Is global warming a natural occurance?

Answer 1

No it is caused by man

Answer 2

Our planet has been around for a very long time (a little over 4.5 billion years) and it's always been either warming or cooling.

For all the time the world has been here humans have been around for a very short time (if the world were a day old humans would have been around for 20 seconds). In the past these changes have been entirely natural.

There's two main forces at work - the cycles in the way the Earth moves and the cycles in the amount of heat energy from the sun. We have a good understanding of many of these cycles but there may be some very long term solar cycles we haven't yet identified.

What we do know is how much these cycles affect our climate and the answer is not by much. Certainly not in the short term, over thousands and millions of years they can and do have a significant effect. Perhaps the most obvious of which is the coming and going of ice ages.

What we're experiencing now is very different to anything that can be put down to natural cycles, primarily because the world is warming up so much faster than could ever happen naturally.

To give you an example. 18,000 years ago the glaciers began to melt (often called the last ice age), this was brought about because of an extremely rapid natural rise in temperatures, such dramatic temperature changes are very rare in nature. Even though these natural rises were dramatic they pale into insignificance compared to the current rate at which temperatures are rising - 17 times as fast.

We know why the temperatures are rising so fast, it's because of the increased levels of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The way they work isn't a mystery and has been understood for a long time. Put simply, the more greenhouse gases there are the hotter the planet becomes (it works the other way around as well, warming produces greenhouse gases).

To answer your question - global warming in the past has been entirely natural, the current global warming is way beyond anything natural and human activity is largely to blame.

If you'd like to know more some terms you could search for are Milankovitch Cycles, Solar Variation and Feedback Effect.

Answer 3

Global warming in my opinion is an abnormal reaction to what we humans have emitted in the air. The earth is our lungs to breathe and we have filled it up with cancerous gases, deteriorating the lining faster than it can heal itself.

Sure one can argue the Earth has in the past heat up and cool down but history also indicates that these hikes in temperature are absolutely not normal - the degrees are significantly higher than what we humans can survive on this earth comfortably. And can be directly correlated to the improvement in technology that requires more energy and as a result we have global warming.

Answer 4

This global warming is not natural that is why where have the
Kyoto Protocol

Answer 5

WHO OR WHAT IS TO BLAME

Irresponsible Agriculture , expanding populations and its effects are the planets biggest enemies.

This text only covers some aspects of Climate change ,i.e.effects of deforestation and subsequent man made desertification ,because of irresponsible farming using chemicals ,over pumping carbon aquifers,over grazing ,wild fires (because of slash and burn gone out of control).

Water and air polution ,such as caused by
industrial contamination ,the contaminating effects of the cities(the internal combustion engine) ,are other stories.

All of these are also man made ,such as the high industrial chimneys pumping contamination into the clouds and the burning of tires,some of this polution has been found in the ice in the polar regions.

There are natural cycles in the planets life
but a lot is influenced by mans existance ,this is increasing with overpopulation,putting strains on Natural resources and increasing contaminations .

The thinner ozone layer helps to speed this up. This is caused mainly by air polution ,also as a result of mans actions.

In North Africa,India,Mexico ,millions of people are effected by land loss , desertification and some have died as a result.

Now many animals are becoming sick because of changes in temperature .
Vital links in the food chains are disapearing affecting other species further along in the chain .

We are witness to a mass exstinction ,for the first time since the dinosaurs.
Of the earth's estimated 10 million species, 300,000 have vanished in the past 50 years.
Each year, 3,000 to 30,000 species become extinct.

Everything is happening so fast it is not possible to monitor things any more.

The Sahara is growing by 7 kilometers a year.
Most of the desserts are as a results of mans actions.And they are increasing .In the dinosaurs days ,there were few desserts.

Collectively this planet is drying up .

Each degree rise in temperature means 10%crop loss

There is less and less water (because of deforestation),to irrigate Agriculture.

Arable lands and their farms are lost all over the globe. Many farmers sons abandon farming and head for the cities.

Northern China is drying up, what once were millions of food producing people, are now hungry refugees ,running for their lives from the all consuming dust storms.

This will have a great effect on world food prices when they start buying at what ever cost, to feed their people.

The farmers that are left have to feed some 70 million more people than the year before but with less topsoil(because of desertification and irreverible erosion)

Over the last half century,
Population growth & rising incomes have tripled world grain demand from 640 million tons to 1,855 million

In the near future the global farming community will not be able to feed every body ,food prices will continue to rise. .

RISING SEAS
The northpole is melting ,and we will know it without ice in our life times.
This does not affect the sea level ,because it is ice that is already in the water.but the melting ice from Green land and the south pole ,and the Glaziers is potable water lost forever and rises the sea levels.

Are We responsible ?
Is it the Sun?
Is it God who wants to punish us?
Is it Gaia who wants to clean some parasitic infestation?
Is it a Natural cycle?

Who cares ? that is not important any more
WHAT IS important -is that we are gonna be in trouble

Answer 6

Absolutely. Apparently the sun's going through a particularly hot streak right now.