Global warming ??

Question

I want to know peple's views on the danger of global warming. Are we right to listen to Al Gore and act now or is it all being blown out of proportion to scare us. According to al we have ten years before the next ice age ..what do people feel .....

Answer 1

That is NOT what Al Gore said. The sources he quotes (the best available at the time) talk about a 2 degree temp rise globally by the end of the century.

Mr Gore deserve's his Nobel prize for raising awareness and putting this issue firmly on the agenda, where it should have been 20 years ago.

However, no matter how shocking an Inconvenient Truth is - it is already out of date.

Recent evidence has emerged of a significant global cooling effect, something completely underestimated in the science Gore uses as the basis of his predictions of climate change.

This effect is called global dimming and has been with us unnoticed for about 30 years. Briefly, industrial particulate pollution results in cloud reflectance increasing by an order of magnitude. In lay terms dirty clouds reflect 10 times more sunlight back to space than cloud formed in clean air. The net result is a decrease in the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth and a net temperature reduction.

This effect has been masking the effects of man made global heating and therefore the model results quote by Gore are actually incensitive to carbon emission!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

According to Dr Peter Cox, one of the world's leading climate modellers. As things stand, CO2 levels are projected to rise strongly over coming decades, whereas there are encouraging signs that particle pollution is at last being brought under control. "We're going to be in a situation, unless we act, where the cooling pollutant is dropping off while the warming pollutant is going up. That means we'll get reduced cooling and increased heating at the same time and that's a problem for us,"

As a consequence the 2 degree temp rise target by the end of this century is effectively already redundant and far from the 0.6 degree rise attributed to man made global warming that figure is nearer 1.6-2.0 degree if you take out the effects of global dimming.

I believe we have about 25 years before the Greenland icesheet and the West Antarctic ice shelves collapse. If they go then the consequence is for an ever increasing temperature cycle which will run away from us, destroying us and most if not all of life on Earth with us. This is not hype it's is backed by massive science. It is scarey because it's real and we do need to act. However what we need to do is within our reach - easily, but we must change the way we do certain things and we must (globally) cooperate on this.

I've put together 4 links. These cover most of it.

Sincerely

LT

PS Any idea why the Conservatives (UK) have rebranded with a Tree and started being chummy to Green Peace and Friends of the Earth all of a sudden? - Well now you know.

Answer 2

Global warming is at the fore front because politicians found how to use a new platform to get re-elected. The world leaders use it because they found ways to make money at it. This is a made up problem just like Global Cooling in the 1970's. Wake up people. I agree we need to be more efficient with our resources, and we should fine and jail companies who are dumping into our rivers maliciously. I want to stop the raiforest destruction, but to say that global warming is a serious man made issue and we need to destroy the American economy and bow down to the rest of the world certainly does not float my boat. Follow the money on this one and you will see that it is all for political gain and grant money for those scientists who profit off of the government if global warming stays at the front of the issues. Look deep into the Keoto (sp?) Treaty, first of all they took jets to a non-central resort location. Not very environmentally concious. THen in the parameters of the treaty they have a clause that makes it so you can buy or sell polution credits. This is all about shifting wealth and breaking down the United States. This is painfully obvious, just look at peoples agenda. The earth's mean temperature has risen .6 degrees C in the past 125 years. Greenland's icecaps have gotten colder in the past 10 years. The Scientists who do not gain anything on their posisition will tell you that the earth has a natural progression and this is what we are seeing. The UN report is made up of POLITICIANS not a good spread of scientists. THere are as many or more scientists who believe that man in NOT the reason and it is over hyped, but their voice is not heard in the LIberal Mainstream Media. This issue is 99% political, and an attempt to make the USA a socialist nation, and eventually communisim. WAKE UP AMERICA, IT IS TIME TO BE AMERICANS. FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE. STOP THE LIES

Answer 3

I wouldn't listen to Al Gore if I were you.

There are a few problems with his little Hollywood film...

- Gore promoted the now-debunked "hockey-stick" graph temperature chart for the last 1,000 years in an attempt to prove man's overwhelming impact on the climate, and attempted to debunk the significance of the medieval warm period and little ice age.

- Gore insisted on a link between increased hurricane activity and global warming that most scientist believe does not exist.

- Gore asserted that today's Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that temperatures in the 1930's were as warm or warmer.

- Gore said that the Antarctic was warming and losing ice but failed to note, that this is only true of a small region and the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice. (Lemon Twist, above, please note.)

- Gore hyped unfounded fears that Greenland's ice is in danger of disappearing. (Again, Lemon Twist, above, please note.)

- Gore erroneously claimed that the ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is disappearing due to global warming, though satellite measurements show no temperature change at the summit, and the peer-reviewed scientific literature suggests that desiccation of the atmosphere in the region caused by post-colonial deforestation is the cause of the glacial recession.

- Gore made assertions of massive future sea level rise that is way outside of any supposed scientific "consensus" and is not supported in even the most alarmist literature.

- Gore incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier's retreat is due to global warming, while ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930's and other glaciers in South America are advancing.

-Gore blamed global warming for water loss in Africa's Lake Chad, though NASA scientists had concluded that local water-use and grazing patterns are probably to blame.

- Gore inaccurately said that polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to melting ice when in fact 11 of the 13 main groups in Canada are thriving, and there is evidence that the only groups that are not thriving are in a region of the Arctic that has cooled.

- Gore did not tell viewers that the 48 scientists whom he quoted as having accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support the Democrat Presidential candidate, John Kerry in 2004.

The above is a quote from here... http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20061121_gore.pdf where you can also see the sources that support the conclusions.

Lemon Twist above talks about "Global Dimming", but this theory has simply been put forward to try and explain why the observed rise in global temperature over recent years has been significantly lower than the alarmists predicted. I'm surprised he didn't also mention the "Ocean Notion" which is the idea that the missing temperature has been sucked up by the sea. (To be released at some future time with "cataclysmic" results, of course!)

In my opinion, the reason why the alarmists' predictions are turning out to be way off the mark, is simply because the science is bad and the "consensus" is wrong.

Answer 4

Nobody on the planet really knows what will happen for sure. Global warming is happening as it has happened thousands of times before since weather began on the planet some 1.6 billion years ago (estimated). Our knowledge of past climates comes from studying a variety of things such as ice cores, glacial, periglacial, cave, deep sea, lake, mire and bog sediments and carbonate deposits among others. Plant and animal remains found in the above and the chemical structure of these things and more importantly the oxygen isotope ratios can tell us a lot about past climates. This is how we know about ice ages and warm periods in history. The last ice age lasted from about 130,000 to 10,000 years ago approx but had several warmer periods in it known as interglacial periods. The last warm period was known as the Holocene and was about 10,000 years ago.

Answer 5

Al Gore is a politician with an agenda, don't fall for his line.
There are normal cycles of warming and cooling going on since the fall of man in the garden which started this whole thing off in the first place. It is also affected by the sun spots. This is all documented but doesn't get publicized because of funding concerns.
There is not one thing that man can do to stop or prevent these periods of warming and cooling. If you think you can do something you are arrogant to the core. God has the whole thing under control and history must run its course so stop worrying about it all!

Answer 6

I believe this is a normal cycle and is more closely correlated to solar activity than human activity. However, that is no reason not to do our best to reduce oil consumption by getting rid of the gas guzzling vehicles. I find our dependence on oil from foreign regimes that hate us much more threatening than global warming. I also hate putting money into their pockets or the pockets of big oil companies. We need to divorce ourselves from this gluttonous need for oil by driving economy cars whenever possible, purchasing electric vehicles and hybrids, riding bikes and walking whenever feasible. Regardless of what you believe about global warming, it would be less expensive for a person to use passive solar as much as possible, drive smaller cars, plant trees, and practice good conservation in the home. For those reasons, I don't like to discourage the belief in man-made global warming. A lot of the people who are worried about global warming are doing nothing to address the issue.

Answer 7

I always laugh when the science sector says something.. reminds me of when they said OH MY GOD!!! eggs will kill you dont eat them.. then a few years later.. OH WAIT eggs are good for you...

back in the 70's the same thing was going on.. the UN all of the US/ UK / german japan everyone said that gases from cars people factorys would block the rays from the sun and we would all die... not from Global warming but from global cooling...

if you look back at earth history.. we have had global ice caps for only a few 1000 years.. at one point we had no ice on earth at all... then we had massive amounts of it and they called it an iceage.... what caused it? noone really knows... we can guess... but I have yet to hear any of these global warming wackos explain why the earth oneday went into a deep freeze.. and it did it more than once.. heck one of the science guys gore uses has a paper out that say the earth has been in 100's of iceages in its life time.... if that is the case.. why... and the next question is.. why did it warm up?
look simply put.. I dont believe we know.. why.. well there is the evelotion part of it.. if we are doing that.. what says this isnt part of it.. next... if the earth is alive... would it not change? grow and someday... die. with or with out people? yes it would...
if you lesson to wackos on the left or right. you will always get the.... " OH MY GOD!!!!!! we have to do this NOW!!!!!!" and then in like 1 to 50 years. you find out we did more harm than good... look at converters for cars.. it now turns out they do more harm than good... or so one study shows.. another study shows it is more hamful to work in an office building than it is to smoke a pack of smokes a day...... or the gas additive the clinton admin added to gas to clean up the air.. turns out that gas additive cause cancer in people and in animals.. and it has a very long 1/2 life and gathers in water..... all because some body in the science sector says this will slow global warming.. and guess what... it did nothing

short of the God aspect of it.. as in he comes back
the earth will change.. we will have another ice age...we will lose all the air on earth one day.. it has happened before.. the earth will die.. and it will come back.. it has already done all those things... it will happen again... people are not all powerful.. nature is now.. and always will be stronger than we are...

Answer 8

Fear not, Evolution will save the day.

The ones who cannot adapt to the new environment will be wiped out. With less people, CO2 levels will decrease and the Earth will cool back down. With the left over superhumans, we can repopulate the Earth with environmentalist.

Answer 9

Global warming is natural. Cavemen in SUVs did not end the ice age.

The only thing that can be debated is just HOW MUCH is mankind contributing.

Answer 10

I am not being funny when I say -cold.

Ok in 10 years I am likely to freeze and I do not want that. So it is time we 'the people' put the Government under pressure to tell us what we can do now, and what they are going to do for us.