With all this "global warming" hype has the planet been warming up since the Ice Age or have i got it wrong ??

Answer 1

Nope you've got it right,as for 30,000 dying in the whole of europe in a heat wave, well 25,000 die from cold weather every year in the U.K. alone, so bring on the warmer weather.

Answer 2

unfortunately most research is tainted by the reseachers views, the majority of research is done to try and prove a theory and this makes me question the accuracy of most of the so called evidence regarding global warming, there are as many scientists on the no side as there are on the yes side, one answerer quoted facts stretching back a million years, wow, what an incredibly long time, to us mortals that is, blink once , thats is how long it is to this planet and its cycles. The arrogance of man rises its ugly head again, remember global warming right or wrong is of no significance to this planet , it only matters to us, and frankly we are just a temporary blight on the planet, if the evidence is right and we are the cause, then it also proves conclusively one other point, we are not the intelligent species we think we are, ask yourself another question - what do you call a species that knowingly destroys the very thing that is keeping it alive?

Answer 3

There's a lot of debate about whether or not human CO2 has caused global warming. There's a school of thought that says that although global temperatures have risen in the 20th and 21st (so far) centuties, there was a dip in global temperatures in the 1970s and that if human CO2 was responsible for the temperature rise there should have been a marked INCREASE in the post war decades. But there wasn't. Many people on here are saying 'the hottest years since records began' but they forget - our records started very late in the life of a planet that's billions of years old. The fact is, we can't be 100% sure what's going on.

Answer 4

Youre rite the global warming thing is a big pile of hype. the earth goes through cycles and there isnt nothing we as humans can do about it. even if we could we wouldnt want to. and yes ur wrong about the ice age. science has proven that the ice age wasnt a one time deal. the earth didnt turn into a giant ice ball. it could only go so far south even when there was one it was in cycles it didnt stay winter for ages it was more like winter then warmed up then got cold again. even now we are in the middle of an ice age. when humans got into the agricultural age then the industrial age. has held back a modern ice age.
if they ppl didnt put out the crap about global warming then alot of ppl would loose money. global warming is nothing but a money maker for ppl. global warming is being used to help convince ppl to buy hybrid vehicles and such. global warming is just a scare tacktic to help sell products

Answer 5

You've got it right but it's important to put things into context.

The world has been warming up for 18,000 years of it's own accord and this is what brought about the most recent glacial retreat - note, it's not the end of the ice age; many people incorrectly refer to it as such but the present ice age is still with us and has been around for a little over 50 million years.

18,000 years ago the world was 9 degrees Celsius colder than it is now, for 7,500 years temperatures rose at a remarkable rate and the glaciers retreated. For the next 10,000 years temperatures rose by a further degree and in recent years they're risen by another degree.

Here's where the concern lies. During the melting of the glaciers temperatures rose by a little under 0.001 degree a year, in the recent past they rose by 0.0001 degree a year, in recent decades they've risen by 0.0156 degrees a year.

It's very true to say that the world has always warmed and cooled of it's own accord but the global warming skeptics deliberately skew the facts by neglecting to mention that temperatures are now rising many times faster than has ever before been known. The validity of their argument is based on the same logic as claiming that the population of the planet is constantly increasing therefore nobody ever dies - if you deliberately omit to take important factors into account then it's easy to misrepresent the facts.

Answer 6

Over 21,000 years the seasons gradually move so that winter time now will be summer time then.
Most temperature records quoted from say the middle ages through to now would have been taken in what was rural areas - these areas are now surrounded by built up areas - so, we have an easy target monthly, comparisons mean nothing and temperature are effected by the heat from the built up areas. However, in England records show strangely enough that there has been no rise in temperature over recent years.

Answer 7

Global warming is a convenient buzz phrase. The problem is not just that the globe is heating up, but its the rate at which it is happening. Man since WW2 has contributed more CO2 than in the previous several centuries put together. Now the oceans are not absorbing as much CO2 as once they did, so the warming effect will increase again. Weather, tides, wildlife, man will all be catastrophically affected within our lifetimes.

Answer 8

Actually, its only been warming since about the 1700s, what is referred to as "the little ice age." Before that temps had been falling since about 1200, when they reached a high peak, a good bit warmer than at present.

Answer 9

Get close to home for the truth. Go to Dartmoor (in Devon, UK) and you will find deserted Iron Age villages on the high moors, deserted middle age villages half way down. This indicates that long time ago, it was warm enough to live up on the high moor, and now it is not. Looking at the "Sea Level Rising" more bulldung. Ok, so the sea level is rising in east anglia, but, its falling in the area of the Black Sea.... Why? 2 ends of a tilting tectonic plate of the earths crust.

Answer 10

Well, in geological terms, an ice age is defined as a period when we have ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres; by this definition we are still in an ice age (because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist).

However, you are correct that the Earth is currently “emerging” from the existing ice age, and is, therefore, in the midst of a very long, generally warming trend.

So, no, you haven’t got it wrong, the Earth is expected to be warming at the present time.

The Global Warming Alarmists (GWAs) would like us to believe that the warming over the last few centuries has been unnaturally fast and must be man made. However, the evidence seems to suggest otherwise.

In 1200A.D. the Earth was in the midst of the Medieval Warm Period, when it was several °C warmer than it is today. A few centuries later and we had the Little Ice Age when it was much colder than today. This change occurred long before mankind began to have a significant effect on the atmosphere and it was therefore, completely natural. If it happened before only a few centuries ago, there is no reason to assume that the current climate changes are anything but a nature process.

To answer some of the GWAs’ point above…

Avatar says: “FACT: >30,000 people DIED< in the single month of August 2003 from the worst heatwave ever recorded in Europe” – Yes, but as baillieston boy (above) points out, the most recent cold snap in the U.K. killed 25,000 people *in Britain alone*.

The truth is that, as far as life is concerned, warmer is generally better. The GWAs, like Avatar, will try to convince you that if the Earth warms up any more, it’s going to be catastrophic for life and cause mass extinctions. This is simply nonsense. And the really odd thing is, if we would actually turn our brains on and really *think* about this, we know it’s true. Take a quick mental trip from the poles to the equator. What happens, life-wise? We start in the polar regions where there is very little life. As we move towards the equator, the amount and diversity of life increases, until we reach places like the Amazon which is one of the richest areas of life on the planet.

The past reflects this. Biodiversity reached its peak at the end of the tertiary age, a few million years ago, when it was much warmer than it is today. The development went in a completely different direction when the ice ages came and temperatures dropped, causing a massive extinction of species.

But this truth doesn’t stop the GWAs lying to us about it. Who hasn’t heard of the terrible plight of the polar bears who are expected to become extinct within 25 years because of global warming? Except, of course, it isn’t true! See here… http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Taylor/last_stand_of_our_wild_polar_bears.html

So, I say again. Whenever a GWA tries to tell you that global warming is going to be bad for life, they are *lying* to you.

Avatar also sys: “neither the RATE of temperature increase nor levels of greenhouse gasses have EVER been as high as they now are” – As mentioned above, the temperature changed just as fast, if not faster, when the climate moved from the Medieval Warm Period to the Little Ice Age. The current rise in temperature is not unusual.

So how can the GWAs make these claims? Simple, they just abolished the Medieval Warm Period!

In 1995, David Deming, a geoscientist at the University of Oklahoma, had written an article reconstructing 150 years of North American temperatures from borehole data. He later wrote: "With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. One of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said: 'We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.' "

So they did. Take a look at the infamous “Hockey-stick” graph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/05/nwarm05.xml&page=3 It starts in 1000 A.D., but there’s no Medieval Warm Period, and no Little Ice Age. In fact there’s pretty much no change in temperature for 900 years, until the 20th century when it shoots up. Clever huh? Except it’s not true.

Avatar then talks about CO2: “The levels (of CO2) massivly(sic) "jumped" 61 points just since 1960!” Well, while it’s undoubtedly true that levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have risen by slightly over one third since the Industrial Revolution, and mankind is probably the cause of most of this rise, there is no conclusive proof the this will have much effect on global temperatures. The historical record shows that changes in CO2 *followed* changes in temperature by 800+ years. Now, while the GWAs have explanations for why this happens when temperatures go up (I’m sure someone will eagerly give us the correct realclimate.org link), they have no explanation for why temperatures go *down* for 800+ years while CO2 continues to rise. Clearly, when this happens, temperatures are completely ignoring what CO2 is doing.

Also remember that CO2 amounts to only a tiny proportion of the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, 98% of which is water vapour. Compared to the effects of water vapour, the effects of CO2 are like farts in a hurricane.

Anyway, I think that’s more than enough. If you want to read more, take a look at my sources.

As ever with global warming – don’t believe the hype.

Answer 11

Nope. You are right. This will continue until the earth gets it's closest to the sun, then our orbit will slowly begin to move us away from the sun again and things will get back to normal over the next few thousands of years. Then it will start getting colder again just like it was a million years (or whatever the time of the last ice age was).
They ONLY thing we can do is adapt and adjust.