Is global warming caused by people(industrialization), or is it a result of nature?

Answer 1

Good question. Nature does contribute in the increase of atmospheric green house gases on the atmosphere. One good example would be, volcanic eruptions which give off large amounts of carbon dioxide, methane and other gaseous substances with heat trapping properties. However after the industrial revolution there has been skyrocketing raises in the concentration of these gases, so we could say humans are the main culprit of this cause.

Answer 2

Hi. I always enjoy this question. Mostly because "global warming" ignores the fact that the Earth is at the end of an ice age and is supposed to be heading for a tropical era. While there may be some human involvement, we're just speeding up a natural process. It's like saying that the population in China is what will cause the magnetic poles to switch. Some time in the next thousand years, magnetic North will become South and vice versa. It's a natural process. There may actually be a correlation between the two. You see, as the Earth heads towards a polar reversal, it's magnetic field becomes weaker. It's theorized that as the magnetic field weakens, the air envelope around the Earth expands, and thus the atmosphere becomes thinner. This thinner atmosphere theoretically is supposed to make for more greenhouse gases and less protection from the suns rays. Right now, the magnetic field of the Earth is down by eighty percent. That's alot. We know this by the study of ancient lava flows. Same way they were able to discover that the Earth switches poles once in a while. So, there's a good chance that this weakened magnetics and diluted atmosphere have a part to play in global warming. And that once the poles switch, we'll be thrown into a tropical era while the Earth's magnetic field is at full strength again. It's entirely possible that the pre-iceage magnetic shift durring the dinosaur era caused an increase of gravity that was just not tolerable for the oversized creatures and plants of that time. But, we just don't know, and maybe never will. Fact is, things change on a very large scale. While we really shouldn't help it along (we're destroying our own habitat, and the habitat of every living thing) we aren't going to stop it. EDIT: as for the subject being decided long ago... unfortunately for some, science is always developing, and what was true two years ago may not be so true today. The possibility of the Earth shifting poles was only discovered when an advanced computer program was devised, which detected the possibility. Although geological evidence suggested it all along.

Answer 3

There are a lot of theories but nobody even really knows if global warming is real. The climate has changed a little tiny bit in the last hundred years, far less than what could be expected of normal variation.

However, if you choose to believe the globe is warming you need to look first at the cycles to establish a baseline of what to expect. There was a recent project in the antarctic where they cut bores deep into the earth to see what the climate has been like in the past. The results indicated the earth was much warmer, as much as 36 degrees warmer, than it is now many times in the past. But that doesn't prove the globe is not warming now or that the globe is being warmed by natural causes. There is a lot of important work to do before the truth will be known.

But please don't let the panic mongers get to you. The earth is not going to be completely covered by water and it is not going to get as hot as Venus. Both are physical impossibilities.

Answer 4

There's no denying that climate change occurs naturally on the Earth.
The claim is that the degree of speed which the Earth is warming exceeds any past natural warming period.
I saw a program yesterday where non-believers in global warming were compared to tobacco companies denying that cigarettes cause cancer.
Well, i don't know about that, but the fact of the matter is that all of this hubbub about global warming is the result of an overall "warming" of the Earth by less than 1 degree farenheit change. that hardly seems noteworthy- i mean how many times have we heard from the weather man that "outlying areas will be cooler" urbanization could easily account for a one degree rise of temperatures in this country, that seems logical.

Answer 5

Did global warming stop in 1998?



The official thermometers at the U.S. National Climate Data Center show a slight global cooling trend over the last seven years, from 1998 to 2005.

Actually, global warming is likely to continue—but the interruption of the recent strong warming trend sharply undercuts the argument that our global warming is an urgent, man-made emergency. The seven-year decline makes our warming look much more like the moderate, erratic warming to be expected when the planet naturally shifts from a Little Ice Age (1300–1850 AD) to a centuries-long warm phase like the Medieval Warming (950–1300 AD) or the Roman Warming (200 BC– 600 AD).

The stutter in the temperature rise should rein in some of the more apoplectic cries of panic over man-made greenhouse emissions. The strong 28-year upward trend of 1970–1998 has apparently ended.

Fred Singer, a well-known skeptic on man-made warming, points out that the latest cooling trend is dictated primarily by a very warm El Nino year in 1998. “When you start your graph with 1998,” he says, “you will necessarily get a cooling trend.”

Bob Carter, a paleoclimatologist from Australia, notes that the earth also had strong global warming between 1918 and 1940. Then there was a long cooling period from 1940 to 1965. He points out that the current warming started 50 years before cars and industries began spewing consequential amounts of CO2. Then the planet cooled for 35 years just after the CO2 levels really began to surge. In fact, says Carter, there doesn’t seem to be much correlation between temperatures and man-made CO2.

For context, Carter offers a quick review of earth’s last 6 million years. The planet began that period with 3 million years in which the climate was several degrees warmer than today. Then came 3 million years in which the planet was basically cooling, accompanied by an increase in the magnitude and regularity of the earth’s 1500-year Dansgaard-Oeschger climate cycles.

Speaking of the 1500-year climate cycles, grab an Internet peek at the earth’s official temperatures since 1850. They describe a long, gentle S-curve, with the below-mean temperatures of the Little Ice Age gradually giving way to the above-the-mean temperatures we should expect during a Modern Warming.

Carter points out that since the early 1990s, the First World’s media have featured “an increasing stream of alarmist letters and articles on hypothetical, human-caused climate change. Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as ‘if’, ‘might,’ ‘could,’ ‘probably,’ ‘perhaps,’ ‘expected,’ ‘projected’ or ‘modeled’—and many . . . are akin to nonsense.”

Carter also warns that global cooling—not likely for some centuries yet—is likely to be far harsher for humans than the Modern Warming. He says, “our modern societies have developed during the last 10,000 years of benignly warm, interglacial climate. But for more than 90 percent of the last 2 million years, the climate has been colder, and generally much colder, than today. The reality of the climate record is that a sudden natural cooling is more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle warming.”

Since the earth is always warming or cooling, let’s applaud the Modern Warming, and hope that the next ice age is a long time coming.

Answer 6

Global warming that we are seeings by natural thing. The blaming CO2 is a lie. A few million years Ago mother nature introduced green plants . Green plants need CO2 to live . Go measure the CO2 with a good meter and u will find about 1 to 2 parts per million. Nothing .

Answer 7

I kind of think of the earth as a human being. Humans are constantly in flux. We grow taller we age, we grow shorter, in the summer we generally change skin tone and in the winter we change back again. Sometimes we get scars; open pit mining, earthquakes, landslides, etc. Sometimes we can cover them up and sometimes we can't. The earth has been "fluxing" since it's birth. Some of the changes are due to man and some aren't. some are a combination of things. To definitively say that man has caused Global Warming is ludicrous. It's too big to make that kind of assessment. Sure, somethings have changed, and I suspect they'll change back without any of us lifting a finger but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take care of the earth. It just means that like good bacteria in our bodies, we can do a little good even if we can't do the whole job.

Answer 8

to answer your question about global warming it is caused by human activities such as oil refining, power generation and car emissions these are the biggest causes for global warming in my study i have found that not only is changing the weather it is putting some animal in great danger such as the polar bear! scientist have been trying to see if its just nature but have found nothing that would have this big of an affect on the planet!

Answer 9

People are the cause of the global warming that occurring now.

Answer 10

id say both. after all, look at all the ice ages and thawing in the past. whos to say that just because humans have become civilised there isnt going to be another natural climate change?
but of course, humans are responsible for the size of the warming, its becoming dangerous and bad. if it were purely natural, there wouldn't be so many tragic consequences.