global warming is it a big deal?

Question

does anybody remember global cooling in the 1970's? This was the liberal mantra back then. We were headed towards an ice age. I wish they would make up their minds. Which is it and do we really contribute that much?

Answer 1

Plenty of people are still chatting it up about global cooling and the next ice age.

Remember Acid Rain? HA, that was a crock.

Anyway, it's not a big deal, and there is little if any evidence to prove that it exists at all. Global average temperatures have stayed pretty steady, but actually went down by 1 degree in the last 50yrs.

Interestingly, the world was much cooler in the 1930s & 1940s (WWII). Why is that interesting? That was the period when fossil fuels where being burned in greatest volume. Apparently they dont have the effects that Mr. Gore would like you to believe.

"Why are we talking about it then?" asked the uninformed masses.

Simple, friends. Fooling you into using "green energy" and buying "carbon off-sets" is a $6 billion a year industry. How much of that do you think goes into Al Gore's pocket.

Answer 2

The global cooling argument has been blown out of all proportion - ask your parents if they remember hearing about it in the 70's - probably not. The reason being that it was barely an issue.

The truth about global cooling (I've studied it) is that it does happen and it is happening. But it's a long term event with temperature changes occuring very slowly over long periods of time. It's happening now, but global warming more than offsetting the effect. What the scientists were studying and saying in the 1970's was absolutely spot on - history has proved them to be correct. There were some hysterical media reports about the coming of another ice ice and the like but then there are hysterical media reports about the world frying in the next 100 years. Media reporting is words and pictures, they have no effect on reality.

To answer your question "which is it". It's both, the world has been in a general cooling cycle for 50 million years, looking back over the 542 million years for which data is available the world is considerably colder at the moment that the mean. However, man has only been around for a tiny fraction of that time and whilst we've been resident on the planet it's never been as warm as it is now.

"Do we really contrinute that much"? Yes we do. When we look at how the world has warmed during the current warming cycle (not a contradiction to what I said earlier about cooling) we see that since the onset of the current warming phase some 18,000 years ago the world has warmed by 9 degrees Celsius - the equivalent of 0.0005 degrees C per year. In the last 100 years the rate oif increase has been 16 times that, in the last 25 years it's been 31.2 times that. I've been generous here because almost all the warming in the last 18,000 years occured between 8,000 and 16,000BC so the natural rate of warming over the last 10,000 years has been almost nil. Put into percentage terms, a maximum of 3.1% of current temperature rises can be attrinuted to all natural events, at least 96.9% must be the result of human activities.

Answer 3

i bypass outdoors daily and each little thing seems the comparable because it has continuously been. My sisters who nonetheless stay in New England say that the winters are transforming into longer and less warm. i will't determine it out and do not know what to do. If it gets worse and it truly is shown to be real then they are going to create industries to wrestle it. Then we are able to coach for it and get a role to assist out. while i replaced into in extreme college (previous due 50's) they instructed us it might get warmer. It in no way did and 25 years later they suggested it could be an ice age....and it in no way got here. Now it truly is lower back to getting heat lower back. i will have self belief it when I see it. climate forecasting can in no way be a technological know-how. there's no thank you to type it interior the lab and administration all of the variables. it truly is going to continuously be guesswork. If the earth's environment have been divided up, we'd all have on the portion of a million a lot each. The photograph voltaic capability accomplishing the earth is 15,000 circumstances the capability utilized by ability of anybody.

Answer 4

First, the idea that a majority of scientists worried about cooling is a myth. Details here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94

Global warming is a very big deal. Left unchecked it will cause coastal flooding and serious damage to agriculture. Rich countries can cope but it will cost them hundreds of billions of dollars, and may lead to a worldwide depression.

Poor countries already struglling to feed themselves will have it much worse. There a lot of people (not all) will die of starvation.

If we do nothing it will be the biggest disaster in human history. A very big deal indeed.

Here are two sources of data about how much we contribute (about 90%). The first is very short, the second is the best summary of the mountain of data that supports this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

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

People like to make "intuitive" arguments about global warming. This is science, and data rules, not intuition. The data says it's real and it's us.

Answer 5

What about this - the Earth's magnetic field is slowly lessening, and if it follows the current trend, it's speculated that we will have NO magnetic field in 2000 years. The magnetic field forces harmful rays from the sun into a vortex around the poles (creating the Aurora Borealis). All of this is a completely natural occurrence that is not caused or affected by what happens on the surface of the Earth. So despite the threats of Global Warming, there is a real chance that the Earth's natural protector of UV rays will be gone in 2000 years.

Why don't scientists and politicians talk about that? Isn't that a very real threat to our existence? I think that global warming is a big deal because scientists and politicians have something to gain from convincing us it is all our fault. It is our fault that life as we know it is going to end, so politicians can put more taxes and restrictions on our daily lives. And not only should you not complain about it, you should be grateful.

There is a constant threat against nature itself. Disease, disaster, war, global warming, the sun burning out...I think the difference is they have found one they can market by convincing you it is stoppable.

Answer 6

Don't remember it.
The warming trend is our own big blunder...got to have more power and more cars..Hey buy an SUV and make a contribution your grandchildren will have to suffer for.

The effects of our selfish lives are catching up with us, and we have passed our ways onto the growing nation of china, fast becoming the worlds leading consumer. SO LOOK OUT HERE COMES GLOBAL famine, loss of habitat for humans, etc...
So stay tuned......

HEY Cheech..! How bout the ice sheet's of Greenland and Antarctica melting at 100 times faster than the rates expected, in the models the government provided.
Or the arctic being Navigable from the Atlantic to the Bering sea, when it's never been possible before. Would those things be extraordinary enough to convince you?????

Answer 7

At that time we were just at the very beginning of the climate science. This global cooling is still accurate but on a large time scale of thousands of year.. So the journalist just wanted a sensationalist topic and couldn´t read a graph correctly !!!

What changed are satellites and computers, precise sun data measurments, new mathematical methods like fractal calculus, finite element method, non-linear simulations and so on...

So NO WE´RE ABSOLUTELY NOT IN THE SAME CASE !!!

We don´t understand global warming well, but well enough already to know that IT´S A BIG DEAL.

Answer 8

Global warming is a deal, but not a big deal. Terrorism, nuclear proliferation and over population are much worse and immediate problems in my book. One atomic bomb detonated in a large city by terrorists will quickly make people forget all about the possibility of the average sea level rising one foot 100 years in the future.

Answer 9

Global warming is not a big issue that congress is making it to be. This global warming is something that was going to happen and there is nothing that can be done. Congress is just putting another blanket on the american people so that we can have something else to worry about and think that they are looking out for us. Bottomline this global warming is just garbage.

Answer 10

It just a bunch of crap that show how people manipulated to believe everything they told. I am sure everyone agree and set their clocks up early this year. We will die from the Asteroid that going to strike Earth in 2028 before Global Warming have any surmountable effect. Saw this on the History Channel last night. :-p