Global warming or a natural occurrence consisting of cycles from warm to cold every 20 years or so?

Question

We had global warming in the dinasour age but then an Ice Age. Doesn't this support the cycle theory? I think the ocean warms from underwater eruptions, sending steam into atmosphere, causing high CO2 levels and rain and snow, and then we go through cooling cycle once again.

Answer 1

Termites give off more than 600 times the amount of carbon dioxide than man's burning of fossil fuels. Three volcanos that have occured since 1800 have given off more emissions than the entire existance of man. There is global warming on Mars. Here is a quote from an article:

[..] The spacecraft also observed a gradual evaporation of carbon dioxide ice in one of Mars’ polar caps, pointing to a slowly changing Mars climate. “They way these polar pits are retreating is absolutely astounding,” Mustard said. But like the rockfalls, researchers were unable to account for the gradual climate change. “Why is Mars warmer today that it was in the past, we really have no way of knowing why,” Malin said. ["Mars Probe Finds New Gullies, Crater at Red Planet"]

Could this be global warming caused by the Martians use of man-made fossil fuels?

And not a single capitalist lives on Mars. Hmmmmm.

Answer 2

The dinosaur age ended 60 million years ago and the ice age was 10 thousand years ago. Hardly a relevant comparison.. Yes there cycles of warmer and colder; otherwise the ice age would not of happened nor would it have dispersed. The chances are very slow taking thousands of years. What we are seeing today is a huge spike in the temperature of the Earth. The change is very dramatic. The change in the Earth's temperature going into and out of the ice age was also dramatic geologically speaking but the temperature change still was very slow compared to what is happening today.

That, being said, and though millions will die because of this warming trend and animal species becoming extinct I know that the human species will survive. This is a real problem and there will be difficulties be glad we're not going through a rapid cooling. There have been many radical changes of temperature
in the past 60 millios of years with very warm climates and ice ages.

Your theory on the warming the oceans does not wash. Above volcanoes don't heat up the atmosphere either. There smoke and ash spread through the atmosphere creating a cooling effect. You, also only get a small amount of steam which is negligible in the earth's atmosphere. Even if we had a huge mount of stean its effects would negligible compared with the cooling by the ash and smoke put into the atmosphere. I really don't understand your claim of volcanoes creating a C02 into the atmosphere making rain and snow and then a warming.

The foremost threat I see today is our killing of the oceans. I know that there will be a lot of nay sayers telling us that we cannot affect change on so large a body of water.but there is abundant proofs to say it is so.

Answer 3

I am of the old school . It was taught that the cycle is every 11 years. There is several other smaller cycles that add and subtract from the 11Years. the cycle is the result of the planets and their orbit effect on the solar winds. There are some other cycles that make a more pronounced fluctuation. these I do not know what affects them. The problem with CO2 does not exist because the plants are tickled with the CO2 we produce . It fundamentally controls their growth,so if there is a lot of CO2 they will accelerate growth and get much bigger so the next cycle they change the amount of CO2 they can handle.

Answer 4

http://www.iitap.iastate.edu/gccourse/chem/carbon/images/paleotrends.gif
(See graph) The cycle interval is much larger than 20 years. This graph shows how temperature and CO2 have changed over thousands of years. Note that it started rising far before industry had a chance to influence. It is also interesting to note the correlation of CO2 concentration. The correlations isn't necessarily an indication of causation. It may be that the rising termperature is resulting in the rise of the CO2 concentration that may change concentrations depending on overall temperature of the earth. Since CO2 is not nearly as significant a greenhouse gas as water vapor, it seems likely that the temperature is affecting the CO2 concentration, not necessarily vice versa.

Answer 5

There are known cycles, although they aren't really cycles; they are more like semi-random episodes of past warming and cooling. Nobody has really proved what causes them. But we also know that people are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air by burning so much coal and things like that, and the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is now at a higher level than at any time in the last 400,000 years. That is a known cause of planet wide warming, but we don't know how big an effect it will have.

Answer 6

Have you ever thought it might be the sun that's getting hotter instead of the earth.