Your Global Warming Standpoint?

Question

Global Warming is an issue that has received a great deal of allention lately. Scientists believe that the earth is getting warmer and the warmest years on record were the last few. Scientists suggest that this will cause more droughts, more flooding, stronger hurricanes, invasion of tropical species into previously temperate climates, a sea-level rise and other problems. Opponents suggest that it is not really happening and that it will cost every person in the U.S. a great deal to fight this problem. What do you think? Why? I personally think all this global warming mumbo jumbo is not real, and that its all hype, and not true.

Answer 1

My position on this is:

1) The earth is warming, and has been for the past 10,000 years or so.  This is unquestionable as data do not lie.

2)  There are also micro-cycles within the general warming trend and these can actually cause a short term cooling within the same trend.  Again, this is obvious if you look at the data.

3) We are currently in a warming micro-cycle, and have been for about 30 years.  Again, this is clear from the data.

4) Current temperatures are still well below past interglacial maximums by 3-4 degrees Celsius.

4) Atmospheric CO2 levels are higher than they have ever been in pre-industrial past.  This is almost certainly due to human activities.

5) The correlation between man made CO2 and global warming is imperfect at best.

6) The obvious conclusion to this is that it is going to get hotter, at least 3 degrees hotter than current levels, regardless of what we do.

7) I am agnostic on AGW, but if you can show me conclusive evidence, I am prepared to accept it.

8) Since it is going to get hotter, I would prefer that we spend our resources in the development and implementation plans to address the consequences of this inevitable event and stop all of the name calling, finger pointing, hand wringing and useless attempts to stop the warming trend.

Answer 2

this is the same rhetorical garbage that was spewed in the 80s and 60s.   The Ozone layer, global warming, oil crisis.  Sure there are scientific and governmental facts to support it. There's also scientific facts to support the opposite case.  

When you delve into it a little further you start noticing an political and economic agenda attached to the whole "global warming" debate.  There is a heavy vestage into "green" technologies from alot of prominant politicians, one specifically is Al Gore.  These political assertions of "the debate is over" and "any credible scientist has confirmed global warming is a fact" is assinine.  Al Gore is a politician and is in no way a credible scientist who can make those assertions from any standpoint of credibility, especially when his interests are clearly one-sided. It also calls alot of the scientific research into question when you find out who is ordering the research, what the initial goal and set up of the research is, and who is actually in charge of these governmental agencies.  I'm not saying they're falsifying anything, I'm just saying that it's not a completely unbiased hunt for the truth.

There are many other explanations for what the planet is going through and the fact that our winters are on a warm trend other than the build up of greenhouse gasses caused by human polution.  Infact, there's more evidence to support that the current warming and cooling effect of the earth is caused by the sun than there is for global warming.  Environmental records are do not go back long enough to make assertions such as the ones being made by the global warming alarmists.  If you're going to assert that the earth is 4.5 billion years old (or even if you only believe the eart is a few thousand years old), 200 years of environmental records (some with questionable methods) is not nearly enough to set trends and/or status quos.

One of the current beliefs that is contradictory to the "global warming" theory is that the earth is naturally a tropical planet (this comes from fossel evidence) and that we're actually in the flux phase of an ice age where the environmental temperature is supposed to vary.  Remember El Nino and La Nina?  One produced cooler weather the other produced warmer.

The Farmers Alminac has always stated that we go through 11 year cycles (which looking back at the global warming and environmental alarms, seems to be very accurate).  11 years of colder temps and 11 years of warmer.  The 90s was cold, there's no denying that.  However I still contend that though our winters have been more mild, our summers have been cooler than normal.  Where I am, we usually record about 3-7 days of 100+ temps, we haven't seen a temp in the 100s in probably 3 or 4 years.

I know that was long, but personally I think this whole global warming thing is a scare and a load of c**p.  I've been through it once before, and I remember the 80s scare about the Ozone and how by the year 2000 we're all going to be mutated cancerous monsters because we'll have no Ozone left and the suns radiation will be frying everyone.  It also reminds me of the whole Y2K scare.  People take worst case scenarios and really run with them, turn them into propeganda, start a public buzz and borderline panic, and behind everything you're going to find a few people who are cashing in on it.  It's basically nothing more than a clever marketing and advertising scheme that conditions and changes the market.  It's not just the environment this happens with.  Oil, pharmasuticals, food, automobiles, education, healthcare...  EPA, FDA, FCC, Military, OSHA, etc are all able to be used by crafty people in positions of influence.  If it sounds like it's trendy and like they're trying to convince you to buy something new and more expensive, then it's probably a ploy.  Don't buy into hype, investigate it!

Answer 3

Im not a scientist, but I have been involved with the environment for over 25 years now and I have to say, it is deniasourse like you that just make the problem bigger. Yes it is real, yeas we can do something about it, will it cost a lot? yes, but it is still cheaper than waiting to do something later.....later we will just be dead and that is to pricey for me and my kids!

Answer 4

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 5

My standpoint is that the theory that there was intelligent life on this planet may soon be disproven.

These scientific organizations warn us that global warming is a serious threat:

NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

National Academy of Sciences (NAS)

State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC)

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Royal Society of the United Kingdom (RS)

American Geophysical Union (AGU)

American Institute of Physics (AIP)

National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

American Meteorological Society (AMS)

Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)

Academia Brasiliera de Ciências (Bazil)

Royal Society of Canada

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Academié des Sciences (France)

Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany)

Indian National Science Academy

Accademia dei Lincei (Italy)

Science Council of Japan

Russian Academy of Sciences

Royal Society (United Kingdom)

National Academy of Sciences (United States of America)

Australian Academy of Sciences

Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts

Caribbean Academy of Sciences

Indonesian Academy of Sciences

Royal Irish Academy

Academy of Sciences Malaysia

Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

The only mumbo jumbo hype involved is the propaganda that ExxonMobil spews, creating the false appearance of debate:

Exxposing ExxonMobil's Agenda: Manipulating Politics and the Public

http://www.exxposeexxon.com/facts/dailyf...

In the United States our belief in "balance" on issues has led us to be very susceptible to propaganda and bias.  Our media gladly portrays "both sides" even when an issue doesn't have a viable second side:

Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias

Creating controversy where science finds consensus

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1978

"A new study has found that when it comes to U.S. media coverage of global warming , superficial balance—telling "both" sides of the story—can actually be a form of informational bias."

Media False Balancing Allowed Extreme Views to be Treated Same as Scientific Consensus

http://www.globalissues.org/EnvIssues/Gl...

You have hit the nail on the head that the discussion boils down to "scientists" vs. "opponents".  Who's more credible, a scientist that says we can save lives and cost (through energy conservation for example), or ExxonMobil, who wants gas prices to rise as quickly and sharply as possible so they can continue to rake in record profits?

Answer 6

Take water out of the depositing of sewage process. Begin self-generating non polluting forms of natural energy usage. Such as beginning construction (manpower needed in the millions) of the jet stream wind power collection devices that would power enlarged bank teller type tubes in tunnels throughout the country, and eventually the world. (Jet streams have over 150 mph winds available at elevations beginning at 3,000 feet). Restore forests, remove roadways, increase the water surface of our states by digging more streambeds. etc, etc. I would give civilization a chance at continuing earth's life into the future. And I would remove power from earth destroying corporations even if it meant civil war.

Answer 7

Yes mumbo jumbo that fits it real well  Check this out.   http://www.fdrs.org/arguments_against_gl...

Answer 8

I believe that the Earth is going through a warming phase. Call it global warming if you like, but I believe that it is probably just a normal cycle.

I am not convinced that it is man made. I'm not saying it couldn't be, just that I am not convinced that man is the sole or even primary cause.

Answer 9

My standpoint?

Its fake.

Answer 10

I believe that global warming is a huge threat. How can 6.6 BILLION people not have an impact on the planet? Check this out, its cool; http://www.peterrussell.com/Odds/WorldCl...

I dont think that there is much point in debating the reality of AGW any longer. The facts are there, the scientists agree and the change is taking place. For example look at the arguments on yahoo answers. The believers have a huge array of knowledge between them and are able to quote facts and post many interesting links. On the other hand the deniers can seldom post a scientific link and seem to think that the weather outside the window is a reflection of the rest of the planet.

   Frankly, I am bored of this whole issue. You may as well try to tell me the earth is flat and is the center of the solar system.

Answer 11

Real, mostly caused by us.  The scientific proof in the links below is overwhelming.

This is science and what counts is the data.

"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...

"There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know...  Global warming is almost a no-brainer at this point.  You really can't find intelligent, quantitative arguments to make it go away."

Dr. Jerry Mahlman, NOAA

Good websites for more info:

http://profend.com/global-warming/

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

http://www.realclimate.org

"climate science from climate scientists"

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

Answer 12

I think global warming is a good thing, better than an ice age.