Is global warming anthropogenic (caused by humans)?

Answer 1

I think we're giving ourselves a little too much credit when we start to believe we have such a big impact on the global climate.

The earth has naturally cooled and warmed itself for centuries, with little or no impact from human beings.

Plus, there is little hard evidence to suggest humans have caused any of the small changes in our climate that have occured.

Global warming is a scare tactic. Don't fall into the trap.

Answer 2

It is obvious that some of it is not anthropogenic. We have been in a warming trend for thousands of years and we have had minor periods of warming and cooling. So the question is, how much if any anthropogenic warming has occurred and the answer is that we don't know. The last cooling was in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. During that time, essentially the same people now claiming global warming, were predicting the coming ice age, for the same reason, burning fossil fuels. Now that we have come out of that period of cooling, they now claim that the recent warming trend is also manmade. They will sometimes make rediculous claims like sulfur compounds caused the cooling in the 1970s but I don't think any objective scientific analyses would support that claim. CO2 concentrations, have lagged behind temperature increases. This makes it very difficult to support the alarmist position that CO2 is responsible for warming especially since it was a trend that is thousands of years old. Water vapor is a far more important greenhouse gas that is generally ignored by the alarmists probably because people cannot credibly be blamed for it. The solar output, its cycles, and orbit "wobbles" are certainly the most important factor in the periodicity of climate over the last million years with numerous hot and cold periods. Presently, we are on an upward trend, maybe 3/4s of the way up based on previous trends, after which time we will likely even out and then trend downward but it will be long after our grandchildren's grandchildren die.

Answer 3

SHORT ANSWER

Historically no but since the onset of industrialisation human activity has greatly accelerated both global warming and climate change.


LONGER ANSWER

Historically the only factors driving climate change have been natural ones but in the last 200 years human activities have had an increasingly dominant role to play.

Both the Earth and the Sun go through a series of complicated cycles, these last anything from a few years to hundreds of thousands of years. Depending whereabouts we are within these cycles there can be a net warming or a net cooling effect. It's these cycles and the interaction between them that have caused short term warming and cooling and have been the trigger for long term warming and cooling.

Currently there's a short term warming trend which has been warming the planet for 18,000 years, this is an anomoly in an otherwise general cooling trend which has been with us for a little over 50 million years. Odd as it may seem, the long term trend is indeed a cooling one and as the history of the planet goes, it's actually quite cold at the moment.

These natural cycles have been responsible for the coming and going of ice ages and historical warming and cooling. But, and this is the salient point, these changes occur very slowly - over thousands and millions of years; the year on year change in average temperatures is miniscule.

In the last 200 years, and particularly in recent decades, the rate of warming has been infinitely more than anything that could possibly be attributed to natural cycles alone. And it's no great mystery as to what's happening.

So what is happening? The science behind global warming is remarkably simple and has been known about for over 100 years. The planet is naturally insulated by a layer of greenhouse gases without which Earth would be 33°C (59°F) colder than it is. Industrialisation has led to a dramatic increase in the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmopshere which is increasing the Earth's insulative properties. Put simply, the more of these gases there are the warmer it gets. The combined levels of all greenhouse gases are higher now and are rising faster than at any time in known history (we have accurate records stretching back nearly 750,000 years).

Answer 4

Absolutely not this is pure human arrogance. We are an insignificant spec on the earth. The earth is two thirds water and one third land and of that land we cover only a very small area. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions etc. have far more effect than years of human intervention. Why have we not produced accurate records of the suns activities which are currently peaking and how do we explain past warming and cooling of the earth. We are viewing too small a snapshot in time and Governments are actively promoting the idea and making it politically unacceptable to have contrary views. In a hundred years they will look back and laugh at us and view us as equivalent to flatearthers.. By all means conserve resources and reduce pollution but lets be honest about the reasons and protect our children from political ideology.

Answer 5

Lets talk about climatic change instead of global warming.

Desertifications (special attention to this case), Weather disruptions, Acid rain, Dust clouds around big cities in south Asia, Massive irrigation to plantations drowning rivers into small water courses, Dead Sea and Caspian disruption and many other situations are just a direct consequence of human interference, like Ozon was/is once.

To any of these examples given above are about Anthropogenic causes. Easy to prove and to show how easily human interference can put down large, imense amount of ecosystems.

Global warming is just another one.

Answer 6

Global warming is NOT caused by humans. We may contribute to the to the warming but we are not the cause. claiming that humans are "THE CAUSE" of global warming is like saying that someone blowing with the wind is THE CAUSE of the wind.

To say that the temperature is not increasing is not correct either, because it is. There is plenty of proof of that but Humans do not have control of the weather YET, so all we can do is adapt best we can. We can try to reduce the amount that we do contribute to the warming but to think we can stop the planet from changing it's temp is silly. Our planet is alive because it is a living, changing, place. Greenland was not named Greenland because it was covered by and Iceshelf, it was once full of rich green grasses. It will most likely become green again. If you want something that stays pretty much the same go live on a dead planet.

Concern for the enviroment is not a bad thing but it should be directed at things that we know for a FACT that we can change. For instance our Fresh Water supply. Humans are depleting the worlds fresh water resources faster than any other natural resource. It is a simple fact that every single living person on earth needs fresh water at least every 3 days to live. Well guess what... the human population continues to increase while the amount of fresh water available is decreasing. With world population above 6 billion already how long do you think it will be before we exhaust our fresh water? We will run out of water before we run out of oil. All simply because there are too many people using water.

What's the solution? limit the population? ration water? find better ways to pureify water? locate more fresh water sources? Who knows, but we will have to address it before we will see any major changes due to "global warming"

Answer 7

No - the basic premise that a rise in CO2 levels causes a rise in temperature is wrong. Historically, rises in temperature come BEFORE rises in CO2. This is because the temperature of the ocean determines how much CO2 it can absorb. Al Gore is an inconvenient idiot! How arrogant is it to think that humans cause this global effect??? Rotting leaves in the autumn give off about eight times as much CO2 as all human activity - even the founder of Greenpeace says that this 'man-made global warming' story is a politically motivated crock. Don't listen to the lies, but also, don't stop caring about the environment, cos we all have to live here, and so do our kids.

Answer 8

i'll tell you what i think the problem is.

do you remember when they were concerntrating on the hole in the ozone layer? and they concerntrated on the cfc gasses causing it. well because changes were made, the hole shrank, and almost doesn't exsist now. so allmost all of the gases we are making now (yes the majority of these gases are produced ny human made machines, factories and power stations) get trapped under this layer (some do escape) and are warmed by the sun.

doesn't it make you think that if the hole in the ozone layer was still there that more of these gasses would escape?

makes you think doesn't it?

Answer 9

The highest levels of the atmosphere are cooling down.
The lowest levels of the atmosphere are heating up.

Most people think because the heat is coming from the earth, what do you think?

Also, the Carbon Dioxide concentration in the air began to increase AFTER 1850. The start of the Industrial Age.
Could this be an unrelated coincidence?

Answer 10

There is no right answer to this... The earth has its own cycle of warmth and coldness over the past billions of years it has existed... ice ages are a great example... it has its own cycle of temperature changes and the atmosphere influences this also.

To say that human behavior has not impacted global warming, would be wrong to say however.... An Inconvenient Truth lays out these factors... BUT, to say that global warming is the result of just human behavior would be pretty naive of people to think.


Thats my opinion... I've taken many college science courses and also sociological and environmental courses... so I have a wide variety of resources to rely on.


All in all.... Global warming is being caused by both humans and nature.