Is mans contribution to global warming a myth, just a cycle of earths own making?

Question

Is the changing size and density of the ozone layer caused by fossil fuels and pollution or is the change just a reflection of the cycle or changes in nature caused by nature itself.

Answer 1

I've answered this question about a million times now in some form or other....

The Earth is a complex and robust system that operates with a number of positive and negative feedback systems. This means that all the systems are interconnected and all the systems change through time.

What a lot of people miss is that humans are part of the system too. By virtue of our very existence, we change the environment.

The media has confused a lot of people about the climate-change/global warming situation. The fact is, we do know what causes global warming. Greenhouse gases like CO2. We also know that industry produces a large quantity of these gases. In fact the levels of CO2 in our atmosphere have more than doubled since the industrial revolution.

Now you can sit there and tell me that Earth changes the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere naturally, and you'd be right. But does it not seem like a huge coincidence that the increase in CO2 levels, and the onset of global warming are occurring together?

The Earth is warming naturally, but it doesn't take an Earth Scientist to work out that dumping huge volumes of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere is likely to make it worse. Pretending its nothing to do with humans doesn't mean we can afford to ignore that it's happening either!

Answer 2

It's probably not a myth, but it's not quite as concrete as most single-issue environmentalists would have us believe. The ozone layer has little to do with climate change (the correct term for "global warming" in the academic community). Rather, the theory purports that climate change is brought on by changing concentrations of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.

The fact is, no one knows for sure exactly what the deal is (so to speak) with climate change, so if anyone tells you otherwise, be very skeptical. The one thing most people can't argue with, however, that at least partially answers your question, is the relationship between human activity and greenhouse gases. While we don't know exactly what kind of an effect said gases will have on the global climate in any quantity or over any length of time, we do know that the vast majority of those gases that are currently in our atmosphere were put there through human activity. Carbon dioxide is naturally produced in small quantities by every aerobic organism, but burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and untold other human activities have increased CO2 concentrations by an incredible factor. The same goes for most other greenhouse gases, such as methane, and airborn nitrites and nitrates.

Answer 3

The overwhelming consensus is that human activity has caused climate change and changes in the ozone. You can find articles that disagree with this, but you won't find many of them in peer reviewed journals.

Peer reviewed journals are those like Nature or The New England Journal of Medicine in which scientists with qualifications equal to or better than those of the writer(s) challenge the article and it's findings; they look for mistakes, false claims, poor documentation, shoddy reasoning, etc. -- kind of like the toughest teachers you can ever imagine. Only those papers which receive a perfect "100%" from the peer review board members are published in these prestigious journals.

The type of magazine and newsletter you will find the "global warming is a myth" articles in is called "a review" or "a review of the literature". These publications don't have the peer review procedures and have much less strict standards for what they publish. For instance, a scientist may write an article or essay commenting on and criticizing the findings of other scientists, and if it is "good reading" a review will publish it.

Some of these "review" type magazines have an agenda besides to inform or to entertain. For instance, a magazine that is heavily funded by Exxon is more likely to run articles dismissing the idea of global warming then those supporting the idea.

The May/June edition of Progressive news magazine Mother Jones carries an article detailing how much of the "global warming is a myth" type "news" is funded by oil corporations.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/some_like_it_hot.html

Answer 4

My personal opinion which is not based on any scientific research is that while man does to some lessor extent contibute to global warming, the earth goes through its own natural cycle of events through the centuries and millenia.

Answer 5

I've been telling people a million times it's just a cycle of the Earth. Like the Ice Age, are you gonna blame the caveman for that because they shot animals? PLEASE! The Earth goes through changes, it's totaly natural stuff!

Answer 6

Just ask Al Gore...he knows everything. (No Scientific backing but, still, he knows everything.) We owe so much to him...after inventing the Internet, he is now brainwashing us with symbolism instead of giving us substance.

Answer 7

Well you have to ask the EGG HEADS what we did to cause the ICE AGE...

Then maybe we would know...

Answer 8

Nobody can prove that cigarettes cause lung cancer ether.