Why do we think people are causing global warming?

Question

The icecaps on Mars have been retreating recently too. Do the two Mars rovers emit THAT much CO2, or maybe the Earth gets warmer when the sun flares up?

Why spend trillions trying to undo nature when we could spend that money to relocate effected people?

Answer 1

Just to respond to a few things which reveals problems with the global warming case. I'll just take a few passages from a previous post to show the problem with some of their claims.

“Coal emits around 1.7 times as much carbon per unit of energy”

Notice that it does not say carbon dioxide yet it does imply it. The emitted carbon is probably soot which is cleaned in scrubbers.


“While carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas”

This is the biggest deception of all
From wikipedia water vapor as greenhouse gas.
. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas
Water vapor is a natural greenhouse gas and accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect. Water vapor concentrations fluctuate regionally, but human activity does not directly affect water vapor concentrations except at very local scales

“methane is second most important.”

Methane will only last a few years in the atmosphere where it turns into CO2. It is produced naturally and there are no good studies that I know of that demonstrates much is emitted naturally from the environments.


“Deforestation is responsible for 25% of all carbon emissions entering the atmosphere, by the burning and cutting of about 34 million acres of trees each year”

Fires are a natural, obviously. Forests burn cyclically. Human intervention has only mad the matters worse and resulting in forest fires burn more thoroughly.

Global warming is more about politics and emotion and not science (IMO).

Everyone does not agree that CO2 is responsible for temperature. There is a theory which states the reverse that high temperature results in high CO2 levels, just for the record.

Answer 2

Because The Scientific Community agree it is
caused by Irresponsible use of the earth and its contents.
If anyone doubts this, they should read Al Gores book
"An Inconvenient Truth", or go to see the movie of the same name.

One part of this problem is not talked about, very much.
That is: Because of the Clear Cutting, and the Burning
of Forests, World Wide, Trees are being lost at an alarming rate, and the forests are not being replanted.
There is an Chemical imbalance in our Atmosphere,
in which CO2 is being added to the atmosphere but
trees are emitting less and less Oxygen.

Trees maintain the balance of chemicals in the atmosphere because tree absorb CO2, and emit Oxygen.
It is good to lower emission standards from autos, but
it does nothing to replace Oxygen.

One other thing I don't see in publications or stated on TV
is how bad the effect is on the human body. Not just
from a reduced amount of Oxygen in the Atmosphere,
which can cause all kinds of breathing problems, but
the higher overall temperature will become harder and harder on the body. Sun burn, heat stroke, etc.

Maybe the excess Ultra Violate Rays will cause more damage to the Eyes.

Of course dry weather and heat makes forest fires
quicker to start and harder to put out. This just makes
the situation worse.

A solution to much of the problem is to stop Clear
Cutting of forests, and Replant the Forests with trees,
immediately.

There are more things that can be done to help with
this problem but I don't want to "Turn Anyone" off.
Just believe that "Global Warming" is a real threat to the existence of Mankind.

Answer 3

There's a lot of evidence. Data on CO2 and temperature in the last 50 years goes in step. 99+% of climate scientists think that manmade global warming is a serious and increasing problem. Only a few disagree, and they are considered flat wrong.

It will cost less to fix it than to deal with flooded coastal areas and disruptions to agriculture caused by shifting temperature and precipitation patterns. In poor countries, many people will starve unless the already burdened rich countries help them.

EDIT:

The statement below (99%...) is absurd beyond belief. It's the other way around:

"Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case."

"Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect."

All scientific articles in peer reviewed journals that contained the words "climate change" from 1993-2003 were surveyed. 928 of them. The number of articles that said global warming was not happening.

Zero.

Reference for the above:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

The scientific community has reached a consensus. Global warming is real.

Answer 4

At the moment it is popular to blame everything on human activities, especially the burning of gasoline in SUVs.

To put things in perspective. Around the world there are thousands of uncontrolled coal fires burning both above and below ground. Very little is being done about controlling these. Some have been started by man, some have started naturally as a result of bush or forest fires.

The oldest underground coal fire is in Australia and has been burning for an estimated 5,500 to 6,000 years.

The largest fire is in the north of China and is 450 miles wide and 3,000 miles long. It burns an estimated 120 million tons of coal a year and produces 360 million tons of CO2 per year. That is about the same amount of CO2 as all the motor vehicles in the US combined.

As well as CO2, these fires push various sulfur compounds and soot particles into the atmosphere.

Answer 5

99% of scientists do not believe in global warming. Many are starting to look and the facts and trends reaching farther back then 50 years and realize that the earth goes through cycles. Right now we are repeating a warming cycle that was last recorded 400 years ago. Well, since we did not have any co2 emitting machines that far back, what is the answer? Simple, the earth goes through cycles. The only thing we are doing is polluting our environment and sealing our fate. The planet was here long before us and will be here long after we are gone. Don't believe the media hype blindly. Please check things out.

Answer 6

Everyone agrees that the measured levels of carbon dioxide in the air are now far, far above what they have been for at least the last 400,000 years and probably longer. And everyone also agrees that is the result of people burning coal, oil and natural gas. Oil companies agree with that. George Bush agrees with that. EVERYBODY agrees with that. The only disagreement is if this will cause significant warming or just minor warming. I don't know of anybody who says it will cause no warming at all.

Answer 7

Didn't know mars had ice caps. Or any water at all presently. Ya a volcano produces more harmful gases to the ozone than it would be possible (alledgedly for men to produce in recent history). It's not so much saving the earth as saving ourselves.

Answer 8

Your avatar looks angry. He may be smoking too much weed. Global warming is a fact. Don't listen to Rush Limbaugh. He's not a scientist; he's an idiot. It has been proved that the ozone layer is being slowly depleted. When it's gone, the warming will be the least of our worries. We'll need to wear lead lined underwear just so we can reproduce.

Answer 9

It is a fact that co2 levels are higher now then they have been for millions of years--this kind of rules out normal cyclical variation that occurs between ice ages; the most plausible cause of the elevated co2 levels is us humans.

Answer 10

you might not think this but the people here on earth may be putting pressure on the sun... by pounding the ground down with their feet...
we are also warm blooded and respire hot gasses so i guess we could be attracted to the other side of the sun, if that makes sense and yeah not like you know this,
but no one listens anymore, so ha there, then you go believing what does get through!?