What causes global warming?

Question

How does global warming happen and how does it affect us?

Answer 1

What causes global warming?

Forcing factors including solar activity, volcanic emissions, variations in the earth’s orbit, and greenhouse gases influences the climate system. Primarily increased levels of greenhouse gases due to human activity have caused recent warming. This is clearest for the most recent 50 years, for which the most detailed data are available.

The Earth heats slowly so even if greenhouse gases were stabilized at present day levels, a further warming of about 0.5 °C would occur.


How does it affect us?

Effects that are happening now include, glacier retreat, ice shelf disruption such as the Larsen Ice Shelf, sea level rise, extinctions of plant and animal species, changes in rainfall patterns, increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. While changes are expected for overall patterns, intensity, and frequencies, it is difficult to attribute specific events to global warming. Other expected effects include water scarcity, changes in mountain snowpack, adverse health effects from warmer temperatures, and the spread of disease.

Additional anticipated effects include sea level rise 0.36 to 2.5 feet by 2100, repercussions to agriculture, possible slowing of the thermohaline circulation, reductions in the ozone layer, increased intensity and frequency of hurricanes and extreme weather events, lowering of ocean pH, and the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. Mass extinctions on the order of 18% to 35% of animal and plant species by 2050.

Answer 2

Some gases ("greenhouse gases") let sunlight in, which warms the Earth, and then block that heat from leaving. That's the "greenhouse effect", and it's a natural thing, mostly caused by water vapor.

Man is making excessive amounts of greenhouse gases, mostly by burning fossil fuels. That causes the delicate natural balance to go out of whack and the Earth warms. That's global warming.

It won't be a Hollywood style disaster. Gradually coastal areas will flood and agriculture will be damaged. But it will be very bad. Rich countries will cope, but it will take huge amounts of money. In poor countries many people will die of starvation, but not all of them.

Most scientists say, in 20-50 years. But we need to start right now to fix it, fixing it will take even longer than that.

More information here:

http://profend.com/global-warming/

Lots of numerical scientific data proving it real here:

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

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

The swindle movie is wrong.

"A Channel 4 documentary claimed that climate change was a conspiratorial lie. But an analysis of the evidence it used shows the film was riddled with distortions and errors."

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece

Answer 3

This is a question that can and does start a lot of controversy, and I quess there are many answers to argue about, but remember, the earth has been getting warmer ever since the last ice age, and this was long before the introduction of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
So, is there a real reason other than the natural warming? is it really mans fault?
Does history of the earth provide the answer?

Answer 4

international warming turns into international cooling by using fact once you have invested a huge quantity of capability faking, forging, manipulating records and merchandising the fake perception that CO2 reasons a international temperature upward thrust however the information starts off to instruct a cooling type then you definately pull the old switcheroo and with any luck desire all of us is so ideas broken via the actual pollutants, mercury, lead, fluoride and Fox information that their gentle minds may even settle for that its conceivable. the actuality is obviously became into that there became into no actual guy-made international warming first of all, and any gentle warming became into thoroughly organic. international temperature is pushed particularly via image voltaic pastime, and image voltaic flare pastime is now at a low so the planet is fairly at the instant cooling after an ever so gentle upward thrust. So the respond is..... it can not. One does not reason the different the temperature basically fluctuates looking on image voltaic pastime.

Answer 5

Climate change causes global warming. It effects us in too many ways to write. The key is finding ways to adapt to changes in environment.

Answer 6

Global warming is caused by carbon diaoxide from cars, factroy smoke and chemicals we pour into our earth everyday

Answer 7

It's probably easiest to answer this question by referring you to webpages I created that answer your specific questions -

What causes global warming?:
http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/causes.html

How does it affect us?:
http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/effects.html

Future effects:
http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/future.html

Answer 8

All kinds of warming are caused by energy being added. If energy is removed cooling happens.

Answer 9

It is a hoax to save fuel for Gore 's air plain and u are buying that. The rich will get very rich over this.

Answer 10

The theory of man-made global warming is false. Anyone who believes otherwise has not investigated the evidence or is purposely remaining ignorant to the legitimate opposition to global warming. I have given up an one and a half hours to watch “An Inconvenient Truth” so I ask you to do the same and watch the movie detailing the opposition.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4499562022478442170&q=great+global+warming+swindle.
Another general resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy

CO2 is not causing the globe to warm the opposite is true, the warming is increasing the atmospheric CO2. When the world heats it gradually increases the temperature of the oceans which serve as the largest CO2 sink. As the oceans heat up they release CO2 which is stored in them. The information comes from the same data Al Gore uses, the temperature always goes up before the concentration of CO2 goes up.
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/ninelieslaunch.pdf#search=%22vostok%20figure%20125%22

CO2 makes up only .03% of our atmosphere. Water vapor, another greenhouse gas, makes up 1-4% of our atmosphere, this gas is acknowledged to be the main greenhouse gas. All human activities combined contribute only 6 Gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year. Animals, through respiration, decomposition, etc contribute 150 Gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere. So humans contribute only a small amount of CO2 to the atmosphere which is already in very small concentrations in the atmosphere.
http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/science.html This is where my data came from, it is an interesting site, it displays the same graphics as Al Gore in his movie but it tells how low the human contribution is. So Al Gore is using the same data but coming to a different conclusion, who do you want to believe a politician with no scientific training or the NASA CO2 laboratory, a group of scientists who spend their entire careers studying CO2.

We know the greenhouse effect is real it is a necessary effect to keep our planet at a habitable temperature. However if our current warming is due to greenhouse gasses it would cause warming in the troposphere , but the troposphere is actually getting cooler.
http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/temperature/. That points to other explanations to our current warming.

So what is causing our current warming, it is the sun.
http://web.dmi.dk/solar-terrestrial/space_weather/
http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2003/split/642-2.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060926_solar_activity.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/08/040803093903.htm
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/17jan_solcon.htm
The fact that only the earth’s surface is warming points to direct heating from the sun rather than heating due to greenhouse gasses. Also other planets in our solar system are warming pointing to a common cause of warming, that common cause being the sun.
http://www.livescience.com/environment/070312_solarsys_warming.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mgs-092005.html
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mgs-092005-images.html

The global warming crowd says our glaciers are melting and animals will suffer this is another false claim.
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V8/N46/EDIT.jsp
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA235.html
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/

the global warming crowd also claims a scientific consensus on the issue, this is wrong in two ways. One, there is no consensus, this is a false claim to make you believe in global warming by suppressing the opposition. http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm
Second, even if there was a consensus it would mean nothing, science is not politics, you don’t vote on theories to determine their legitimacy.

The IPCC is the main supporter of global warming, their statements are defended blindly by people who don’t want to admit that global warming is not real. People will claim that they took into account natural sources of CO2, they didn’t. Take a look for yourself:
http://www.ipcc.ch/activity/srccs/index.htm. That is the latest IPCC report, read the entire report, do a search of the documents, there is absolutely no mention of natural sources of CO2. The natural sources have been completely ignored. Also people will claim that the IPCC took the sun into account in their report, this is not entirely correct, while the sun is mentioned the report it’s effects have not been accurately represented.
http://www.john-daly.com/forcing/moderr.htm. The IPCC did not take into account the Svensmark factor. This would greatly reduce the effect of solar radiation on the earth. Look back up to the solar resources to see the effect of the sun correctly represented.
Also allegations have been by IPCC scientists who disagreed with the IPCC statements. They say that their research was censored or taken out of the IPCC report. This is not the first time the IPCC has lied, they forged the famous “hockey stick” graph, which later resulted in a reissuing of the IPCC report.

Quotes form politicians, CEO’s, and others are not proof of global warming, they issue these statements to get votes and customers. Scientists are able to get published and get time on the media by supporting global warming. The IPCC continually lies and misrepresents data so they keep their jobs.

In regards to the precautionary principle that says we can only help if we switch over to alternative energy, this idea is not correct. While this may seem legitimate it only helps the first world, third world countries can not afford to switch to the more expensive energy options. Also the US currently spends 4 billion dollars a year on global warming research which could be better spent on research for disease or to fight poverty. For an excellent example of how the precautionary principle is harmful you do not need to look further than DDT. This pesticide was cheap and incredibly effective but it was banned because of it harmful effects on egg shells. Now thousands of people die every year in third world countries because of malaria, a disease that could be easily controlled with DDT.

I hope anyone who believes in global warming they will take a look at the resources I provided. These resources should convince you that global warming is not man-made, it is caused by cycles in the earths climate. If you are not convinced I hope you at least take a new look at global warming as an unproven idea. Remember that global warming is big business for anyone who aligns themselves with it.

I could not go this entire post without mentioning global cooling. In the 1970’s it was claimed that there was a consensus on the fact that the world was headed into an ice age. We have seen once before how damaging a false claim about our climate change can be to our world. Most of the global warming crowd does not want you to know about this scare because it is so similar to the scare today. Government panels were formed and claimed the world was headed to an ice age, evidence poured in supporting the claim, a consensus was claimed, then the whole issue just faded away. That is what will happen with the false scare of global warming.