With all of the talk about global warming, is it possible that this is a natural cycle of the earth?

Question

Data for earth temperatures has only been monitored for the past couple hundred years, and studying the environment has only really come of age in the last 50. With such a small snapshot of time, comparitively speaking, is it possible that it is not us, and that it is a natural cycle the earth undergoes?

Answer 1

The overwhelming affect of climate change is due to "mother nature" (ie, ocean currents, atmospheric gas changes, solar radiation, etc.).



Humans know that there have been radical climate changes over the history of the planet. The changes have been from extreme cold to extreme warmth. These are natural changes the planet undertakes.



Even since people have been recording temperatures (only about 150 years) we have seen swings in climate. Since the industrial revolution we have still experienced decades where it has warmed and decades where it has cooled.



There is no clear scientific data that proves humans are having any affect on climate and/or temperature changes.



Of those scientists that believe humans have some impact on the warming of the planet most of them say it is probably around one half of one degree Celsius. Again, this is a guess and there is no scientific method that can prove it.



Now, all that being said. Even if the planet is warming and even if humans have something to do with it, what is the harm? Why is global warming assumed to be a huge problem? A warmer climate gives rise to longer crop growing seasons, larger crop yields, more hospitable living conditions for humans, etc. More people die from cold than die from heat. Would we rather have global cooling?



You have to take everything with a grain of salt. Whether the planet is warming or cooling the fact is humans have little to do with it. Whether the planet cools or warms humans will adapt.



We simply can not put our economy, our standards of living and our future at risk to try to combat something that we can not change and something that isn't a problem anyways.



Only continuing to invest, invent and move forward will we be able to overcome whatever will present itself to us in the future.

Answer 2

1) The average global temperature is increasing. Probably though the data is very much skewed to the northern hemisphere and especially N. America 2) Any global temperature increase is due to natural cycles only. Any significant global increase is probably due to natural cycles. 3) Mars is warming so any warming on Earth is due to the sun. Again any significant warming 4) In the 1970's the alarm was about global cooling. Irrelevant except that it shows the alarmist are always there and interestingly it is essentially the same group of people that are still alarmists. 5) Volcanoes contribute as much, if not more, to global warming than humans do. Probably true. There are also other natural sources that are little understood. For example, you cannot tell me how much methane migrates upward and is released through the soil. Don't even try, any numbers you give won't mean anything. 6) Levels of the so called 'greenhouse gases' are increasing. Yes. They have been for thousands of years. Some global warming hysteric tried to blame that on humans as well though I don't think it would explain previous cycles. Humans have probably added some, maybe 50 parts per million. Is this what has caused the earth to warm since the 70s then why did it cool in the 40s to 60s? Thank you for your time.

Answer 3

That is exactly what it is...Global warming is a farce by liberals just like global cooling was in the 70's.....It's just the earth going through its own natural cycles and at the moment we are going through a natural warming period....Scientists recently said that even if everyone in the US stopped driving cars for the next 50 years, the actual change in temperature would only amount to 1--700th of a degree over those 50 years....Not much of a change considering what everyone would have given up over those 50 years..

Answer 4

No, the way things are going it is obvious that it is caused by things we are doing. The many years of use of aerosol cans, unknowingly caused such a rift in the ozone that we know of no way to fix. This is not something that is natural, that is man-made. We have done too much with our use of too much natural energy, or our over use in many ways to natural fuels,, the burning of oils and coal to create CO2, which forms the Greenhouse effect, which causes the whole idea of global warming. This is our fault, not something that is a natural cycle, it is something we have created. We don't have to look past the last 100 years to know it's not a natural cycle of the earth. It's not a cycle of the earth following in the disappearance of the dinosaurs.

Answer 5

Yes, It is very possible. The thing is, us humans are still putting way too much pollution into the air, whether you believe in Global Warming or not. A natural cycle of the earth's temperatures would not be as drastic as I believe they are right now. I think Global Warming AND a Earth's natural cycle both have an effect on the Earth's temperatures.

Answer 6

When you throw money at scientists and then provide incentives for certain outcomes, like the Natural Selection, those theories that produce scenarios where further research or action is required will be favored. Those scenarios that don't get ignored for obvious reasons. So what you end up with is a bunch of scientific theories presenting gloom and doom and we are all going to die scenarios unless we give this or that scientist more money for additional study or if we don't follow some social or political agenda. Science has very little to do with man caused global waming. It is a phenomena manufactured by an agenda driven media and political movement.

Answer 7

There are natural cycles of temperature change throughout the earths history. These have actually been measured for the past tens of thousands of years using carbon dating. The truth is that CO2 is proven to absorb electromagnetic radiation and trap heat in the earths atmosphere.



You are right though, the argument for global warming is incomplete but there are enough pieces of evidence to suggest we MAY be having a negative impact on our atmosphere.

Answer 8

I personally doubt that it is a natural cycle of the earth for reasons explained below: 1) When industrial age came about no one was the wiser about how it would aventually impact the earth. 2) It wasn't until recently that environment studies showed how global warming was even occurring. 3) As of now we're not even sure if what we do to help save the environment will eventually turn back some of the damage done over time. With luck we all can make a difference If we try.

Answer 9

Yes, check back more than a few Hundred yRS, it is just that the natural warming trend is happening in our imediately life time and we are not knowing what to expect.. The chemicals and ozone,holes, and all the rest does have an effect on the warming, but there were no factories, cars etc millions of yrs ago and the warming trend occured anyway, Modern people of today never had the experience to really see what really happens in nature. and they panic.

Answer 10

When this first became an issue I was of the same assumption. I even went as far as to research and place the "cycles" the earth goes through from "Ice Ages" to tropical climates. I even had the argument that the amount of heat radiated by the sun from severely overshadows the minimal increase in temp from greenhouse gases. In recent time though I have started to review the evidence that scientist after scientist provide and it's becoming more evident that the green house gases are having a greater and greater effect. When an entire panel of today's top scientist all agree that it is happening (and they don't agree on very much) then there may be some merit to it. The Earths atmosphere is becoming a great big magnifying glass/ thermal insulator. We need to accept that we need to change our game plan or end up having to manage the problems of our environment's adapting to this phenomenon.

Answer 11

It's a very good point you make and is well put. Allow me to draw on my experience in this area and see if I can explain a little more...



Temps have only been measured for a short period of time, the UK has the longest record stretching back to the 1600's, in some countries it's just a few decades.



We can accurately reconstruct historical temperatures using several techniques such as ice core samples, dendrology (tree rings), oxygen isotopes, sedimentary deposits, glacial analysis etc. Each method produces it's own set of results, these can then be compared with the other data sets to ensure accuracy. We can never guarantee complete accuracy but using different methods are able to reconstruct temperatures going back over half a billion years. The further back we go the less accuarte the figures but even so, it's still within a margin of less than one degree Celsius (the margin of error over the last half million years is much smaller).



Armed with accurate temperature information over such a long period of time we can see just what the natural effects on our planet have been. In short, there always has been either warming or cooling and in the past temperatures have been much hotter and much colder than they are now. Surprising as it may be, the Earth is currently in a cool phase and the long term trend (over the last 50 million years) has been one of cooling.



What we can do is to look at how temperatures have been changing in the last few hundred years and compare this with how temperatures have changed naturally in the past. Herein lies the big concern - temperatures are rising much faster now than has ever before been known.



Sometimes the world goes 'crazy' of it's own accord (it's all to do with triggering mechanisms and feedback cycles) and there are periods of extremely rapid temperature changes. Such an event has happened recently in that 18,000 years ago the world rapidly began warming and this led to the most recent glacial retreat (often, incorrectly, referred to as the end of the last ice age). In this period temperatures rose by 9C.



So, when the world goes crazy temperatures can rise by as much as a two thousandth of a degree per year. In the last few decades temperatures have risen more than 30 times as fast.



We know how and why the world has warmed in the past and it's basically down to what is often referred to as the Greenhouse Effect. This is something we understand very well and in it's simplest terms - the more greenhouse gases there are in the atmosphere the more pronounced the greenhouse effect becomes. Again, to put things into context, nature can handle an excess of 3 billion tons of CO2 emissions each year (through the carbon cycle), last year alone we overloaded the system by 26 billion tons. It would be very naive and foolish to claim that these emissions are not contributing to global warming.



This isn't to say that humans are solely responsible for the current warming, even if we didn't exist the world would be in a warming phase of it's own making.



There are two primary causes of natural warming - the way the Earth moves and the amount of heat received from the Sun. There's names for these, they're called Milankovitch Cycles and Solar Variation.



There are several variations in the way that the Earth moves, I won't go into detail but if you'd like more info then the terms to search for are precession, obliquity and eccentricity (equinoxal and elliptical). These cycles affect our climate but over very long periods of time, the shortest cycle is 19,000 years.



The amount of heat from the Sun also varies and just as with the Earth, there are several cycles - some of these occur every few years, others last for thousands of years. The variation between maxima and minima is very small. Again, for the sake of putting it into context, the average amount of heat received from the Sun is 1366 Watts per square metre per year, the difference between maximum and minimum is just 1.3 W/m2/yr - a variation of less than one thousandth.



Together these cycles of the Sun and Earth cause natural warming of our planet. The time at which the effect is most pronounced is called Insolation Maxima, at the opposite end is Insolation Minima. The difference between the two is small

and the effects from one year to the next are very small indeed - over thousands of years the changes compound and have a noticeable effect.



To summarise, in the last couple of hundred years the world has warmed faster than ever before and natural cycles can only account for a small proportion of this (10 to 20% at most).

Answer 12

Actually, there is hard scientific proof on both sides of the argument. Human nature is to be curious, and as such, we have information gathered over a few decades on why we are going through a warming cycle.



Naturally, the Earth completes cycles of heating and cooling, such as the last Ice Age. These are influenced greatly by holes present in the ozone layer that become larger and smaller based on gravitational pull (affected by the melting and freezing of glaciers at the poles- news.yahoo.com/s/.../weirdgravityincanadablamedonheftyglaciers ) and other natural occurances.

Nasa has these listed as natural reasons the ozone layer cycles and changes:

1. Strotospheric sulfate aerosols- changes are experienced when gases and chemicals found in the Earth are released through volcanic eruption, most notably when Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1993.

2.Stratospheric winds- these change course every 26 months, which changes the distribution of ozone around Earth.

3.Greenhouse gases, such s chlorine and carbon- These are actively cycling through stages of buildup of ozone and depletion in certain areas of the atmosphere. The scenario that these are predicted to work under is the "Day After Tomorrow" theory of cooling near the pole causing a buildup of Chlorine in the polar ozone concentrations and creating a huge warm front behing a large cold front, causing catastrophic storms and reorganization of the ozone layer, leading to the next ice age. These gases are commonly touted as the bringers of doom by global warming experts. Carbon emissions are currently being reduced, but atmospheric chlorine is not- and it is the big one in the theory, carbon simply acts as a catalyst for the heating.

4. Sunspot cycles- these can potentially cause the equivalent of 20 years of human caused ozone depletion in one active year. We have no control over the volcanic activity on the sun, or the rate at which ozone is replaced in the atmosphere.

5.Stratospheric Chlorine- the kind we put there in Halocarbons. The good news is that between 1999 and 2004 , there was a 2% drop in halocarbon concentration in the atmosphere. The bad news is that from 1978 to 1987, there was a 3% drop in ozone.

Quote from a site on global ozone changes:

"The ozone layer is located 50 kilometers above the ground. Most of the solar ultraviolet light is absorbed by the ozone molecules, which temporarily break up when the ultraviolet light photons collide with them. On September 22, 2004, ozone thinning over Antarctica reached its maximum extent for the year at 24.2 million square kilometers (9.4 million square miles). The largest maximum area on record was 29.2 million square kilometers, in 2000. On October 5, 2004 the ozone layer reached a low value of 99 Dobson Units. Data come from NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) on the Earth Probe satellite, from Aug. 1 - Oct. 5, 2004." (http://www.solarstorms.org/Sozone.html)



All of this translates to about a 3 degree temperature change over about 100 years. While humans can easily adapt to a 3 degree change, delicate ecosystems and the balance of chemicals in the atmosphere are not so readily changed.



By being ecofriendly and responsible about our waste and the chemicals we use, human contribution to the prblem can be minimized. Unfortunately, humans do not cause the vast majority of global warming or ozone depletion. All we can do is our best and hope.

Answer 13

I think it is a part of the natural cycle but i think that we are responsible as well. Just like hurricanes have an active cycle every few years i think that the earth has a cycle as well. And as people we tend to think that I'm only one person what is it going to make a difference if i drive everyday,use the air conditioner more but if everyone thought about it like that then i think we could make some of a difference. But i think both ways its the earths natural cycle and us.

Answer 14

Absolutely it's possible. In actual fact, it's pretty d@mn likely.



However, it's also undeniable that human behavior is having a direct, and in many cases severe, impact on the planet. You can argue that some of these changes are contributing to global warming (i.e. deforestation, industrial waste) Whether you're right or wrong I think misses the point. These practices are harmful in all kinds of ways regardless of their impact on climate.



Instead of a pissing match over their role in global warming, how about we just fix them because they are unsustainable for our survival over the long-term. If they end up helping global warming, then cool, we've solved that problem too. If they don't have any impact and it still happens (or doesn't) well, at least we have a few other less problems to worry about.



And if a meteor the size of upper Mongolia crashes into the planet and makes us all extinct.... well, at least we'll go with a relatively clear conscience.

Answer 15

I'm going out on a real big strong limb and say yes it is a cycle not even close or even in the race to the warming cycle between 1000 and 1500 century when the viking were farming in Greenland thus the name and northern Canada. the whole earth was tropical and very warm and toastie in the beginning and yet here we all are. Take a bowl of water with a chunk of ice in it let it thaw and see if the water level goes up or down. Yes the short answer and REALITY our ice is getting thicker not very fast but it is. P.S. using less fuel and finding more environmentally friendly sources is something one and all should do no matter what but don't use the global warming bull as the reason because it is just not worthy to sound thinking.

Answer 16

Though it's a natural cycle, when the earth warms up too much, it can trigger an Ice Age (An opposite reaction)...



Ice Ages usually come about every 20,000 years or so, and the next one isn't scheduled for another 9-10,000 years, so if we are the cause for precipitating an early one, it is US who will have to PAY the price!

Answer 17

I believe that it has more to do with a natural cycle, but that the cycle may have been accelerated by man.



Studies show that Mars is melting. To me this suggests that the excessive solar activity we are currently experiencing is responsible as we are closer to the sun than Mars is.



That is not a reason to give up and behave recklessly. Rather it is more reason to nurture and care for the earth as best we can.

Answer 18

I think it is a natural cycle.. If you look way back at some history, global warming existed and then kind of went away again.. It's great that everyone is helping out the environment by recycling and making the world a better place, but I don't think they need global warming as an excuse to do it..

Answer 19

Thats exactly what I was thinking also. But I do also believe that we all can change some things to help the enviroment. Because like you said we dont really know whether its the natural cycle or if its man made. Maybe we are just speeding up some of these cycles with pollution....etc.

Answer 20

It IS the natural cycle. This is proven from all the core samples from all over and different fossils that are found in the wrong areas. I've seen a few shows on the various science shows.

Also...How can we be responsible for "warming" when all the record high temps are noted back in the 40's?

This "warming" crap sounds just like the new ice age that was coming back in the 70's.

Answer 21

No. There are ways scientists can tell what the climate was like on earth much farther back than a couple hundred years, and the consensus in the scientific community right now is that global warming is definitely caused by human activity. In this day and age very few scientists will dispute this.

Answer 22

While that's possible there are two facts which scientists know and which are important indicators that its' not totally a natural phenomenon.



1. Ice cores and tree-cores, both of these sampling methods are HIGHLY reliable out to about 4000 years for trees and somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 years for Ice cores.



In the case of Ice cores, they can sample the atmosphere from tiny bubbles from thousands of years ago , trapped in layers of ice like layers in a core sample or a gigantic ice-cream cake. These samples have been used to accurately confirm all manner of planetary activities, like firestorms created by meteor impacts or ash and increased snowfall from super-volcano eruptions and also track individual volcano's activities based on comparing the unique ash profiles from the Earths volcanos to the ash traces found in the different layers. Nobody disputes that we can do this and do it accurately, but when those same scientists say oh, by the way, when CO2 levels go up - so does the temperature, a few years later.



Say something like that and all of a sudden people from industry and political circles say it's a big mystery and nobody it sure this stuff works very well or is very accurate. Well it works well enough to predict how frequently volcanos erupt and match up nicely to historically recorded events (like the explosion of Mt. Pinatubo in the Phillipenes or the ancient explosion at/near Akrotiri/Santorini, Greece).



Industry and commericial generally interests have no vested interest in being regulated/told or forced by governments to control the way they are doing business, it smacks of over-regulation and socialist policies to some folks. However without SOME regulation, sulphur dioxide would still be allowed in US coal plants and acid rain would still be a problem. Without regulating CFC's we would all be able to get a sunburn without getting a tan, and have to wear 45+ sunblock.



However, unfortunately, business interests have been very successful at pooh-poohing this issue for almost 40 years now, so whereas back in the 1970's some relatively modest changes in building codes and the efficiency of coal plants and cars, might have worked.



NOW its getting serious , and getting harder to ignore the facts at hand, so soon we will have to treat this as a very serious and probably expensive problem, and work together like humanity hasn't worked together before.



Pretty much we're in a position where things will not change in ways we will be in a good position to change with.



For instance in Australia, they simply stopped getting the seasonal rains, in many places which once had seaonal rains like in the US, they just stopped getting them, they occasionally get a sprinkle or something but most of Australia hasn't seen significant rainfall - similar to historical (pre-1980) trends since the early 1990's.



Aussies are coming to terms with the fact that it could be just a very long drought, but more and more it looks like a permanent change.



There are similar problems in Africa (Mali, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, and many sub-Saharan states) all have experienced very long wet-spells or dry-spells/droughts, since food production isn't every exactly a consistently productive industry Africa is a bad benchmark but the US isn't. If the same thing happened in Kansas or Nebraska, how many years would it take of NO/negligible rain and (of course) increased temperatures before the grain-belt started looking more like a desert-belt. How many years or decades could that go on before we have to start rationing food?



2. The planet's Ice caps and nearly all (3300 of 3303) glaciers have all dramatically declined or in many cases simply collapsed from melting - and most all of them have done the most dramatic melting and retreating in the last 30-40 years.



It's not a little bit or a scattered problem, it seems to be planet wide, and there is no place (except for 2 or 3 glaciers, where we can't tell what's going on), where there are glaciers that are growing or increasing in overall net mass.



Overall, it's possible it could be a natural cycle with which we are unfamiliar, however that's just not as likely as the possibility that the collective use of CO2 producing engines and factories has had and is having a bad effect on the planet. It's also not impossible that its BOTH , there could be a natural cycle AND our CO2 production, which could be enhancing an already bad situation.



Either way CO2 isn't really the biggest problem Methane is, the (currently frozen) vast tundra regions of the upper Alaskan and Canadian wilderness as well as the Tundra of the Siberian coastline,but it too has started to "mysteriously" melt - all across the northern and southern latitudes. And the last time that happened was basically the as far back as they Ice cores go , because there weren't any polar icecaps during that timeframe, and sea levels were - much much higher.



For my money, We still had folks "say it isn't so" even after the debacle of Katrina, and Rita and before that there was Gilbert and Mitch and Hugo and Andrew and other category 5 "storms of the century" now appearing every few years.



Andrew, Gilbert and Mitch exhibited some weather patterns and wind speeds not normally associated - even with category 5 storms before which made some meterorlogists suggest we might need a category 6.



To be fair, we could do alot better and move our cities out of the way and not flock to these hurricane prone areas but that's not realistic.



You look at countries like Japan and Germany (not exactly historically known for being particularly liberal) and they are ALL OVER this problem, using nuclear, wind and solar to reduce their dependence on oil and their production of CO2, so some folks are convinced enough by the science to not just start talking about it like we are but to have government programs and regulations and policies and even treaties about this subject.



At the end of the day, if it's a man-made problem, then it's OUR problem and we have a responsibility to the future to do something about it, in the same way we have to defend our country or build roads or schools or any other thing of national interest.



If it's a natural problem, again the responsibility is still ours to try to do something to minimize our contribution to the problem.



I like this analogy, it's like being told , "today you will have a car crash and there's nothing you can do to prevent the accident", however, you can change the seriousness of the accident, taking certain steps to minimize the damage, "wear your seatbelt", "look both ways at an intersection", "stay off busy highways", these are some ways we might consider "regulating" our behavior to minimize the potential for damage, that's what EVERYONE in such a situation would do. My question is why is it ANY different for this problem.

Answer 23

Yes. Exactly. It is a natural cycle of the Earth. Look at past data. It all makes sense. Great question.

Answer 24

Yes, it is very possible. Global warming and ice cap melting as been observed on Mars. That implies that at least *part* of the affect of global warming on Earth is due to the Sun, which we cannot control. I won't say global warming is 100% the Sun's "fault," or 100% man's fault. Someone should figure out how much of it we can change and how much of it we cannot.

Answer 25

I'll answer your question with a question, How long before this time period in which we have studied the environment, did we start letting harmful emitions from nuclear plants and other dangerous chemicals into the environment. These harmful acts have not been around that long either, but they seem to be speeding up the process of global warming even if they didn't start it specifically. How else do you explain the bazaro weather patterns?

Answer 26

Ice core samples can show the relationship between the amount of C02 and temperature in the atmosphere up to tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago. Evidence shows that in the last century, carbon dioxide levels are much higher than it was in the last 50,000 years (I don't remember the exact number of years, but it's in that ballpark). That global warming is caused by or greatly exacerbated by humans is accepted by most of the scientific community as a fact.

Answer 27

i can see both sides; yes i do believe it can be a natural cycle of the earth here, but i also think we are contributing. with so much cfcs and pollution etc, we are not helping the environment!! i think i researched somewhere and it said we are due for the "heat age" (opposite of ice age) in the next few hundred years or so, but we are ahead of schedule due to global warming. either way, i think if theres anything we can do to prevent it, or delay it, we should. do you really want your kids or grandkids to go through the hell of the ice caps melting and "normal" temperature in the summer to be 110+ degrees etc? maybe my great great great great grandkids, but my grandkids are a little too close to home...

Answer 28

That's a debate that is still going on. PBS has some good documentaries on it, with both sides. Here are some summaries.



http://www.pbs.org/now/science/climatedebate.html

Answer 29

I agree with you--I think it is a natural cycle. They have proof that the magnetic poles of the earth have changed several times. I've wondered if part of the "warming" has to do with that cycle--and if the earth is just getting ready to change magnetic poles again.

Answer 30

it is a natural cycle, the earth has always cleaned itself , we are just pushing it faster

Answer 31

Yes, I believe this is very possible. However, I think it is better to be safe than sorry and try to help slow it as opposed to doing nothing at all.

Answer 32

basically, while there is a cycle and it is happening, the rate at which the average global temperature is changing suggests human interference with the cycle.

Answer 33

A majority of scientists say it is 99.99% natural and .01% something else.

Funny how nothing is 100%.

Answer 34

Exactly! That's what I've been thinking, but everyone is pushing this global warming issue really hard. Great minds think alike, or one moron, two minds. lol.

Answer 35

Irresponsible Agriculture ,

and expanding populations and its effects are the planets biggest enemies



some still believe that nothing is wrong ,they will also be convinced when the price of food and beer hits the roof ,because of third world problems in food production and Global potable water shortage



are We responsible ?is it the Sun?

or is it God who wants to punish?

or is it Gaia who wants to clean some parasitic infestation?

who cares ? that is not important any more



WHAT IS -is that we are gonna be in trouble



The Earth has many problems because of man

this is undeniable ,how much we are responsible for Global warming is debateble ,But there is a definate change in Global temperatures that is affecting nature in a bad way.



this text only covers some aspects of Climate change ,i.e.effects of deforestation and subsequent man made desertification ,because of irresponsible farming using chemicals ,over pumping carbon aquifers,over grazing ,wild fires (because of slash and burn gone out of control)



water and air polution such as caused by

industrial contamination ,the contaminating effects of the cities(the internal combustion engine) ,are other stories,



and all of these are also man made ,such as the high industrial chimneys pumping contamination into the clouds and the burning of tires,some of this polution has been found in the ice in the polar regions



there are natural cycles in the planets life

but a lot is influenced by mans existance ,and this is increasing with overpopulation,putting strains on Natural resources and increasing contaminations as well as destructions of essential componants the ensure living conditions for all life forms



the thinner ozone layer helps to speed this up.and this is caused mainly by air polution ,also as a result of mans actions



in North Africa,India,Mexico ,millions of people are effected by land loss and desertification and some have died as a result,



And now many animals are becoming sick because of changes in temperature ,

vital links in the food chains are disapearing affecting other species further along in the chain



90% of the feral (wild) bee population in the United States has died out.



In the Netherlands bee diversity is down 80 percent in the sites researched, and "bee species are declining or have become extinct in Britain."



wildflowers that depend on pollination have dropped by 70 percent



we are witness to a mass exstinction ,for the first time since the dinosaurs, of the earth's estimated 10 million species, 300,000 have vanished in the past 50 years. each years, 3,000 to 30,000 species become extinct.



everything is happening so fast it is not possible to monitor things any more.



,the Sahara is growing by 7 kilometers a year

and most of the desserts we know are a results of mans actions ,and they are increasing ,not getting less ,in the dinosaurs days ,there were few desserts.



collectively this planet is drying up ,



each degree rise in temperature means 10%crop loss



and there is less and less water (because of deforestation),to irrigate this production ,

and there are less and less farmers to do it..

Arable lands and their farms are lost all over the globe. Many farmers sons abandon farming and head for the cities.



Northern China is drying up, what once were millions of food producing people, are now hungry refugees ,running for their lives from the all consuming dust storms.

This will have a great effect on world food prices when they start buying at what ever cost, to feed their people.



The farmers that are left have to feed some 70 million more people than the year before but with less topsoil.



Over the last half century,

Population growth & rising incomes have tripled world grain demand from 640 million tons to 1,855 million



In the near future the global farming community will not be able to feed every body ,food prices will continue to rise. .



RISING SEAS

The northpole is melting ,and we will know it without ice in our life times.

this does not affect the sea level because it is ice that is already in the water.but the melting ice from Green land and the south pole ,are another matter



here are a 100 ways to help

http://www.eco-gaia.net/forum-pt/index.p... Source(s) http://www.greenpeace.org/international/...



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natur... Source(s) Lester E Brown is the director and founder of the global institute of Environment in the United states .he has compiled a report based on all the satalite information available from NASA,and all the information that has

come from Universities and American embassies WORLD WIDE ,

his little book--a planet under stress , Plan B has been trans lated into many languages and won the best book award in 2003

Answer 36

anything is possible....but i'm sure the population and pollution we emit isn't helping things either.

Answer 37

it is, but we humans are making it a lot worse

Answer 38

Yes. However, we are contributing to it and making it that much worse.

Answer 39

The theory of man-made global warming is false. Anyone who believes otherwise has not investigated the evidence or is purposely remaining ignorant to the legitimate opposition to global warming. I have given up an one and a half hours to watch “An Inconvenient Truth” so I ask you to do the same and watch the movie detailing the opposition.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4499562022478442170&q=great+global+warming+swindle.

And another video for those of you short on time: http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=3

Some more general resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy

http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=4

http://www.john-daly.com/



CO2 is not causing the globe to warm the opposite is true, the warming is increasing the atmospheric CO2. When the world heats it gradually increases the temperature of the oceans which serve as the largest CO2 sink. As the oceans heat up they release CO2 which is stored in them. The information comes from the same data Al Gore uses, the temperature always goes up before the concentration of CO2 goes up.

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/ninelieslaunch.pdf#search=%22vostok%20figure%20125%22

This is the entire record of temperature verses CO2 record. This is the same data used by Al Gore but anyone with a fifth grade education can see that temperature rises before CO2:

http://vortex.plymouth.edu/atmosphere/IceCores1.gif

The global warming crowd tends to hind this graph, they will only show graphs of the last 20 or so years in which CO2 appears to cause a temperature increase. However when you look at the full data set you see that the current warming trend is not the result of CO2, CO2 rises after temperature. The global warming crowd uses the zoomed in graph to mislead you also they tend to use thick lines on the graph so you can’t make out what rises first. As you can see the temperature rises first and then CO2 starts to skyrocket, that’s why graphs of only 20 years seem to show CO2 leading temperature.





CO2 makes up only .03% of our atmosphere. Water vapor, another greenhouse gas, makes up 1-4% of our atmosphere, this gas is acknowledged to be the main greenhouse gas. All human activities combined contribute only 6 Gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year. Animals, through respiration, decomposition, etc contribute 150 Gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere. So humans contribute only a small amount of CO2 to the atmosphere which is already in very small concentrations in the atmosphere.

http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/science.html This is where my data came from, it is an interesting site, it displays the same graphics as Al Gore in his movie but it tells how low the human contribution is. So Al Gore is using the same data but coming to a different conclusion, who do you want to believe a politician with no scientific training or the NASA CO2 laboratory, a group of scientists who spend their entire careers studying CO2.



We know the greenhouse effect is real it is a necessary effect to keep our planet at a habitable temperature. However if our current warming is due to greenhouse gasses it would cause warming in the troposphere , but the troposphere is actually getting cooler.

http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/temperature/. That points to other explanations to our current warming.



So what is causing our current warming, it is the sun.

http://web.dmi.dk/solar-terrestrial/space_weather/

http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2003/split/642-2.html

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060926_solar_activity.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/08/040803093903.htm

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/17jan_solcon.htm

http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=900

The fact that only the earth’s surface is warming points to direct heating from the sun rather than heating due to greenhouse gasses. Also other planets in our solar system are warming pointing to a common cause of warming, that common cause being the sun.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/070312_solarsys_warming.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mgs-092005.html

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mgs-092005-images.html

Another theory is that ocean currents play a role

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2000-03/UoCS-Nrol-1903100.php



The global warming crowd says our glaciers are melting and animals will suffer this is another false claim.

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N46/EDIT.jsp

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA235.html

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/



The global warming crowd also insists our seas are rising due to global warming, however this is not entirely correct. Seas in certain areas are rising, there is no global sea rise. The seas have been rising ever since the last ice age: http://globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Holocene_Sea_Level_png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png

These two sources show that sea level increase now has actually leveled off from a very steep rise for the past 20 thousand years. For proof of this look here:

http://www.climateark.org/articles/1999/markhotd.htm

A mark left by Sir James Clark Ross, an Antarctic explorer, in 1841 is still visible. Not only that but the mark was placed in 1841 to show how high the sea was, not only is the mark visible it is 30cm above current sea levels. Now it is possible that the mark was placed at high tide and the picture taken at low, but even then the mark would still be above current sea levels. The seas have risen dramatically over the past thousand years not due in any part to us. If you want proof of that take a look at one of the dozens of ancient underwater cities that spot the globe. When these cities were built they were on land now they are deep underwater: http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2004/s1107203.htm

This shows a dramatic increase in sea level during human time but long before the world became industrialized.



The global warming crowd also claims a scientific consensus on the issue, this is wrong in two ways. One, there is no consensus, this is a false claim to make you believe in global warming by suppressing the opposition. http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

Second, even if there was a consensus it would mean nothing, science is not politics, you don’t vote on theories to determine their legitimacy.

Here’s 21 pages of websites that disagree with global warming.

http://www.climatechangedebate.org/documents/CCD_read.pdf

The thought that the only scientists who disagree with global warming are paid by oil companies is simply a stupid statement with no reality. This is the most illogical argument by people in support of global warming. Aside from being completely false it begs another question: Who pays global warming supporters? The answer is big environmental agencies that make millions off of global warming each year by teaching, publishing books, and selling environmentally clean products.



The IPCC is the main supporter of global warming, their statements are defended blindly by people who don’t want to admit that global warming is not real. People will claim that they took into account natural sources of CO2, they didn’t. Take a look for yourself:

http://www.ipcc.ch/activity/srccs/index.htm. That is the latest IPCC report, read the entire report, do a search of the documents, there is absolutely no mention of natural sources of CO2. The natural sources have been completely ignored. Also people will claim that the IPCC took the sun into account in their report, this is not entirely correct, while the sun is mentioned the report it’s effects have not been accurately represented.

http://www.john-daly.com/forcing/moderr.htm. The IPCC did not take into account the Svensmark factor. This would greatly reduce the effect of solar radiation on the earth. Look back up to the solar resources to see the effect of the sun correctly represented.

Also allegations have been by IPCC scientists who disagreed with the IPCC statements. They say that their research was censored or taken out of the IPCC report. This is not the first time the IPCC has lied, they forged the famous “hockey stick” graph, which later resulted in a reissuing of the IPCC report.

Here’s another source that disagrees with the IPCC: http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/Sept1004GlobalWarmingPG.pdf

And another: http://www.sepp.org/Archive/NewSEPP/ipccreview.htm

And another: http://www.john-daly.com/guests/un_ipcc.htm



Quotes form politicians, CEO’s, and others are not proof of global warming, they issue these statements to get votes and customers. Scientists are able to get published and get time on the media by supporting global warming. The IPCC continually lies and misrepresents data so they keep their jobs.



In regards to the precautionary principle that says we can only help if we switch over to alternative energy, this idea is not correct. While this may seem legitimate it only helps the first world, third world countries can not afford to switch to the more expensive energy options. Also the US currently spends 4 billion dollars a year on global warming research which could be better spent on research for disease or to fight poverty. For an excellent example of how the precautionary principle is harmful you do not need to look further than DDT. This pesticide was cheap and incredibly effective but it was banned because of it harmful effects on egg shells. Now thousands of people die every year in third world countries because of malaria, a disease that could be easily controlled with DDT.



I hope anyone who believes in global warming they will take a look at the resources I provided. These resources should convince you that global warming is not man-made, it is caused by cycles in the earths climate. If you are not convinced I hope you at least take a new look at global warming as an unproven idea. Remember that global warming is big business for anyone who aligns themselves with it.



I could not go this entire post without mentioning global cooling.

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

http://www.michaelkubacki.com/cooling.htm

In the 1970’s it was claimed that there was a consensus on the fact that the world was headed into an ice age. We have seen once before how damaging a false claim about our climate change can be to our world. Most of the global warming crowd does not want you to know about this scare because it is so similar to the scare today. Government panels were formed and claimed the world was headed to an ice age, evidence poured in supporting the claim, a consensus was claimed, then the whole issue just faded away. That is what will happen with the false scare of global warming.