Is Global Warming only a periodic cycle the Earth goes through or is Al Gore right?

Question

Consider this - humans have cycles in biorhythms, female monthly cycles, etc. All of these cycles can be altered or stopped by using artificial means such as drugs. Don't you think the same thing can happen to the cycles of the Earth when pollution is forced into the atmosphere and onto and into the Earth like a drug into the body.

Answer 1

It's not about Al Gore. He was just reporting the consensus of the worldwide scientific community. I just watched some video clips for a 60-minute segment about it. Here's the URL. http://60minutes.yahoo.com/segment/26/global_warming

The last clip was particularly telling. There was Dr. Robert Correll, one of the world's top authorities on climate change on prime time TV, telling us that,
"The planet is out of balance. ... We now have really unchallenged science, in my opinion. ... And you have the preponderance of evidence across the board among all the disciplines, that the warming we're seeing today is substantially coming from human effect. .... What's different today is the rate at which this is occurring. ... (It's) so much more rapid ... than virtually any time we've seen in the history of the planet." -- http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/scp_v3/viewer/index.php?pid=16598&rn=49750&cl=1414771&ch=334515&src=news (Warning - you'll have to watch a 15-sec ad first)

So who is this Dr. Richard Correll? He was the Assistant Director for Geosciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1987-1999 and chair of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment study completed in 2004, where he coordinated an international team of over 300 scientists, experts and Arctic region natives.

Now that the oil companies here in the US have begun to abandon their position and Pres Bush followed suit a few days ago in his State of the Union Address, I expect the debate to quiet down a bit.

------------------

To Gunny T:

I sure would like to see your source for that 6000 ppm CO2 500 million years ago.

As to what you say about the ice core, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4467420.stm :

"Over a five year period commencing in 1999, scientists working with the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (Epica) have drilled 3,270m into the Dome C ice, which equates to drilling nearly 900,000 years back in time.

Gas bubbles trapped as the ice formed yield important evidence of the mixture of gases present in the atmosphere at that time, and of temperature.

"One of the most important things is we can put current levels of carbon dioxide and methane into a long-term context," said project leader Thomas Stocker from the University of Bern, Switzerland.

'We find that CO2 is about 30% higher than at any time, and methane 130% higher than at any time; and the rates of increase are absolutely exceptional: for CO2, 200 times faster than at any time in the last 650,000 years.' "

Answer 2

Only here can a question more suited for a scientific inquiry be channeled into Politics.
On an almost daily basis we find that what may be a cyclical event is much worse than anticipated due to the last 150 years of the industrial revolution. If you put a drop of food coloring into a water glass, the water is turns color. How you can expect to put tons of pollutants into the atmosphere and not have some sort of reaction is beyond me.
Now that Bush has used the term climate change, does that make it alright? In this administration, where things are left out, and certain points are stressed on things like evolution, birth control, and pollution, science has been held captive to politics in a very unflattering way.
But its OK now that Bush says so, even the neocons amongst us can take off the blinders and say..."Maybe".
O brave new world.

Answer 3

It's not a matter of whether Gore is right, but what percentage (.1%?) the natural cycles of temperature and atmospheric Co2 variation born out by the Vostok Antarctic ice core studies are directly attributable to man.... Punch up the Vostok Ice Core charts revealing the natural cycles for the past half million years (Gore likes it better at only 1000 years)… also 500 million years ago our atmospheric Co2 leve was on the order of 6000 ppm, as opposed to the devastating 350 ppm we experience today. What happens when we ban fossil fuels, starve half the worlds population, create massive civil unrest… then the global temperatures follow the normal cycle and continue to rise? Oh my…Oh my… even 200 years later… Oh **** Oh ****…..

Answer 4

The Earth does have a cycle, but the climate changes we are currently experiencing are not part of that cycle, the differences in the cycle were very small, and if you see the chart you will see that the current changes cannot possibly be natural, and are therefore man made. And, if they the changes are man made, the ways to end the changes can be powered by humans as well.

Answer 5

I think it's a natural cycle that is being accelerated by humanity. I watched a show on Discovery a few years back that spoke of a warming period before the last ice age. It's simply cycling again. But, due to our technology and pollution, I think we are speeding it up this time.

Answer 6

According to Bush the PC term is "climate change". But call it what we will, the worlds climate has become more unstable. There is defiantly more frequent occurrences of very unusual weather events occurring at an increasingly larger scale.

Answer 7

This is a rational question. One asked by every meterologist and scientist that has studied the problem.

99% agree that Global Warming really IS a problem.

Answer 8

Al Gore didn't come up with this scenario, he just knows the facts from studies of hundreds of thousands of scientist from all over the World for 50 years now.....The greenhouse effect is very real....other wise why would automobile manufacturers agree to emission controls....DUH Neocons!!!!

Answer 9

Anyone who claims the Earth is warming due to human activity needs to explain why Mars is also warming.

Answer 10

it is not a question of whether Al Gore is right, but whether 99.9% of the world's scientific community is right.