To those who question / do not believe in global warming...?

Question

How many of you have seen "An Inconvienent Truth?"

Where SPECIFICALLY do you find problems or faults in the argument?

Why do you specificaly think global warming (or climate change) is not real?

Answer 1

I believe two things are well accepted by the vast majority of the scientific community.

The first is that global warming is real and mostly caused by man. The data is simply overwhelming.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

The speed of the change is very unusual, which is one of many things that rule out natural causes.

The second is that Gore's movie is at the high end of scientific estimates of the effects of global warming. Basically a "reasonable worst case" analysis.

If you want to have the best scientific estimates of what is happening, the report below is it. It's overconservative (ie it may understate the situation) because thousands of scientists had to agree to stand behind it.

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

It's very technical, here's an equally conservative and very solid website.

http://www.pewclimate.org/

If you think the cost of reducing it is large, it's peanuts compared to dealing with the costs of the impacts if we do nothing to reduce it.

Answer 2

There is no question that global warming is real. Detroit, Michigan and Moscow, Russia used to be under 10,000 feet of glacier just a short 10,000 years ago. Sea level has been rising at one foot per century for at least the past 50 centuries. Coastal communites of the ancient Greeks and Romans are now submerged under 20-30 feet of water. The Mediterranean basin was a cooler and wetter place in ancient times than it is now, with major desertification having occurred since then.
The controversy is not about whether global warming is happening, the controversy is about how much of the warming is directly or indirectly man-made. I personally do not believe that there is a definitive answer on this, no matter how many "experts" you line up with their opinions.
Furthermore, the Earth is in a climatologic cycling rhythm that includes the majority of the time in "ice ages", with only brief "interglacials" as we are in now. During the last interglacial, known as the "Emian period", both polar ice caps completely melted! (How did the cave people allow THAT fiasco to happen?) No matter what we do, the ice caps are going to melt!! So why throw the whole world economy into a great depression and prevent the starving third world from enjoying some prosperity over something that is going to happen anyway? You explain it to me, please.
P.S. I plan to go live on Mars where it is much cooler, thank you.

Answer 3

I have not seen it, and do not intend to. Gore is a politician, not a scientist, and the film is simply a propaganda piece. The facts are as follows:
- The atmospheric CO2 level is increasing; we know this from measurements. The amount of the increase is reasonably related to human activity. However, the CO2 level has fluctuated considerably over the earth's history; it was four times as high during the era of dinosaurs as it is now.
- The earth's temperature appears to be increasing, based on glacial retreat and similar observations. The amount of such increase is controversial. The temperature has been fluctuating throughout the earth's history, as is evident from the ice ages.
- There is widespread opinion that the two effects are causally related. This is credible, but not proven, and cannot be, for it is not possible to construct a controlled experiment; the evidence comes from computer simulations, which may or may not be correct. Anyone who has tried to use computer modeling to predict the weather is well aware of the possible pitfalls.
- The cost of attempting to deal with the matter in any significant way will be enormous. A program proposed by the UN has a price tag of $557,000,000,000,000 -- far more than the total value of every asset on the planet.

Prof. Deutsch of MIT, whose scientific credentials are impressive, wrote a piece that appeared on the op-ed pages of the 3/15 Wall Street Journal. It discusses the possible use of CO2 sequestration to reduce power plant emissions. My present view of this is that the proposed technology is not proven, and that there can be no assurance that CO2 pumped underground will stay there: if it bubbles to the surface, it could cause a catastrophe such as occurred in Africa, when CO2 under some lakes came to the surface and asphyxiated many. My own view is that nuclear power is to be preferred to coal-fired power.

Answer 4

All I know is that the mean global temperature of the earth has been rising for the last 100 years or so.

What does that mean? Who knows? It's kind of silly to be screaming it's a crisis.

There is no basis to attribute the rise to human contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere.

Correlation does not mean causation.

The earth has been around for billions of years. We only have decent global climate data for the past 100 years or so and some spurious point data further back.

You cannot create a statistically significant model with that data set.

Who is to say that the variance we have seen in the last 100 years or so is outside of the normal global temperature variance of the earth in it's existence.

Answer 5

Bill G and some others have been listening to Limbaugh again.

Of course things are warming up on mars, but only in the southern hemisphere because its starting to be summer there too. That means a slightly denser atmosphere for a brief period.

Its interesting that Bill G and others have not bothered to see an Inconvenient Truth yet condemn it.

I guess that's what happens when you have an Oxycontin drug freak doing your thinking for you.

Answer 6

I have not seen the movie and it is unlikely I will. I do not trust the source for honesty.

As to global warming, I have heard it said that the ice caps on Mars are receding. If that is true, the only common factor between Mars and the earth is our sun.

I think global warming is a political agenda being driven by people who stand to profit from government grants. Reveling that is an inconvenient truth for people who make a living fleecing the public.

Answer 7

Fan of Al Gore, are ya?

I haven't seen his movie yet but my problem with global warming is that the earth has natural cycles, how do we know this isn't part of a natural warming cycle?

Answer 8

maybe when the globe warms we will no longer need microwaves cause like our pizza would always be hot,


by the way im kidding im not this stupid but global warming is serious and should not be taken lightly

mmmmm pizza

Answer 9

Whether it is real or not makes no difference. The point is that we're creating too much pollution and it is harder and harder to find a clean place to live and breath.

Answer 10

forget about politics
or what the papers say ,
or the opinions of people who are sitting safe in their heated or airconditioned artificial environments
go to the countries on the equator ,check what has happened in history
and listen to what is going on in the many disaster areas on this planet ,(and therer are more than ever each year )

i send everybody who cares or who wants to know or who does not believe ,this mesage


some home truths

ecologists and scientists who work for politicians ,get paid by these politicians and they have downplayed the facts because solutions are expensive and means change and change effects many peoples incomes,and upsets profit margins,so most of the world is kept in the dark of the real things that are going on.

: i have seen lands that have been turned from jungle into desserts by people in a matter of a couple of years ,because of the slash and burn method used by settlers and expanding agriculture,and i have seen rivers dry up because of deforrestation in many places in Africa and Mexico ,

i live now by the side of a river in Mexico where,in 30 years 5 species of fish have become exstinct .
and part of the year the river is dry this is for longer every year because of over use of water by agriculture and as a result of deforrestation.

there are natural cycles in the planets life
but a lot is influenced by mans existance ,and this is increasing with overpopulation,putting strains on Natural resources and increasing contaminations as well as destructions of essential componants the ensure living conditions for all life forms

in North Africa,India,Mexico ,millions of people are effected by land loss and desertification


in recent times thousands of people have died because of exessive heat,usually old people.in India ,Mexico and France,
deforestation causing desertification,the desert conditions causing very cold nights and scorching hot days

in china, thousands of what used to be farmers are running for their lives from the dust storms that have burried their towns and turned their lands into dessert,the globe where they were got to hot for them .
and instead of producing food they are now needing it from some where else,and they will drastically effect the world food prices when they start buying water in the form of grains ,at any cost destabalising governments, in some countries ,could be the result
(are you seeing more Chinese around interested in agricultural lands ,we do here in Mexico)

,the Sahara is growing by 7 kilometers a year
and all of the desserts we know are a results of mans actions ,and they are increasing ,not getting less ,in the dinosaurs days ,there were no desserts.

collectively this planet is drying up because of bad farming practices like,over grazing and fertilizers,

as far as the food production is concerned, Global warming or some of its effects are serious,rising seas result in landloss

each degree rise in temperature means 10%crop loss

more landloss because of desertification every year,we have less areble land to produce food ,for an extra 70 million people ,

and there is less and less water (because of deforestation),to irrigate this production ,
and there are less and less farmers to do it..
who are overpumping deep carbon aquifiers
who are plowing more and more unstable lands because they have lost so many million hectares to desertification ,
because of bad farming practises ,such as using fertilizers and heavy machinary or over grazing

RISING SEAS
The northpole is melting ,and we will know it without ice in our life times.
this does not affect the sea level because it is ice that is already in the water.but the melting ice from Green land and the south pole ,are another matter.

Global warming is in theory reversable,but it will mean global co operation between all countries ,and taking into account human nature and the world politics ,it is unlikely that this will happen,

At least not untill we are all in the middle of planetary disastres and it becomes a battle for the survival of humanity every where.

SOLUTIONS
if you want to help the planet ,plant a tree every week ,if everyone on the planet did we we would be able to reverse the destructive processes

reduce carbon emisions,and they are already working on that by alternative forms of energy and regulations on carbon producing materials,aerosol cans,burning rubbish,industrial chimneys,powerplants etc.

the capture of carbon and the production of water and assist the aquiferous manta.

the world bank pays large subsidies for reforrestation to capture carbon and the best tree for this is the Pawlonia

Waterharvesting projects ,such as millions of small dams.to redirect over ground waterflows from the rains into the ground to supply subteranian water supplies.

the protection of existing forrests.

stop building more highways,urban planning to include vegetation stop building cities encourage people to return to the land to conduct their business from there which now has become possible thanks to the internet.

education to motivate people to auto sufficiency by building more home food gardens.

education on environmental awareness
education on family planning to curb over´populaion

Agricultural education and improvements to follow the principals or sustainability and soil management.

more environmental or land ,design to prevent bush fires,such as--fire breaks

,more dams.regulations and control for public behaviour

alternative effeciant public transport to discourage the use of the internal conbustion engine

recicling wastes,limit water use



Source(s) Lester E Brown is the director and founder of the global institute of Environment in the United states .he has compiled a report based on all the satalite information available from NASA,and all the information that has
come from Universities and American embassies WORLD WIDE ,
his little book--a planet under stress , Plan B has been trans lated into 50 languages and won the best book award in 2003.