Global Warming: fact or fiction?

Question

I just watched Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth", which is about global warming. I must say, I was impressed, or should I say worried, that global warming may actually be true.

However, I'm trying to scour the internet for more information. I found an anti-global warming website (see below). Are there any legitimate scientists out there who want to clarify the issue?

The main arguement the anti-global warming website makes is that nature produces 180 billion tons of CO2 a year, while human activity only increases that by 6 billion tons. Supposedly, that is insufficient to affect the climate.

However, Gore's movie shows considerable historical information about steadily rising temperatures and the amount of CO2 in the upper atmosphere.

What's the truth???

http://home.austarnet.com.au/yours/Dont_Believe_Global_Warming.html

http://home.austarnet.com.au/yours/Greenhouse_Bullcrap.htm

I've received a few really interesting responses, especially from: poortycoon_4 and mickdotcom.

Still, what worries me is ALL the indicators seem to be going in one direction. It looks like there is a direct correlation between the amount of CO2 and the rate of glacial disappearance.

What about the influence of plant life? Mickdotcom said that Alaskan Tundra takes in Oxygen and emits CO2. What about other types of vegetation. My understanding is that duuring the process of respiration, plants in the dark emit carbon dioxide. Plants in the light emit oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis.

Reagan made some funny quip once about plants and global pollution. I'll have to look that up.

Answer 1

It is thought by some geologists that the Earth experienced global warming in the early Jurassic period, with average temperatures rising by 5 °C. Research by the Open University published in Geology (32: 157–160, 2004 [59]) indicates that this caused the rate of rock weathering to increase by 400%. Rock weathering locks away carbon in calcite and dolomite, which are minerals with various degrees of carbon oxides. As a result of this, carbon dioxide levels dropped back to normal over roughly the next 150,000 years.

Sudden release of methane from clathrate compounds (the Clathrate Gun Hypothesis), has been hypothesized as a cause of past global warming. Two events possibly linked in this way are the Permian-Triassic extinction event and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. However, warming at the end of the last ice age is thought not to be due to methane release [60].

The greenhouse effect has also been invoked to explain how the Earth made it out of the Snowball Earth period. During this period all silicate rocks were covered by ice, thereby preventing them from combining with atmospheric carbon dioxide. The atmospheric carbon dioxide level gradually increased until it reached about 350 times current levels. At this point temperatures were raised to an average of 50 °C, hot enough to melt the ice. Increased amounts of rainfall would quickly wash the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Thick layers of abiotic carbonate sediment which can be found on top of the glacial rocks from this period are believed to have been formed by this rapid carbon dioxide removal process.

Using paleoclimate data for the last 500 million years (Veizer et al. 2000, Nature 408, pp. 698-701) concluded that long-term temperature variations are only weakly coupled to carbon dioxide variations. Shaviv and Veizer (2003, [61]) extended this by arguing that the biggest long-term influence on temperature is actually the solar system's motion around the galaxy. Afterwards, they argued that over geologic time a change in carbon dioxide concentrations comparable to doubling preindustrial levels, only results in about 0.75 °C warming rather than the usual 1.5-4.5 °C reported by climate models [62]. Veizer's recent work has been criticised by RealClimate.org [63].

Palaeoclimatologist William Ruddiman has argued (e.g. Scientific American, March 2005) that human influence on the global climate began around 8000 years ago with the development of agriculture. This prevented carbon dioxide (and later methane) levels falling as rapidly as they would have done otherwise. Ruddiman argues that without this effect, the Earth would be entering, or already have entered, a new ice age. However other work in this area (Nature 2004) argues that the present interglacial is most analogous to the interglacial 400,000 years ago that lasted approximately 28,000 years, in which case there is no need to invoke the spread of agriculture for having delayed the next ice age

Answer 2

Those "scientists" who say that global warming is not true are heavily funded by companies that have an interest in producing greenhouse gases (ie- power companies fund these scientists). Obviously, if your funding (which in turn is where your personal pay check comes from) comes from a company that wants to produce green house gases, you will say what the company wants you to say.

Almost ALL REPUTABLE scientists believe that global warming is true. I haven't seen Al Gore's movie, but I have been very interested in this issue personally. There are pictures of disappearing ice caps over time (see http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/qthinice.asp - I know that this group has an agenda as well, but it is the best picture that I could find; these pictures have been on the news too, so it's not just environmental groups claiming this). There are incidences of polar bears drowning because their habitats are being destroyed (this never happened before). The hurricanes have grown in size because of the warming oceans. Nature's patterns have changed (ie- habitats have started to move as the climate has changed). Global warming is true and it is scary. The more that I read, the more terrified that I become. Stephen Hawking may be right, we might need to move to other planets to avoid destroying ourselves (Stephen Hawking last week said, "The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy Earth.")

Answer 3

Ok, Truly, the earths average temperature has fluctuated by as much as 5 degrees in the past, now that was over 10 million years yes, but it has done it. The main point of the global warming argument is that it takes a long time to raise or lower the earths average temperature, but in the past 100 years, it has risen by about a degree fahrenheit. Small in respect to total amount of time and in temperature, but if it used to take 2 million years to change a degree or two, and now it is doing it in 1/100,000th of the time, then something obviously is wrong.

Answer 4

There's little question that the earth is warming up, and warming up quickly. However, there's also plenty of evidence that the earth has gone through repeated warmer and cooler cycles again and again and again through its history. Whether this period of warming is being caused by human intervention or not is impossible to tell, and frankly, it's not relevant.

IF the trend continues, and in all likelihood it will, then sea levels are going to rise and that's going to displace a lot of people. If human-caused pollution is behind global warming, then our problems are probably even bigger. Either way, the planet certainly does seem to be heating up, and that's that.

Answer 5

There is some global warming going on. It is due to green house gases(CO2). The state with the highest amount of CO2 gas emission is Alaska. This is due to the fact that Alaska, Canada and the northern countries have large amounts of Tundra. Tundra is a vegetation that takes in oxygen and gives of CO2.
Al Gore and other environmentalist don't point this out because it would mean spraying defoliant on large parts of Alaska and Canada. Talk about an inconvenient truth.

Gore, the famed inventor of the Internet, goes around on a private jet presenting his side of global warming. The people who believe in Gore will see his movie and be impressed by it. Those that don't agree with him won't see his movie.
As for me I have too many problems of my own to worry about global warming.

Answer 6

I'll tell u wat, u hav found one of most stupid URL on the net. global warming is a well known FACT & there is nothin fiction in it. if its fiction, the KYTO protocol wouldnt hav been launched detering the economic growth of the biggies like USA. n dnt u forget, the 180 billion of CO2 produced by nature is recycled by its own natural procees.
all those sci-fic movies are just over exaggeration.dont u worry.
if u still dont believe, u'll experience the heat in the decades to come.

Answer 7

I think you just about answered your own question. There is some debate on the facts, but when polar bears in the North start eating each other because their environment has changed so drastically.....we gotta wonder.

Answer 8

Will you please use common sense. How could it be possible that CO2 being much heavier than the components of our atmosphere magically rises defying gravity and stays suspended in a magical layer above the earth? Do you want to see a real "greenhouse layer?" look at a big city from a distance on a hot day see that smog layer? Look at the same area at 5AM...where is it? Did it go to Al Gore's magical layer in the sky by a process of Gorefusion? NO..it simply settled to the ground just like confetti would if you dropped it from a high building. Consider your source of information...Al Gore "I invented the Internet" I believe he is truly delusional. His old running mate Lieberman would not even be in the same room as he anymore.

Would it benefit all of us if these were no CO2 emissions? Of course...is it realistic? No....We can slowly cut down on emissions just as we are.

We are not effecting the global climate...We are simply too small in the grand scheme of things to have that effect (barring full scale nuclear exchange).

Answer 9

the problem is it can't be proven one way or another. the "globe" is so large that we would need probably need millenia of data to say whether what is happening now is natural or not. everything else is just speculation.

there probably is something to worry about, but i'd be wary of doomsday harbingers like al gore. politicians spin this both ways.

Answer 10

Earth has undergone climatic changes many times in its billion year history. with every climatic change some species of living beings have disappeared. the present global warming may be earths' attempt to wipe out or at least reduce the numbers of one species which has been procreating without any limits.