Do you think Global Warming is happening naturally or everyone is just paranoid?

Question

No one can prove if it's are thought though since we have only been measuring the weather for around 200 years. If we saw data from 1500 or whatever and then looked at the tempreture was rising then we would know. You know what could people back then do to pollute the earth. Drive their 4x4's.

Answer 1

I think that entirely too many scientists today are ready to say they know that global warming is the responsibility of our pollution of the atmosphere, when there is no way for them to really know if the warming trend is something that happened before, or not. Why? Because if they get everyone to believe that it is what we are doing that is causing it, then they can believe that we can do something to stop it. If it is just a natural occurrence, that has happened many times before, then there is nothing that we are able to do to stop it, and we may not survive it if it continues.

While I won't discount the possibility that polution may be causing it, I will never assume, no matter how many "experts" agree with each other, that it is our actions alone that is causing it. This may be the natural course of things.

Answer 2

My opinion is that the current warming trend we seem to be seeing is probaby mostly natural and will probably not cause us any major problems.

Global Warming Alarmists (GWAs) will tell you differently, of course, but most of what they say is simply propaganda.

Take Bob, above, for example. He says: "99+% of scientists around the world believe global warming is real and mostly caused by us." But this simply isn't true - Bob's lying to you. Here's a link to an actual survey of climate scientists. http://downloads.heartland.org/20861.pdf Let's see what they have to say on the subject...

Is global warming real? A whopping 82% say is it. But that's well short of Bob's 99+%. In fact, almost 1 in 5 are not sure it's even happening and almost 3% *strongly* disagree.

Is global warming mostly caused by us? Almost 56% say yes, but that's nearly half of Bob's 99+%. Basically, that shows that scientists are pretty much evenly divided on the subject.

So why do people like Bob lie to us and say these things? Because it's a classic propaganda technique: tell the people that it's already been decided and these are the "facts" and you'll be amazed how gullible people will be. Of course, it only works if you can silence the opposition, which is why we get people like Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, comparing climate sceptics to advocates of Islamic terror. Neither, she said, should have access to the media.

Notice that Bob uses this "everyone believes it" tactic twice, because he later quotes Jerry Mahlman (NOAA) as saying "There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know..." So, is that as good a consensus as there was about the Earth being at the centre of the Solar System during Galileo's time? Saying "there's a consensus" is meaningless. What they're really saying is "Well, we can't actually *prove* it, but there's more of us than you, so we're right (so there)."

As ever with global warming - don't believe the hype.

Answer 3

I'm more inclined to believe it's a natural occurrence. Considering the Carbon Dioxide levels were nearly double during the med evil period (measured via bog strata), and no ice age resulted. Carbon Dioxide levels run up about every 700 years or so. It's nothing new.

When Mt. Pinatubo erupted it belched out a phenomenal amount of carbon dioxide, various acids and sulfates creating a massive ozone hole, yet self corrected within 140 day's.

Shifting ice caps? How many people realise the earth is constantly shifting on it's axis, which is why we have compass deviation from magnetic to true north. Wind directly affects ocean temperature along with deep water currents and visa verse. Get a change in current pattern, there will be a created cause and effect.

The premise of Global Warming is BIG business when you really take a good close look at it. All you have to do is research back to discover who began yelling "Global Warming" in the first place... and the light grows brighter.

As for those who have done no research and merely watched a movie, ready to believe everything espoused simply because it was claimed to be...research the validity and you'll find some convenient distortions of truth.

You may not like the reality of the results you find out, but as far as the above examples...they are fact.

Answer 4

The oldest recorded temperature data comes from the UK Meteorological Office and is known as HadCET (Hadley Centre Central England Temperature), it dates back to 1659.

The earliest thermometers (thermoscopes) predate this so there are some earlier measurements but they're usually disgarded as not being reliable.

There are seveal techniques we can use to calculate, with great accuracy, historical temperatures. The furthest we can go back uses oxgyen isotope analysis and this provides us with a 542 million year climate record.

Not that we need to go back that far, even a chart drawn from the last 30 years of data shows a very rapid warming trend (30 years is generally considered the shortest time scale for which a reliable analysis can be made).

From these detailed temperature records we can clearly see that something strange is happening - temperatures are rising far faster than has ever before been known.

We've known for over 100 years why this is. It was back in 1896 that Svante Arrhenius established the link between greenhouse gas emissions, the greenhouse effect, global warming and climate change.

To say that we don't have enough information is simply not true, we have a huge amount of information and this is why the scientists are so concerned. If we did only have 200 years of data there would be far less cause for concern as it would be assumed that the Earth was behaving naturally. It's quite clear that what's happeing now isn't natural and current temperature rises are 17 times as fast as anything that's ever before been known.

Answer 5

It might be possible that the hole in the ozone is not just a symptom of global warming, it could be the earths attempt to cool down, and unfortunately frying everything under that hole. Global Warming opens the door for new environmentally friendly alternative businesses. Oil is not sustainable. Fuels like rapeseed oil and power sources like solar and wind energy need large scale funding in order to make any impact. The fact of the matter is, people have been screaming about global warming since the fifties. So when you have a couple of scientists threatening the success of the corporate fatcats with their findings, it's going to get covered up. It's all about timing, and the timing is going to be different for every country and it's about whether is economically viable. It seems risky when there is money involved, but at the end of the day, If you had a choice to live in a city with traffic that runs on petrol or rapeseed oil, what would you choose. Rapeseed runs in all engines and doesn't require any car modification. And the waste gas is oxygen, believe it or not. Also, if the climate heats up, it's in your interest to use the energy to your advantage. Save yourself a heap of cash in the longrun and invest in a solar panel. Of course, geography is an important factor. If it was possible to pinpoint an area at tisk of flooding, a water power station could be built, creating jobs and improving qualituy of life, basically setting up the economy. It will take a long time. Some countries are run by difficult leaders and the only thing that will work is money, funding and positive propoganda. Scare tactics may seem bad to some people but it's the only way to get the message across to the indifferent.

Answer 6

I think the issue is related to the causes of global warming and the extent to which temperatures will actually change. The earth has been through many climate changes throughout its life.
We are also coming out of a great cooling which began in the early 1900s.
As far as going back before the 1850s (when records began), moisture content is measured in the rings of old trees, then temperatures are extrapolated, which isn't all that accurate, particularly when putting temperature changes into context becomes difficult, temperatures need to be trended over millions of years, rather than the few hundred shown in the likes of 'An inconvenient truth'.....
One great concern is, given how much hysteria has been wiped up, there is a temptation for politicians to make radical changes and expenditure based on shaky scientific grounds merely to appear 'Green'.
Very complicated topic isn't it?

Answer 7

Some years ago, we had a meteorologist to give a talk at a club I attended.
He produced a chart of global temperatures covering the last 200,000years: guess what?
We are currently slap bang in the middle of the chart for global temperature. It has been much hotter and much cooler than now in the past.
Conclusion? We don't really know yet if it is natural, man made or both. But... it does make sense to conserve all our resources for the future, so lets stop polluting and wasting fuel!

Answer 8

Quite simply put, we are not responsible for global warming, perhaps we are speading it up a little though.

So lets get this right, the earth is about 5 billion years old, in that time its been super hot, ice aged, tropical, hit by space debris, freezing cold again, hot again etc...

I personally believe the whole global warming warming is a side issue used by government to smokescrean the real issues we face (ie, iranian and korean nuclear bombs, gulf war 3, the greater german state... other that the EU etc)

Answer 9

Global warming is definately natural, however continually building over natural land can't be doing the earth alot of good. The Co2 that we produce is not harming the planet, Co2 is produced naturally, and nature produces a shite load more than we do. Watch 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'. Although the co2 and other gases we produce can't be doing our health any good.

Sharn do you know what volcanoes produce?

Answer 10

Like a lot of important issues, Global Warming suffers the indignity of every ill-informed pundit chipping in with their two cents' worth. There's no other subject in recent years that's attracted so much uneducated opinion on both sides of the debate.
For me the global warming debate detracts from a far more pertinent point about fossil fuels - they're going to run out one day, and most of what's left is in the hands of unpleasant dictators. Therefore, regardless of whether carbon emissions are warming the planet, we need to be cutting down on carbon consumption because of the economic and political consequences of staying hooked on the black stuff.
As far as whether GW is happening or not, I'm not going to contradict myself and add my own ill-informed voice to the melee. All I would do is break the question down into its component bits:

1) Is the temperature of the planet increasing?

2) If the answer to 1) is yes, is this increase abnormal when the earth's natural up-and-down temperature fluctuations are taken into account?

3) If the answer to 2) is yes, is this abnormal temperature increase due to human activity?

All three questions require the answer 'yes' for global warming to be considered a reality, the hardest one to prove being question 3). Some scientists (see sources, below) dispute even the first question, pointing out that weather stations in rural areas have not even registered a temperature rise at all over the past hundred years, and the phenomenon of global warming is something only recorded in cities (urban areas tend to warm up as they grow bigger due to the intensive use of concrete and electricity). Certainly it is very challenging indeed to link any increase in temperature to human activity due to the sheer complexity of climate as a science.
One thing's for sure - opinions on global warming tend to ignore the science and follow the politics. In other words, people in bed with oil companies etc tend to think (with no scientific background whatsoever) that global warming is all hokum, whereas liberals and socialists with an axe to grind tend to plug GW theories as gospel truth as it suits their worldview that energy companies really are 'destroying the world'.
What we should be doing is let scientific study (ie creating theories, making predictions, and seeing if those predictions come true) set the tone for the global warming debate, and ignore non-scientists on either side of the issue.