The Global warming issue...what or who is causing it?

Answer 1

Trevor, where on earth did you get the data that lead you to make the ridiculous assertion that the current warming trend is 16 x faster than ever seen before and 100 x faster than the period prior to the industrial revolution? Stupid statements like that are exactly why people are skeptical about global warming claims. I always hear people say 'how can someone deny global warming when the science proves it?" Exactly what science backs up your inane statement?

The scientific facts show that not only are your statements about warming being 16 times or 100 times faster than known just wild exagerations, but also that they are completely wrong! See the attached link for a temperature reconstruction study based on ice core data from both antarctica and greenland. In it you'll see that antarcitica temperatures have fluctuated by 2.5-3*C ABOVE and BELOW current temperatures over the last 10,000 years. The rate of warming of 1*C over the last century is minute compared to the rate of warming that antarctic saw 400 years ago when it warmed around 2.2*C in one century. The current warming is over 2 times SLOWER than that warming trend.

Also take a look at the greenland temperature trend for the last 10,000 years. You'll see that greenland was warmer than present for MOST of the last 10,000 years. You can also see some very rapid warming and cooling trends in greenland over the last 10,000 years that were more rapid than present warming.

Please stop making outlandish statements about global warming that have no basis in fact.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Anthropogenic Warming (A.W.)is not established to the extent many think. A consensus is not a substitute for a proven event. The probabilistic modeling used to predict climate changes are scenarios and only as good as the parameters & defined variables in the model. Case in point: The Sun, pro A.W. camp claims to have accounted for Sun's effect by measuring Radiant Output. They totally exclude on these models, the strength of the Sun's Magnetic Field which impacts on the ability of cosmic rays interacting with the Earth's atmosphere & the resulting generation of clouds in the atmosphere

Answer 4

No-one knows.

It is almost impossible to get research money to look at anything other than the contribution of CO2 - even though it is only present in the atmosphere at 30 parts in a million.

CO2 levels do not match temperature changes over the past 100 years, and going back further increases in CO2 ALL follow rather than precede climate warming. This makes for a flakey case.

Water vapour accounts for 95% of the greenhouse effect, but is often ignored in climate models.

But with all this uncertainty, what is a best guess?

Well, somewhere around 10% due to human CO2. Somewhere around 50% due to increased solar output. Somwhere around 40% due to other atmospheric changes (mainly water vapour - human contribution to this is less than 0.1%).

Answer 5

Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are drying, and wildlife is scrambling to keep pace. It's becoming clear that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our lives. There are many causes, not just one, and we may not know what all the causes are. There are natural causes that we know very little about but we know they are there because geological evidence tells us that Earth's climate changes quite a lot -sometimes colder than today and
sometimes warmer. Some have suggested changes in the sun's output of radiation, or changes in the amount of dust in the atmosphere from volcanoes or meteor impacts as natural causes. For about 100 years there has been concern that the
burning of coal and oil in our industrial age might put enough carbon-dioxide and other gasses into the atmosphere to trap reflected sunlight and thus cause the atmosphere to heat upage Various means of controlling industrial and agricultural air pollution are being discussed by the world's governments.

Answer 6

Well, the Earth naturally cycles through periods of warming and cooling. We are contributing to how quickly it is happening right now, but the more serious problem is that we are devastating our ecosystems. You should read the book "Fingerprints of the Gods" by Graham Hancock. Don't be intimidated by the thickness of the book. If you read the first two pages, you'll be hooked. It will blow your mind!!

Answer 7

regardless who or what, it is clearly a problem when the fishing industry tanks due to polluted waters. That whales, dolphins and large marine animal carcasses are considered toxic waste. That landfills causes community upheavals and debates. It is without argument that we should all accept at some point that humans are damaging our own environment. We should not ridicule scholars, scientists and politicians who take a stance at protecting the environment.

Answer 8

Natural weather patterns - take the grand canyon for an example, it was once full of water. Who caused this? no carbon emissions compared to now days as stated by professor Gore.

Answer 9

Let me give you an answer, not one that's based on opinion or what I want you to beleive but one that's based on what we know.

The world has always warmed and cooled of it's own accord. In the past it's been much hotter and much colder than it is now. Ice ages have come and gone several times. Humans weren't around when this was happening so there's no question that this is something entirely natural. These changes occur over very long periods of time and are due in part to the way the earth moves and differences in the heat received from the sun.

The most recent significant natural change began 18,000 years ago when the world began warming. This caused the glaciers to retreat. In terms of nature this was caused by a spectacular rise in temperatures - about one degree for every 1000 years.

For over 100 years we've understood how global warming works and the relationship between greenhouse gases, the greenhouse effect, global warming and climate change. In simple terms, the more greenhouse gases the warmer the world becomes. Some people claim this isn't so but these claims have no basis to them. In fact, if the claims were true the planet would be so cold as to be uninhabitable. You see, there's a lot of natural global warming which keeps our planet at a habitable temperature.

Nature is very good at dealing with things like carbon dioxide and there's a natural carbon cycle which is constantly releasing carbon dioxide whilst at the same time absorbing it. Left to it's own devices nature is more or less in equilibrium.

If there's an increase in the levels of carbon dioxide then nature can't cope. Putting numbers to it then nature can handle 3 or 4 billion extra tons of CO2 per year but last year alone we added 29 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. There's many other greenhouse gases as well including methane, nitrous oxide and a whole bunch with long, impressive sounding chemical names.

For more than 100 years we've been overloading nature and creating a surplus of greenhouse gases which have built up in the atmosphere. These trap heat, the way they work is quite simple and if you look at some of my previous answers these explain the workings.

As levels of greenhouse gases have increased so too has the global temprature. What we're seeing now is an increase in temperatures many times faster than anything that's ever happened before.

The full picture is a very complicated one and there are a great many factors at work but the bottom line is that nature warms and cools the planet, it's currently warming it but since industrialisation the rate of warming has gone up dramatically.

What we can't say for certain is how much humans are contributing to global warming. We can make an estimate based on the fact that the world warmed by about 1 degree Celsius in the last 10,000 years of it's own accord but since industrialisation we've seen a similar temperature rise but in just 100 years. Temperatures are currently rising 16 times as fast as has ever before been known and about 100 times as fast as the period prior to industrialisation.

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EDIT:
To dsl67 (Below): You're talking about single countries, I'm talking about the world as a whole. You're talking about weather, I'm talking about climate. Global warming is not single countries and it's not a short term event.

If you want to use short term examples you can find more extreme examples than those you've cited - Siberia for example, has warmed by 4 degrees in just a few years; much more dramatic than the Greenland and Antarctic variations you refer to.

In 1980 GLOBAL average temperatures were 14.14°C, in 2005 they were 14.53°C - a rise of 0.39°C in 25 years or 0.0156°C per year. In the holocene temperatures GLOBALLY rose by 1.5°C - an average of 0.000129°C degrees per year. In other words, temperatures are now rising 121 times as fast as the holocene.

If I wanted to distort the figures I could have excluded the recent temperature rises and taken the data back by say 9,000 years - by doing so it's possible to demonstrate the world was cooling as the temperature 9,000 years ago was 0.2°C higher than it was in prior to industrialisation in 1800. Instead I opted to use the accepted norms of the holocene and mid 20th century means. Anyone can distort statistics, I chose not to by using standard data ranges.

As for the 16 times rise. Current annual temp rises 0.0156°C. Glacial retreat spanned 8,000 years, GLOBAL temps during that period rose 8°C or 0.0001 per annum - one sixteenth of the current rate. Again, I could have made it more dramatic by looking at temp rises over just the last few years and comparing them to the 18,000 year glacial retreat period. Had I done that then the current temp rise would be 0.025°C compared to 0.0005°C thus giving the impression that GLOBAL temperatures were rising 50 times as fast as had been previously known.

As to where I got the figures from - my own 23 years of peer reviewed and published research.

Answer 10

Very short answer. Solid, verified, peer reviewed data.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

Man, about 90%. Sun, about 10%.