Is there any truth to global warming at all? If it is true can we stop it somehow?

Answer 1

The raw data is correct, but we have no way of interpreting it correctly. One data point nobody bothers mentioning is that the earth's temp tracks EXACTLY with the Solar Weather. If we could control the sun's output, we could control global warming. Question is, are we smart enough to try? Or would we only make things worse?

Answer 2

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 3

If you study the history of the earth, there have been many major climate changes, even before the existence of humans. So, to some extent, there is not much we can do about climate change, it will occur with or without us here. Beyond that, I spose it all depends on who you want to believe.

There is no doubt that extracting follil fuels from the ground and burning them prolly has some effect on the atmosphere. But while we are burning fuels, trees are taking that CO2 and making wood from it. We are harvesting that wood and making things with it. So, the CO2 that was locked up in fossil fuels in the ground for millions of years, gets released into the atmosphere, trees grab it and again lock up that same CO2, so it is not in the atmosphere anymore. It is somewhat of a buffering effect. The question still unsolved, are we burning more fuels than trees can grab and lock up, or is the equation way out of balance?

Consider this, before the modern erra, wildfires were quite common, burning millions of acres of grasslands and timberlands. Recent reductions in the numbers of wildfires has reduced the amount of CO2 that entered the atmosphere from natural occurrences. So, burning of some fossil fuels may be helping to maintain the balance.

It is all so complicated, all the studies I have seen, on both sides of the subject, have been far from complete. They will address one particular issue, and look at it thru a soda straw, disregarding how the rest of the world impacts on their findings.

An example is methane gas, and the amount of it produced by cows. The rest of the story as I have been told, is that methane is a heavy gas, and will tend to collect in low areas, lower reaches of caves, bottoms of wells and such. If this is true, the "greenhouse effect" of methane is minimized because it will not linger in the upper atmosphere, but settle out often below ground.

So.... is there truth to global warming, I would label it as relative truth at best.

PS... what the first answer said about the sun's climate affecting ours makes so much sense, yet, as he says, nobody ever considers that in their studies. I have never heard it mentioned before. Basically, the studies on global warming are only as good as the people making the studies, and they are far from perfect. You might even say they are only as good as their benefactors will let them be.

Answer 4

Yes Virginia, there is global warming. Finally, our President is even acknowledging this fact. Of course, the extent and course of its future is impossible to outline at this point. However, there are things you and I can do to make a contribution to steming the tide of warming (excuse the pun). The cars we drive is perhaps one of the biggest contributors the individual makes to global warming. We need to think about hybrid or all electric cars. Hybrids are already available and will help a lot. How we manage the heat and light budgets of our homes are also very significant factors affecting the global climate. Reducing our use of electricity and natural gas will produce enourmous changes in the growth of global temperatures.

Answer 5

Yes!
It is real!
You should watch "An Inconvenient Truth" starring Al Gore.
He clearly shows how our planet is chaging rapidly.
If we don't do something about it, we'll face some serious consequnces. Our grandchildren will suffer for sure.
You can also check out: www.climatecrisis.net
Save energy and natural resources.

Answer 6

Reduction of greenhouse gases will be the 1st step. The U.S. is the major contributor to that.