What specific data can we compare to, to prove people are causing global warming?

Question

Meaning, scientist state that in the last 10-15 years, the earth's atmosphere has heated up. How do we know that this temperature warming is or is not supposed to happen? What do scientists compare this warming to in order to back this theory up? How far does one go back to research temperatures on earth to back up this data?

Answer 1

We do not have enough scientific data to show that the current warming cycle is being adversely affected by man. The sun is the source of global warming. It always has been. Weather, on our planet, has been changing for 5 billion years. Scientists have at most 100 years of temperature data to look at.
Look at the weather in Northwestern Pennsylvania from 1976 to 1978. I was there. During one winter, there were record snow falls. During the next winter, there was record cold. People were looking for the start of an ice age.
Our weather changes every day. It will continue to change every day. Until man has infinite knowledge, which will be never, man will never be able to factor in the endless number of possibilities that affect climate. Several months ago, I watched a program on PBS wherein scientists were claiming that global warming was causing surface cooling. I got a head ache and shut it off.

Answer 2

It's pretty much impossible to prove cause and effect without a controlled experiment. Obviously we haven't done a controlled experiment with planetary weather, which is why global warming is still controverial. There are some basic facts though:
1. Some gasses, such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and water allow visible light to pass but block infrared light. This will cause them to act like a greenhouse in Earth's atmosphere.
2. Since the industrial revolution began, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere increased 40%.
3. During the 20th century, the average temperature of the Earth (as we measure it at the surface) increased by .6 degrees plus or minus .2 degrees.
Some people look at those three facts and think it's obvious that the earth is warming and pollution is the cause.

Answer 3

Scientists can conclude that due the amount of carbon in the air from human activities like driving, burning of materials has caused a greenhouse effect and trapped these chemicals in the atmosphere causing the planet to warm up. Scientists compare temperatures dating from the last 400,000+ years before all the human activity and all the cars and noticed a trend with the way the world was heating up in the 21st century with polar ice caps melting, the ocean heating up and the dramatic change in weather.

Answer 4

They not know why it is warming, so, the best thing is to blame it on something they can get media exposure from. See it more exciting to tell people it because of Cars or something that caters to some Freak Control Group like save the Mosquito Society.
When it probably just Fluctuations of the Earth around the Sun.
The Earth just go round and round
and wobble to and fro
it tilts and spins
and zigs and zags
this changes the weather you know!
Now it slide a little close
to the sun you see,
the weather warms
and people are concerned,
they not know the history.
It happened before and will again
this is just how it do.
But, Scientist blame it on me and you!
Tried to make a poem, hope you see what I say.

Answer 5

Actually, they can't. It's an assumption by SOME scientists, but not by all. In fact, some point to the sunspot cycle as the reason for global warming, plus the fact that were are (geologically speaking) just coming out of an ice age and into a warming cycle. The latter scientists can point to proofs in rock strata that we have gone through these periods before and are actually due for one in the next several thousand years (in geologic terms, any time now).

Answer 6

scientists in the polar caps can get ice cores which have a rough history of the atmosphere going back up to 800k years
"Ice cores contain an abundance of climate information. Inclusions in the snow of each year remain in the ice, such as wind-blown dust, ash, bubbles of atmospheric gas and radioactive substances. The variety of climatic proxies is greater than in any other natural recorder of climate, such as tree rings or sediment layers. These include (proxies for) temperature, ocean volume, precipitation, chemistry and gas composition of the lower atmosphere, volcanic eruptions, solar variability, sea-surface productivity, desert extent and forest fires"

Answer 7

They don't compare it to temperature increases over a long period of time. They just look at the last 10-15 years and freak out.

Answer 8

As long as men started farting!