Global Warming Real Opinions?

Question

I personally believe it is all fake I mean its not that the earth is suddenly having a big change in climate its just that the last 750,000 years have been relatively unchanged in climates. I mean we have had many many warming and ice ages in the history of the earth and I'm pretty sure we didn't have cars back then to cause that. And 20 years ago everyone was convinced the earth was going to cool. I think its just a scam.

Answer 1

Its more a case that the science has been cherry picked to fit a environmentalist ideal or political assertion i.e. GS Callenders fudged co2 reconstruction over more accurate chemical gas analysis. You only need to look at the many peer reviewed papers, the earths geological record and current climate history so see man has little influence at best. This doesnt dismiss the greenhouse effect but highlights that much more work is required to first better understand the natural systems. It also doesnt mean we cant reduce our use of fossil fuels anyways.



If you actually look at the facts the case for AGW is weak but is instead presented to us as solid and boosted by dubious media releases such as "polar bears drowning" (ignoring the fact they can swim long distances and the numbers have increased recently), "arctic ice at all time low" (ignoring the fact that a warm current is currently passing through the area driven by changes in wind pattern) , Al Gores movie and all its mistruths etc... using a dedunked graph, not stating co2 FOLLOWS warming etc...



Its rubbish like this that makes many smell a rat, as some of the stories we hear defy the earths history and even common sense in many cases.



Of the IPCC scientists and reviewers surveyed only 20% thought co2 was the primary driver of current warming, yet the IPCC summary states that co2 is the main driver over the last 50 years using words like "very likely" this is politics as no one with any common sense will say they are 100% right based on assumptions and unproven models!



I was amazed that as much as 20% could agree with such a rediculous statement, what drove the climate before man if man is the primary driver?



Also of note, a survey in Canada found "An overwhelming majority of the public nonetheless does not believe that the causes of climate change have been fully identified or that the debate has been settled. By a more than 4:1 margin, the public calls upon the media to provide more multi-sided reporting on the issue."



A similar survey in the UK found 56% of people were skeptical of AGW science (see the BBC link below and the pro AGW take on it).



Obviously there is a large portion of the general public that is skeptical (as is also seen on yahoo answers) so skeptics are not a minority but possibly even a majority (in some countries anyways), they are just not heard over the environmental scare stories and the scientists following the politcal drum beat..

Answer 2

The current world temperature as of 2005 seems very mild and comfortable but for some reason the believers think the colder 1885 temps were more ideal and so we continue to disagree about the climate ideal. Some like it warm and toasty and some like it cold and chilly! Global warming as advertised is a fraudulent hoax designed to extract money in the form of higher prices from the pockets of the consumer. Global warming or as they are switching to climate change is a natural cycle that the earth goes through due to the variability of the sun. Since high school in the early 1950s when our teachers in history and geography coordinated the ages of the earth and historical records relating to the variability of climate from solar variation and orbital variability. We dealt with mostly the Roman warm period around the time of Christ and the MWP through the little ice age and the effects on civilization and population from climate change. It was also noted that there was a very sudden climate spike around the year 1600 between two solar minimums when it went from little ice age to very hot and back to ice age in a little less than 100 years. I have seen this documented a couple of times but it is hard to find because it blows the AGW hypotheses clean out of the water. Also the current optimum is well under the three previous optimums and might only be another hot spike between ice age minimums.



1000 years ago the Arctic Ocean was free enough of ice for the Vikings and Inuit to navigate the coasts of Canada and Russia both directions from Greenland. It was to see and verify these records that Columbus visited both Scotland and Iceland around 1490 before his voyage to the Americas to verify. He was told that the northwest and north east passages were not open in the summer months as they had been when Leif Ericson and others had explored them several hundred years earlier. So he took the southern route that was warmer even though it meant bucking contrary winds and currents.

But then again the MWP lasted almost 600 years and the Roman one about 400 while our current cooler one has barely lasted 150 years and shows strong signs of potential cooling and has never really been that stable like the earlier ones. During the Second World War we had huge fleets of supply ships working in the arctic to supply Russia with war materials to fight Germany with.



NASA is already changing all the materials that Hansen altered to reflect true temperatures and this will make a major change by lopping .5C off the world temps like they already have with the US records. The sun is 99.99% of the warming and cooling of the earth, turn the sun down a little and things get cold, turn it up and things get warm. It is just that simple and easy to understand. Those who promote the AGW hypotheses know this but for religious and political reasons prefer to blame industrialization for the changes in climate. The believers just love to cherry pick old outdated materials instead of the latest revised material that has been fixed!



http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.D.lrg.gif



http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.C.lrg.gif

Answer 3

linlyons: "Al Gore often used the worst case scenario. The IPCC reports more often use the best case scenario. The truth is somewhere between them." How do you know it is somewhere in between? I'm sure Al Gore would say six million Jews were killed by the Nazis. And Holocaust Deniers would say the number was zero. So being the "moderate" that you are, to be consistent, you would need to conclude that 3 million were killed. Edit Raison: "Al Gore has said some silly things like 25 feet increases in ocean level, but does not go into how he arrived at such numbers." You were expecting he should write out the calculations? You have probably been told by some teacher that the Earth orbits the Sun in an approximately elliptical path. Have you ever seen the calculation as to why it is elliptical? So then how come you are not claiming that is some silly trick by Al Gore or whoever? I think you should challenge that. I think you should argue that maybe it is the Sun that orbits the Earth.

Answer 4

Most people understand that there has been much more drastic climate changes in the past. That is not the issue, however. The issue is our influence that is tipping the scale in an unnatural direction. What the concern is that we are throwing climate change into overdrive, which can essentially cause drastic change much sooner than expected. What you have to ask yourself is that if humans didn't blast from a few million people to 6.7 billion people in about a century, and didn't throw a bunch of excess CO2 into the atmosphere, would there be any difference in what's happening now. It is just way more logical to assume we are having an affect.



Basically no scientists ever said that humans are the only thing that can cause global warming. Not even close. Experts are well aware of the history of climate change, trust me. It's how they get their calculations and comparisons. If it wasn't for the understanding of the history of climate change, there would be no way to make conclusions of our influence on today's climate...

Answer 5

I personally am with you. If you consider that the earth is not a perfect circle this influences the spin...during the revolutionary war we went thru was referred to as a little ice age.....thus the appauling conditions our soldiers faced. They state that we are in a warming phase yet, in Maine where I live we had 127 inches of snow fall last winter.

The expedition to the artic to check on glacial decrease had to turn back as the conditions were too severe...they all had frost-bite.

Granted there have been climate changes, but I would expect this to be a normal cyclical occurance due to the natural tilt of the earth. Reduction of pollutants is of course good irregardless, but I do not subsrcibe to the notion that we as a whole have caused all the problems with the planet. I am not that arrogent.

Answer 6

You know what, i'm not going to trust any websites, or any theories from anyone anymore.

You know why, cause every month i see people are coming up with one crap sh** of theory saying that this is the cause, no that is the cause. Nowadays no one can tell exactly whats happening. Even the scientists don't understand what is real and what explanation to give.



About global warming, recently i read somewhere that all the reason given for global warming is B S cause not only earth is warming up, but all the planets have shown significant increase in temperature.



Now how's that?

Answer 7

More pollutants have been released by one small volcanic eruption than humans have ever released all the way back to the 1st caveman making a fire.

95% of all carbon dioxide and other green house gases come from water evaporating, then about 2-3% for dead animal bodies rotting. Then 1.28% from all the humans' factories, cars and ect.

So if 98% of all green house gases have been being released since the beginning of time how could we have made such a big difference in a few hundred with our cars?

Global Warming is a lie thought of by democrats to make people think they are the good guys.

And Al Gore choose selected scientists for his fake statistics.

People need to do their own research and thank you for asking this question.

Answer 8

It is all a scam. Weather people can't even forecast the weather 3 days in advance. I love how they came up with a global temperature. What are they using for a basis temperature? Considering most weather stations 50 years ago, didn't have accurate accounts for weather. Plus most of those stations don't exist anymore.

Los Angeles Basin had the coolest summer on record, with no days above 100 degrees. People forget that when you replace dirt and trees with blacktop and cement, that raises the temperature for the area.

But that is never accounted for. I blame Gore for all this nonsense. He didn't get to be President, so he made up some crap, and got some Hollywood wackos to believe it, and the funny part, is some of them actually blamed George Bush for it.

Answer 9

It's a case of politicians backing the idea because it supports what they wanted to do anyway.



In the 1980's Margret Thatcher was an avid supporter of the idea of global warming. Her government made funds available for pseudo scientific research into global warming to help justify the building of nuclear reactors and the closing of coal mines.



Lately, governments have found that global warming is a convenient justification for fuel taxes and electricity taxes.

Answer 10

100 month limit before Global Warming irreversible according to Alexander Sims article. No commercial jets or major use of fossil fuels or millions of cars in time before. Neanderthals and others after not known to drive cars.Oil burns in car engines and then there is a release of Green House Gases this according to elementary school texts is how the process works. What people are doing is burning oil in cars.

Answer 11

I believe that global warming is a lie. As you said the earth has been heating and cooling for centuries. And also the surface of mars is heating too are our cars the cause of that? I don't think so.

Answer 12

Global warming is just the latest in a string of alarmist ideas.

The Y2K bug, bird flu, the nuclear holocaust we were supposed to have, the ice age in the 70's, the exaggeration of 3 Mile Island, the severity of CFC's, the supposed oil shortages, the Large Hadron Collider, the economic depression, Mad Cow Disease, the severity of second hand smoke, the severity of DDT, the idea that eating too much will make you fat. All are excellent examples of alarmism and the way humans are persuaded to accept ideas without thinking. This society of ours where we are irrationally ruled by fear is terrible. The western world did not rise to prominence because we thought the sky was falling. No. We rose to power because of our rational, scientific thinking. We did not let the 'Chicken Littles' of society take control and stymie our success. So the same should be of today. It is time to put a stop to the scaremongering tactics of Greenpeace etc, who in my mind pose a greater threat than any terrorist organization. But I divert.

You're right in that we have had many warming/cooling periods in the past but you're wrong where you say that we haven't had them in the last 750,000 years. That is just rediculous. Climate changes all the time. The last proper ice age was 10,000 years ago for instance. But it's not just major shifts in temperature. The world's climate has gone up and down for thousands of years since the last ice age. Starting with the Holocene optimum from 9,000 years ago to 5,000 years ago. Then it went down. Then up. Then down. Then up during the Mediaeval Warm Period you hear so much about. Then down during the Little Ice Age. Now it's going back up again. Can anybody tell me how this is different from the past. Why is this particular warming both caused by us and a bad thing. Warming has never been bad in the past. With warmer climates come more food from agriculture and less disease, poverty and starvation. Also, reptiles, amphibeans and other cold-blooded creatures can thrive better in warmer climes. So now we've established that:

1. we are not the cause of climate change

2. warming would be good for the world while cooling would be detrimental.



Therefore CO2 is not to blame. It has been framed if you will. But surely, you say, CO2 is still bad for the environment and us thus we should not emit it, after all if you breathe CO2 you will die. Not so. CO2 is actually beneficial for the environment because plants use it to respirate. If tree-huggers really care about what they were hugging they would emit as much CO2 as possible to help their leafy friends. Since more CO2 means more plantlife, this in turn will lead to more animal life creating more biodiversity. Not only this but if plants can grow better then our crops will do well too. Goodbye world hunger. In fact emitting CO2 is like giving farmers free fertilizer. Now I believe that in Africa there is a lot starvation. Could you be so mean as to deny these poor, impoverished, 3rd world countries a chemical which would improve crop yields? It's an abomination that these environmentalists would put nature before their own species. This sort of treachery should be illegal. They would accord nature with more rights than humans if they could. Just look at the Narmada Dam incident. The Indian government were going to build a series of dams to provide hundreds of thousands of impoverished Indians with fresh, clean water and electricity. Greenpeace and other such criminal groups petitioned the World Bank (who was funding the project) to withdraw. Under tremendous pressure they did. One of the points raised by these econazis was that many tribal villages would be displaced. Never mind that:

1. the dispaced people were to be given land to farm elsewhere for free

2. most of these tribal people wanted the dam to go ahead

And never mind that Greenpeace itself displaced 25,000 tribal people to make way for a tiger reserve to name one incident.

I'm getting a little sidetracked here I just realized.

The point is that CO2 is not detrimental to the planet. This chemical is non-toxic so as long as the concentration isn't too high we'll be fine. Yes I know if you breathe just CO2 you will die but that's because if you're breathing CO2 you're not breathing oxygen. The coal and oil reserves were mostly layed down during the Carboniferous Period. You may notice the word carbon in Carboniferous and that is for a good reason. During the early part of this period, the world was covered - and I mean covered - in trees. The soil beneath the foliage was boggy thus providing perfect conditions for coal to form. As this period dragged on, the trees sucked carbon out of the air in the form of CO2 and retained it. After the tree died, it was buried in the marsh and the carbon was trapped for 100's of millions of years forming coal. Therefore we can safely say that the level of carbon dioxide dropped significantly during the Carboniferous Period. Did this drop in CO2 cause some cooling? No, the world grew even hotter as it entered the Permian Period. At this time the world was just a vast, arid desert. Therefore, again, CO2 cannot be responsible for warming. Today when we burn coal, we are just putting the carbon back into the carbon cycle where it belongs. In fact we are at one of the lowest levels in CO2 in history. Don't you think we ought to let the plants (especially our crops) have their carbon back?

I do.

Answer 13

Maybe this whole global warming concept is to get us to pollute less, irregardless if it is real or not........



I mean if people believe that global warming is going to warm the planet and ruin the world, people will try to do things about it, like conserve energy. I know it has had significant effects you can see everywhere. Saying its not real is like saying its ok to pollute as much as you want. There is much more good being done out of this than bad.

Answer 14

I also believe that global warming is a scam. Is there enough of us to form a consensus?

Answer 15

Introduction



The phrase global warming refers to the documented historical warming of the Earth's surface based upon worldwide temperature records that have been maintained by humans since the 1880s. The term global warming is often used synonymously with the term climate change, but the two terms have distinct meanings. Global warming is the combined result of anthropogenic (human-caused) emissions of greenhouse gases and changes in solar irradiance, while climate change refers to any change in the state of the climate that can be identified by changes in the average and/or the variability of its properties (e.g., temperature, precipitation), and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the decade of 1998-2007 is the warmest on record. The global mean surface temperature for 2007 is currently estimated at 0.41°C/0.74°F above the 1961-1990 annual average of 14.00°C/57.20°F. WMO states that among other remarkable global climatic events recorded in 2007, a record-low Arctic sea ice extent was observed which led to first recorded opening of the Canadian Northwest Passage.



Causes of Global Warming



In the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report scientists conclude that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level" and, furthermore, they conclude with "very high confidence (at least a 9 out of 10 chance of being correct) that the globally averaged net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming" of the Earth's climate system.

As with every environmental variable, there are multiple factors that contribute to the "warmth" of the Earth. Humans measure warmth as temperature which is a measure of the amount of heat contained in a physical object. One can envision this concept by thinking of a pot on a stove. As heat is applied to the pot from a flame or heating element, the temperature of the pot will increase. But heat will also begin escaping the pot in the form of steam and also through radiative and convective cooling from the top and the sides of the pot. Eventually the rates of both heat loss (cooling) and heat gain (warming) may stabilize and the heat then contained within the pot at an instantaneous point of time would be reflected in an equilibrium temperature. This equilibrium temperature could be measured directly but it also could be calculated by determining all of the flux rates of heat entering (heating) and leaving (cooling) the pot.



One way that climate scientists look at the warmth of the Earth's climate system is to calculate the annual average temperature of the surface of the Earth using temperature measurements systematically collected throughout the year from thousands of land- and ocean-based weather and observation stations. The observed trends in the Earth's annual average temperature is one of the factors leading to the scientific conclusion that the Earth is now in a period of global warming.



In order to attempt to answer why the Earth is currently warming, scientists have conducted accountings of each of the fluxes of heat into (warming) and out of (cooling) the Earth's climate system. Since the measured data show that annual average temperatures of the Earth have been increasing in recent decades, the year-to-year annual flux of heat into the climate system must be greater than the annual flux of heat out of the system. By accounting for each of the fluxes of heat into and out of the system, scientists are able to assess which fluxes and processes are contributing to net annual warming of the Earth's surface. By conducting such accountings, scientists are able to quantify the influence that each natural and human factor has in altering the balance of incoming and outgoing energy in the Earth-atmosphere system and can calculate an index of the importance of each of the factor as a potential climate change mechanism. Each of the factors are called climate drivers and the relative impact or index of each factor's importance to climate change is called its radiative forcing.

Finally, an increase in solar irradiance since 1750 was estimated to have caused a forcing that contributed to the recent warming of the Earth. However, the impact of the increase in the amount of sunlight striking the Earth each year during this ~250 year time span was estimated to be only about 1/20th of the warming impacts of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

Answer 16

This question was answered most eloquently by Jonathan Renouf in the Guardian newspaper's "Comment is Free" column yesterday, Thursday 2 October.



Please follow the link below and weigh up the experiences of someone who really has researched this subject from all sides.

Answer 17

i am only 16 years old but am seriously worried. No one understand that this will not only effect the animals but my generation and the ones to come. The government is to stupid to see that our enviorment problems are as just as big as are econimic problems. Sarah palin doesn't even believe in global warming and even her own people protest against her. What will we do if she becomes are future president. This world needs to do something now and i want someone who can make this happen read this. PLEASE and i am a total animal lover and to think that more then half our mammals and 96 percent of are sea animals will be dead.. its horrible. Methane is being released from the sea ground today! These methane gases not only kill aquatic animals but *** green house gases to out atmosphere which will ruin it! This was one of the causes of the mass extinction 250,000 years ago! If we don't do something now we can not reverse this global warning please people ACT!

Answer 18

GLOBAL WARMING IS A FARCE! we are actually going into global FREEZING.......the sun is shrinkin every 5 minutes.......does it make sense that we ae going into global warming...or freezing...lets think logically for a second..

Answer 19

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/HANSEN.JPG



http://icecap.us/images/uploads/MSUCRUCO2.jpg



Temperatures have been trending downward recently and have failed to meet past warming predictions.

Answer 20

Don't listen to the Limbaugh's, Palin's, conspiracy theorists, and devil advocates arguements. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that global warming is real.

Answer 21

answer mine please http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_