What exactly IS Global Warming?

Question

Could I have a good explanation of what is Global Warming? I've heard many things about it, but what causes it? How exactly do we stop it, and what do we avoid if we do?

In "ENGLISH" please. I don't speak scientific much :P

Answer 1

Global Warming is gradual warming of the Earth that causes major social, economic and political impacts around the world as ice caps melt, water levels rise and temperature changes disrupt crops and other food supplies. The Earth goes through climate change cycles and recent man has not had to experience a cycle. The jury is still out about climate change and man's role if there is one by man's use of fossil fuels, but one thing we do know for certain is that there are political agendas to promote socialistic politics. Even if man was partially responsible, if humans changed entirely, there would only be a slight difference of a degree or two in temperature change. I think we should get off fossil fuels because it makes us dependent upon unstable nations for our energy supply, not because of global warming.

Top scientists have refuted man's affect on the climate such as Astrophysicist Nir Shariv who stated, "Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming. Particularly because of the evidence that has been accumulating over the past decade of the strong relationship that cosmic-rays have on our atmosphere."

"The sun's strong role indicates that greenhouse gases can't have much of an influence on the climate."

Even doubling the amount of CO2 by 2100, for example, "will not dramatically increase the global temperature."

Oregon state climatologist, George Taylor said that "the global warming seen in the past century is caused largely by natural events, including cyclical climate patterns and solar fluctuations linked with cosmic rays and changes in cloud cover." Mr Taylor was recently fired by the Oregon governor for his "scientific" views.

I don't think there is a debate about whether global warming is occurring, but the idea that it is man made is a myth. Remember, the UN that came out with a recent report about climate change is a political entity that has done many things to prove it is not a credible, un-biased source. A recent example is the oil for food scandal that diverted millions of dollars to UN members and others. Also, even if there was man made climate change, China (the world's second-largest greenhouse gas emitter) and India are not going to embrace fossil fuel consumption.

Additionally, many scientists disagree about climate change and 17,000 signed a petition against the Kyoto treaty. Unfortunately, the sales focussed media who know little about this, spin it to suit their own opinions. So, its highly debatable whether humans are influencing global warming. Another thing to consider is that every 11,500 years, the earth goes through a major extinction with a global warming and cooling phase (ice age.) Paleontologists are able to track this through soil samples. We may actually be headed into an ice age because we are coming to the tail end of the current cycle. The problem is that the media and politicians get focussed on a piece of the puzzle and try to simplify this issue. Don't be fooled. There is probably nothing humans can do. Even if we could, there is no way you can control China who is becoming a major world polluter. Humans will need to adapt to climate change. Where I live there are small changes in our weather pattern, but nothing major. A lot of the media is hype to sell newspapers. The only caution is that some past climate changes have been more radical, swinging wildly from hot to cold. Others have brought on instant and severe cold conditions. I know the area that I live used to be buried in hundreds on feet of ice, but temperatures are mild today... Humans will just need to wait and see what mother nature brings and adapt as necessary.

Source(s):

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=156df7e6-d490-41c9-8b1f-106fef8763c6&k=0

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming020507.htm


Winter Blast Brings Snow To West LA, Malibu
CHP To Escort Motorists Through Icy Grapevine
POSTED: 9:43 am PST January 17, 2007

http://knbc.nbcweatherplus.com/weathernews/10773559/detail.html

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics
January 17, 2007:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=32abc0b0-802a-23ad-440a-88824bb8e528

Global warming 'just a natural cycle'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/18/nclimate118.xml

Imminent Global Cooling
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V10/N3/C1.jsp

R.G Bromley (1979)and Kenneth J Hsu (1982) - Dramatic sea temperature changes in earlier extinctions
Norman D Newell - Sea level plunge before extinctions
Anthony Hallam University of Birmingham, UK
http://www.climatecentral.org/
http://www.iceagenow.com/

Answer 2

Global Warming is a theory that states that human beings are causing the earth to heat up through pollution.
How ever this theory has been debunked on several different levels.
There is no way of knowing that the earth is heating up because we have not been able to study this until the last 100 years.
The Earth's temperature has been fluctuating since the beginning of time, do to changes in sun activity and natural climate shifts the planet has gone through many warming and cooling cycles long before man came around and will continue to do so long after we are all gone.
Much of this hype that is fueling the global warming argument is done for government grants so that scientists can get money and also for politicians to use to get elected

Answer 3

5 reasons why the theory that humans cause (or contribute significantly to) Global Warming is bunk:

1) We can't predict weather for next Thursday - how are we supposed to believe climate models looking out decades?

2) Mars is also experiencing Global Warming.

3) There are about 20 serious climate models in use today. They don't agree with each other.

4) The climate models are "specutacularly poor"(*) at predicting the past. That is, we should be able to feed in data from (say) 1982 and predict 1983. The results compare poorly to the observed data for 1983.

5) Little attention is given to the gas that is far-and-away the #1 contributor to global warming: Water vapor.
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

(*) In the words of Dr. S. Fred Singer. He is an atmospheric physicist at George Mason University and founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, a think tank on climate and environmental issues. The quoted phrase is from an interview: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/debate/singer.html

Answer 4

The apparent increase in global temperature, supposedly caused by human ativity, particularly by human emissions of carbon dioxide. The retreat of glaciers worldwinde suggests that temperatures have been increasing. The atomspheric level of carbon dioxide has increased about ten percent in the last forty years. Carbon dioxide absorbs and re-radiates infrared radiation quire strongly, and there is some consensus that this greenhouse effect is related to the increasing temperature. There is no consensus whatever as to what to do about it -- all proposed solutions are hideously expensive. The UN has proposed a 50-year program to deal with it; the price tag is $557,000,000,000,000 -- far more than the total value of every asset on the planet.

Answer 5

myth..

Media Shows Irrational Hysteria on Global Warming

"The Public Has Been Vastly Misinformed," NCPA's Deming Tells Senate Committee

12/6/2006 5:57:00 PM

To: National Desk

Contact: Sean Tuffnell of the National Center for Policy Analysis, 972-308-6481 or [e-mail]

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 /U.S. Newswire/ -- David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), testified this morning at a special hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The hearing examined climate change and the media. Bellow are excerpts from his prepared remarks.

"In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.

"I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." "The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. ... The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."

"In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate became known as the "hockey stick," because of the shape of the temperature graph. "Normally in science, when you have a novel result that appears to overturn previous work, you have to demonstrate why the earlier work was wrong. But the work of Mann and his colleagues was initially accepted uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100 previous studies. Other researchers have since reaffirmed that the Medieval Warm Period was both warm and global in its extent.

"There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a result, the public has become vastly misinformed."

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The NCPA is an internationally known nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute with offices in Dallas and Washington, D. C. that advocates private solutions to public policy problems. NCPA depends on the contributions of individuals, corporations and foundations that share our mission. The NCPA accepts no government grants.

http://www.usnewswire.com/

Answer 6

Global warming is a group of gases that blocks in heat. The heat builds up and gradually makes it hotter. Using fuels like gasilonine and others.

Answer 7

When the sun's heat ray's are getting trapped in the atmosphere and when it gets trap there it has nowhere to go and so the planet starts to heat up. The polar ice caps will melt causing a rise in sea level which is very very bad, as all those coastal community's will flood. It will be catastrophic.

Answer 8

One Example of Bad Leadership.

Answer 9

Global warming means the warming up of the 'globe' due to the greenhouse effect.
Lemme just give you this website:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming
It'll take care of all your queries.

Answer 10

its a theory that climates are getting warmer over time, and it may be due to certain pollutions that act as greenhouse gases