the globe as the clear plastic on a greenhouse. Longer rays of light from the Sun go in and reflect off different thermal masses bouncing back and creating shorter lengths of energy that cannot exist the plastic barrier. These beams then just continue to bounce around inside the green house until they’re finally absorbed completely (some do escape but very few), thereby warming the greenhouse greatly even in cold temperatures.

Basically there are 2 ways that this reaction (or lack of) affects the planet. Global warming and global cooling.

1. as we add to the gases in the stratosphere, where the ozone layer is (Carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, etc), we add to the plastic of the greenhouse, trapping more short wave length energy and heating the earth more.

2. as we deplete the ozone (with chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs), we allow more long wave length energy, which bounces back out to space without heating any thermal masses on earth, thereby cooling the planet.

It’s pretty easy to see the results..

Melting ice sheets & glaciers

Floods & droughts

Great hurricanes & cyclones

Seasonal extremes

Seasonal phenomena’s

Species extinction

New & resurgent diseases

There are many ways to stop both global warming and cooling from accruing or at least slow them down until we can discover a way to reverse it, but Stop burning fossil fuels is the biggest.

I currently own 2 converted h2 vehicles which run on 100% hydrogen and 1 EV (electric vehicle), not to mention our home is completely off the grid, using alternative energy (solar, wind, etc)

If you interested I offer several DIY alternative guides to walk you step by step threw Greener living, how to run your car on alternative fuels and being self-sufficient, at agua-luna com or

http://www.agua-luna.com/guides.html

Hope this helped, feel free to contact me personally if you have any questions, I’m willing to walk you step by step threw the conversion process if you’re interested.

Dan Martin

Retired Boeing Engineer now living 100% Off-the-Grid with my family, using Alternative Energy & loving every minute.

for more info visit agua-luna com

Answer 2

Once again, kudos to Bob!

Campbelp, just because you cannot see nor smell carbon monoxide, does not mean it will not kill you.

Language shapes human perceptions of reality.  There are good reasons for retaining the name 'Global Warming':

- the polar ice-caps are melting, calving off icebergs, and the Ocean-levels (meaning the ENTIRE OCEAN SURFACE) has been rising at a rate of approximately 1 cm/annum since WELL before I studied oceanography (at Wellesley College -- a reputable US uni -- Hillary Clinton is an alumna).  I lived in NYC, and Manhattan is a very small island.  In the 1980s, measures were being discussed, to protect the whole City with dikes and other measures.  I do not know whether they followed-up on these discussions.

- Although there is a vast amount of precipitation (including snow) and even cold temperatures involved, one must think on a GLOBAL, not LOCAL level.  When I say 'global', I do not just mean the surface of the globe.  I mean the atmosphere, the land, the water, and the magma layer.  All of these work TOGETHER, to create what we call 'weather'.  We are not talking about the weather!  We are talking about fundamental changes in the global dynamics, which together can change the entire PLANET.  Venus is a perfect example of greenhouse-gases run amok -- leading to a planet trapped inside dense cloud-cover, which is incredibly hot. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/199...  

-Geological time is generally very, very slow.  Of course, there are blips of minor change, from time to time.  Geological time runs slowly because of many factors, the greatest of which is that solids do not change drastically, as easily as do liquids, and liquids do not change as easily as gases.  The magma layer of the Earth -- the stuff that comes out of volcanoes as lava -- is liquid.  Most of the surface of the Earth is water, now.  It was not always so.  The atmosphere is, of course, gases, with a layer of water-vapour (clouds) hovering in fairly close proximity to the Earth.  

- The whole system is a CLOSED system, and becoming more closed.  The increasing amount of cloud-cover which we have witnessed in the past couple of years, all over the world -- leading to flooding, mudslides, record snowfall, avalanches -- is caused by Ocean-water, evaporating (from warming) along with glaciers, evaporating (from warming) and rising into the atmosphere, as clouds.  When the clouds supersaturate (there is too much water in them, to retain its gaseous state), it 'precipitates out'.  Snow, rain, floods, tropical storms, tsunamis, cyclones, and hurricanes are all combinations of precipitation and WIND.

- Wind is NOT simple.http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/kingworc/de... Without a grasp of how the winds work, it is impossible for ANYONE to make an informed comment on 'global warming'/'climate change'.  I defy any denier to give me a thorough summary of how the wind works, with the Oceans, the land, the Polar Ice Caps, vegetation, the magma-layer, and greenhouse gases, to contribute to what we call 'weather'.

-In baby-talk, the wind is creating a feedback-loop of water from the oceans into the atmosphere.  This is causing the record storms and so forth.  It is also MOVING areas of the Oceans which have been 'warmer' (the Gulf Stream, etc) onto different paths.  The more cloud-cover we have, the greater the Earth's 'albedo' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo#Clou...  

-Albedo, as regards a Planet, refers to how much of the sun's rays the planet reflects, rather than absorbing.  Counter-intuitive though it may seem, the higher a Planet's albedo, the hotter the planet's surface.  Think about it: there is no way for the heat to escape the planet.  It is trapped between the Planet (which is hot -- remember, the magma layer is molten metals) and the cloud-cover.  This is what happened on Venus.  The heat generated by the Planet http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/adaptation/... itself can't escape into the Outer Atmosphere.  Likewise, there is no darkness at night, during which cooling can take place.  

The term 'Climage Change' is fraught with its own problems, because the Earth's climate has changed many times.  At one time, the entire Planet was covered with land, and nearly all of it was rainforest.  'Climate Change' is nicely clinical, and may be easier for some people to accept.  The truth is, anecdotal evidence of a couple of chilly years, here and there, is IRRELEVANT.  So, there was a blizzard, in 1982, in Denver, CO, USA.  What does it matter if your nan remembers five years of excessive heat, in Oklahoma, USA, during the Depression?

Geo-Atmospheric time does not FUNCTION that way.  In the past half-century, (and/or beginning with the Industrial Revolution, but it has speeded up, exponentially, in the past half-century) human beings have been heaving STAGGERING amounts of pollutants into the land, water, and air.  Some of these pollutants are not ''greenhouse-gases''http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_...  They may be toxic in other ways, but they are not necessarily DIRECT causes of the 'Human-Generated Imminent Global Climate Catastrophe' -- an unwieldy term, but THAT is what we are facing.

We have burnt coal, for two centuries now.  That generated carbon dioxide. Many places still burn rubbish, because there is no place to put landfills -- which are problematic in other ways. We have had smokestacks churning sulphur dioxide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_diox... into the air, which was determined in the 1970s to cause Acid Rain...killing off trees, which breathe carbon dioxide IN, and exhale oxygen OUT... and which is also a greenhouse gas. Likewise methane, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_cla... hydro-chloro-fluorocarbons (used to make styrofoam - polystyrene, and as a propellant for spray-cans -- illegal or strictly limited in a handful of countries), freon (a refrigerant -- and of course, to refrigerate anything, energy is used, which actually HEATS the surrounding area.  This is why the back of your 'fridge is warm) and countless other greenhouse gases.

Unlike the anecdotal 'cold snaps', or indeed 'heat waves', of people's mates, the situation we have here is HUMAN-MADE.  We believed (wrongly) that the Planet could absorb anything we could throw at it.  That may have been true, in the 1800s, when the human population was relatively small.

I was born in 1961.  The population of the Earth just 46 years ago, was 2.500.000.000 people.  Most of those people did not have, nor want cars.  Most of those people lived in very simple poverty, treading lightly upon the Earth.  2.500.000.000 people is now the combined population of China, and the Indian Subcontinent!  These countries are no longer poor (in the same way...) and the market for cars is COLOSSAL.  Internal-Combustion-Engines are one of the biggest emitters of carbon-dioxide on the planet.

The present population of the Earth is well above 7.000.000.000.  The Planet can no longer absorb the waste products, the industrial by-products, the carbon-emissions, the need for SPACE (created by clear-cutting rainforests) of this infestation!  

There was a philosopher, in 1798, one Thomas Malthus, who postulated that the Earth could only sustain a limited number of human beings.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_...  If he was right, and I believe he was, we have 10-30 years left, before the human destruction of the Earth, causes the Earth to destroy 90% of humanity.

Perhaps we should just call this human-generated-imminant-climate-catastr... a 'Malthusian Catastrophe'?  Naah.  That would require people to read, and it would place excessive 'blame' on the Developing World.  We ALL bear the 'blame'.

Yes, I am pessimistic.  I am a scientist, with a great deal of education in the human-sciences.  I know how hard it is, to shift human beliefs... especially when it is urgent, and inconveniences them.

Answer 3

no - keep it global warming- that is what it is. Single events don't show it - the average does.

If global warming behaved in a way that would convince skeptics - we would be in big trouble right now.

Answer 4

I don’t think repackaging it under a new name would make any difference. The fact is that the current concern IS about warming, not just change. To call it ‘climate instability’ as one suggested, or ‘climate change’ has no effect on the majority of people because they realize that the climate has always, is currently, and always will be changing.

I would be more likely to accept the notion if the science had not become so politicized. Unfortunately there is now power to be gained and money to be made for those who support the notion, two forces that can compromise the integrity of anyone – including scientists. Those with cooler heads calling for caution and thorough investigation before taking drastic measures that could cripple the world’s economy and hinder developing nations are demonized as ‘deniers’, and (wrongly) assumed to be lackeys of big oil.

The Act-Before-We-Think crowd’s mantra is, “We can’t afford to not act right now!” But hitting the panic button like that is perceived by most as being hysterical and neither well reasoned, nor a sensible call to action. It is this cult-like fanaticism that turns many people away before ever engaging the science.

Further, many think that when we’re talking climate change – something that often takes centuries or millennia - a delay of a decade for research would be harmless if it prevented wasting hundreds of trillions of dollars on plans like Kyoto; that in a best case could only reduce global temperature by 1° C.

Samantha Stickers – Please tell me where do I pick up my check? I haven’t made a dime from not buying into the hype – apparently I’ve been missing out :-)

Answer 5

As for me, as long as gore is the spokesman, I will resist everything about the whole notion.

Answer 6

it's climate change, because as the atmosphere heats up, the polar ice caps melt. all that cold water spreads around, actually making the world colder, and this could possible trigger an <i>ice age</i>. that doesn't sound like warming to me.

Answer 7

We can reduce carbon emissions all we want. If the Sun burning hotter is causing this all we will have accomplished is the over taxation of the people. And if you don't think money's involved, and standard of living. You really are naive. The Politicians on the other hand will gain power over their subjects. Are you a subject?

Answer 8

Undeniable empirical proof would probably convice more people.

Answer 9

I think "climate instability" would really be more appropriate. Unfortunately, most of the "deniers" will never understand the seriousness of the problem. Even Bush said AGW is real in his State of the Union speech last night.

Answer 10

Global warming is real. Its effects are visible to everyone. There are no skeptics. There are only people pretending to be skeptics because they are paid by the oil and gas industry.

See http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/s...

A spokesman for the Royal Society, Britain's leading scientific academy, said: "At present there is a small minority which is seeking to deliberately confuse the public on the causes of climate change.

"They are often misrepresenting the science, when the reality is that the evidence is getting stronger every day.

"We have reached a point where a failure to take action to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions would be irresponsible and dangerous."

Answer 11

The words are not the problem. The fact that it cannot be seen, felt, smelled or tasted is the problem. If you had not been told this problem existed you would have never figured it out on your own. It is impossible to show people proof of it. It takes careful record keeping and armies of data gathering scientists to even know anything is going on. You cannot just see a sky full of smog or feel a difference in the weather. It is a very subtle and invisible problem. Al Gore says this all the time. He says it will sneak up on us unnoticed. But he implies that at some future time everyone will notice it easily. He doesn't actually say that it will become obvious to all people in the future, but he implies it really strongly. But that implication is a lie. It will never be obvious to anyone. It will always require massive amounts of measurements and record keeping and calculation and thinking to detect. The oceans will not boil. People will not fry. Even the much feared sea level rise will happen so slowly that nobody will notice. It will be like Venice, which has been sinking for years. See the source. People in 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200 years in the future will not ever notice it without being told. Because the changes are too small and happen too slowly. The changes are the same changes that have happened to the world climate for natural reasons for hundreds of millions of years. This most recent change may be caused by human activity, but it is different from past natural climate changes only in its cause and possibly its speed, where speed is in geological terms, where a million years is a normal time span and a thousand years is a really short time.

(EDIT) I have to disagree with ♥Samantha♥ Stickers above. The effects are NOT visible to everyone. Only the reports on TV and the web and in magazines and books and news papers are visible to everyone. The actual effects themselves, like the arctic ice pack shrinking, are totally invisible to 99.99% of the population. I have never been to the arctic myself, have you? I have not seen the ice pack myself, have you? And even if we had, it is not enough to see it once. All we would see is water and we would have to believe and trust the person who told us that 100 years ago that water would have been covered in ice and that it was a bad thing that the ice was gone. It is NOT obvious for all to see. It just seems that way because so many people are always SAYING it is obvious for all to see. It is a similar false belief to the one people have today who laugh at the stupid people of the past who thought that the Sun went around the Earth. Today so many people say how obvious it is that the Earth and other planets orbit the Sun, but those same people cannot even point out a planet which is clearly visible in the sky. They have just been told over and over that the planets orbit the Sun so they just believe it and think that they know more than they really do.

(EDIT) My brother’s wife is Chinese. My wife is Thai and I have been to Thailand. Bangkok is a very low lying city, once called the Venice of the East. It has everything to fear from rising sea levels. They are even less aware of global warming than we in the U.S. are. They are even more concerned with economic improvement and less concerned with pollution than we in the U.S. are. They have all kinds of local pollution of the kind that IS clear for all to see and that was cleaned up in the U.S. decades ago. Like smog in cities bad enough to make you cough and river water that stinks. Compared to these problems, global warming is totally invisible. I am thinking of a nature program on PBS where one of the Cousteau’s was interviewing an Eskimo man about the shrinking ice pack, and he was not really aware of it or worried about it at all. And he was old enough to have seen it when there was more ice. Believe me when I say that global warming is INVISIBLE!

Answer 12

I think the problem I have, and yes, I'm a denier.  Is that we've barely scratched the surface on the data collection.  

No one has ever answered that the utopian temperature should be.

GW 'experts' tend to not include the largest source of heat to our planet, the sun.

The 1930's were very hot in the US, and I realize that the US is not global, but to say that we are in the hottest time period ever is bunk.  The 1930's were warm, and how hot was it before man?  No one can really tell.

Yes, humans pollute too much, I'm all for polluting less and recycling more.  Believe me, I would love to get wind power and solar power for my house, I'd love to see that power meter spin in the other direction.

I do recall that MN has had some warmer winters in the past 3 years.  I also know that MN is having a brutal year for cold temperatures this year.  And yes, I know that 4 years do not make enough data either.

Ed Begley Jr. is about the only activist that I admire, he truly lives the green life.  Al Gore, jetting all over the world, the Bali conference members, all hypocrites, not practicing what they preach.

Call it global warming, fine, collect 1% of earths 4 billion years of existance, come to a conclusion that X is the average temperature of the earth.  Then prove that Man is the cause.

Call it climate change, fine, collect 1% of earths 4 billion years of existance, come to a conclusion that X is the average temperature of the earth.  Then prove that Man is the cause.

I honestly don't think there is enough data.  Becaue Al Gore and mainstream media highlights this every 5-10 minutes also lends a bit of 'hype' to it all.  It's also doesn't help when there are 'fringe' groups, Earth Liberation Front, PETA, and others that use fear and imtimidation to prove their point.  Even here, at Yahoo Answers, I've been called stupid and ignorant for being a denier.  Call me what you want, debate is good however, provided everyone has an equal chance to debate.

Answer 13

The buzzwords aren't the problem.  You can call it anything you want.  It's still more politics than science.

Some people just arn't prepared to accept that the emperor is wearing clothes just because the concensus says he is.

There has been a great deal of junk science supporting global warming from Micheal Manns hockey stick which turned out to be a programming error to James Hansen stepping up Nasa temperature measurements.

Answer 14

No.  It's not as simple as that.

People don't bother to really look at this, at the science.   Take the idea that the Sun is to blame, and hasn't been considered properly.  Or that there isn't enough data.

The Sun has been studied extensively.  And we KNOW it's not the cause of the recent warming.

"Recent oppositely directed trends in solar

climate forcings and the global mean surface

air temperature", Lockwood and Frolich (2007), Proc. R. Soc. A

doi:10.1098/rspa.2007.1880

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

News article at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.st...

""While evidence suggests fluctuations in solar activity can affect climate on Earth, and that it has done so in the past, the majority of climate scientists and astrophysicists agree that the sun is not to blame for the current and historically sudden uptick in global temperatures on Earth, which seems to be mostly a mess created by our own species."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,2583...

Foxnews!

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-...

And many more.

Here are two summaries of the mountain of peer reviewed data that convinced 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...

Past data has limited relevance (but we have plenty of that, also, in the second reference above) when the issue is the effect of man made greenhouse gases.

This answer could have been ten times longer, with more solar information, and data.  People simply can't or won't bother to study this.  You're not going to fix this level of ignorance with a name change.