Global warming *a product of 100 years of industrialization?* or more of a natural cycle ?

Question

2 schools of thought (1) changes in the climate are caused by man? (2) These changes have occured for millions of years.
I invite your opinion ,and any suuporting data.

If it's man made how does one explain the other millions of years of climate changes?

Answer 1

The short answer is, it's both.

The long answer is there are natural cycles of about 20,000 years, 40,000 years and 100,000 years that have been somewhat regular over the last 800,000 years for which we've been looking at ice core samples. (There's information from other sources such as sea sediments that goes back further, but it's not contradictory.) The information from the ice cores leads us to infer that we have been enjoying a cyclical warm period and we were about to head back into an ice age.

However, due to the buildup of greenhouse gases, the descent into ice age isn't happening. This would be a good thing except that the buildup is so huge as to send things reeling in the other direction.

This recent buildup is primarily due to deforestation, end products of fossil fuel combustion and methane produced by livestock. Right now CO2 is at a level 30% greater than any seen during the last 800,000 years and the rate of CO2 increase hasn't been seen in millions of years.

Here's some background info on climate change from a politically neutral source written about 8 years ago: http://www.lakepowell.net/sciencecenter/paleoclimate.htm .I found one inaccuracy in it. It says, "So far in the past 18,000 years, the earth's temperature has risen approximately 16 degrees F and the sea level has risen 300 feet." That directly contradicts the graph above where it shows a rise of only 5c which is 9 degrees F. Otherwise, the information seems to agree with other stuff I've read.

The 4th IPCC report was made available a week ago and said basically that the science was unassailable. It had been presented to policy makers earlier and as a result, Bush got into line in his SOTU address. And now, ExxonMobile, which had been responsible for funding most of the global warming skepticism (http://www.exxonsecrets.org/ ), just put out a statement saying basically the same thing (http://www2.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Newsroom/NewsReleases/corp_nr_mr_climate_ipcc.asp ).

I think the discussion now is going to be more centered on what to do about it rather than whether or not it's a problem.

Answer 2

Most accept both. Man caused changes are operating over shorter time spans. Normal changes in climate have operated on the geologic time scale as the earth wobbles and other events have taken place. A good intro geography book will explain natural changes and the time scale over which they operate.

Answer 3

worldwide cooling and warming is a organic phenomenon generally, besides the undeniable fact that attributable to issues like greenhouse gases being pumped into the ambience, the approach has accelerated. unfortuately that's going to be yet another 30-50k years earlier the subsequent ice age, and we wont comprehend the way it incredibly seems. what's going to finally take place is that via fact the IceCaps shop melting it is going to cool (and improve the tiers of) the sea, the top consequence is that (even however appropriate now our annual avg temperature is increasing) the international temperature will initiate cooling returned subsequently putting on yet another ice age. even however I doubt any of our toddlers would be around for such an prevalence. yet...we are able to paintings now to cut back the outcomes that we are inflicting. working w/ 1st (and third) worldwide international locations on conserving the eco-friendly domicile gases to a minimum. worldwide Warming is one element that regardless of political, or religious or financial view, definitely everyone desires to paintings at the same time in this, via fact we are aLL affected.

Answer 4

could possibly be a little bit of both, however i mainly think it's due to industrialization of man over the years that is making global warming seem to arrive sooner than expected.

Answer 5

Global warming is a man made problem.