what causes global warming?

Answer 1

Mostly us, burning fossil fuels and releasing excessive "greenhouse gases". The sun is about 10%. Verified and peer reviewed data on all the major factors here:

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

More stuff on causes and more data here:

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

"I wasn’t convinced by a person or any interest group—it was the data that got me. I was utterly convinced of this connection between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. And I was convinced that if we didn’t do something about this, we would be in deep trouble.”

Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)
Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut and the first Commander of the Naval Space Command

Answer 2

There are lots of things that can help with global warming. The primary mechanism for it are the greenhouse gases. These gases trap heat in the atmosphere which causes an increase in heat.

Another factor is that once the earth starts to heat up, the ice caps start to melt. These ice caps reflect light and heat away from the earth, and when there are less of them, the earth can get warmer.

I have read about theories which state that these warming trends can actually lead to global cooling because of changing the ocean and air currents.

As far as our impact, whether or not we have an impact, or even if global warming is actually happening, I will not comment.

Answer 3

Vehicle emissions from millions of cars on the road every day; smoke-belching factories that pollute the air and our water supplies; toxic fumes from power plants; and the natural cycle of the Earth.
Naysayers will claim that it's all a cyclical thing and there's nothing we can do about global warming. Unfortunately, the whole 'natural' process has been escalated because of our industrial revolution over the past 150 years.
Our generation won't see serious side-effects, but our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren WILL. And when they do, and when they find out that we KNEW we were squandering all of Earth's precious resources for our own convenience, how do you think they'll feel about us? Will they call us greedy, selfish, irresponsible, and reckless when they have to live in the squalor we helped create?? Most likely they will view their ancestors as low life cretins without regard for the sanctity of human life or the delicate ecological balance between man, plants and animals necessary for survival on this planet. And how will we be able to answer such charges? Not very well, I'm afraid. -RKO- 05/04/07

Answer 4

It depends on what school of thought you come from. Some believe in the Al Gore science fiction version and other more intelligent real scientists believe it's a natural phenomenon which has occurred hundreds of times throughout Earths lifespan.

Answer 5

The sun

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.
Here’s 21 pages of websites that disagree with global warming.
http://www.climatechangedebate.org/documents/CCD_read.pdf
The thought that the only scientists who disagree with global warming are paid by oil companies is simply a stupid statement with no reality. This is the most illogical argument by people in support of global warming. Aside from being completely false it begs another question: Who pays global warming supporters? The answer is big environmental agencies that make millions off of global warming each year by teaching, publishing books, and selling environmentally clean products.

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.
Here’s another source that disagrees with the IPCC: http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/Sept1004GlobalWarmingPG.pdf
And another: http://www.sepp.org/Archive/NewSEPP/ipccreview.htm
And another: http://www.john-daly.com/guests/un_ipcc.htm

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.