I dont believe in man-made global warming try to convince me?

Question

Man made global warming is a myth used to tax us. If you have acutual agurment for it please write, i am willing to listen to a fair point.

Note i am a recent physics graduate so u cant pass any political rubish like the media on me!

Can i just add for when people say greenhouse gases what do they mean?
Water vapor is the number one green house gass at over 90%.

Answer 1

Don't need to. It's natural.

Here...check out this website that's run by some really good scientists from Harvard-Smithsonian and professors from other prestigious institutes all over North America, www.friendsofscience.org. They really put up convincing and (reluctantly) UN Climate Report backed data that shows that Global Warming is natural and normal. They totally convince me that the cause of this natural temperature flucuation is the most simple source, the sun. For instance, for centuries, the sun has always intensified and weakened its radiation upon the earth, thus causing temperatures to change from century to century. During the 1400's, the Medieval Warming period took place, when temperatures were 3-4 degrees warmer than they are today! And after that during the 1700-1800's, we went through a little known Little Ice Age, when the temperatures dropped 1-2 degrees. Right now, we're only coming out of an ice age, so no wonder our temperatures are higher than they were 100-200 years ago. Which explains why they're still completely normal. And besides, in the sixties, when industry was reaching a peak, and carbon emissions were at an all time high, the temperature actually dropped! Scientists actually thought that we were going to go through another ice age. Yet, during the same time, the sun's rays weakened, thus proving that it was in direct correlation to the temperatures here on earth. So, to conclude, global warming isn't man-made, it's completely natural, caused by the sun.

Answer 2

CO2 is going up. OK, it is a minor contributor to the greenhouse effect, and humans are a minor contributor to the CO2. That natural system is balanced for a certain amount of water vapor, CO2 and other constituents. Now people come along and put a little extra CO2 into the system. Before, there were 100 units of CO2 released and 100 units absorbed each year, now there are 101 units released and 100 absorbed. It is a system out of balance. The effect is small, but not zero. So the only question is, how much effect will it have. If you read the climate science reports, the serious scientific reports and not the press releases or the latest blog, and you will see that there is pretty good evidence for a foot or two sea level rise in 100 years and a couple degrees temperature rise in 100 years. I personally do not consider that problem worth the cost that would be suffered by the cutbacks that would be needed to reduce CO2 emissions as much as some are saying we need to. But because coal and oil WILL run out some day, I support all efforts to find alternative energy sources.

Answer 3

Well, Dana claims to be a physics graduate, too. Maybe you'll buy into this:
Quite simply, natural causes cannot account for the acceleration in global warming over the past 40 years. Climate models have shown that greenhouse gases are responsible for 80-90% of the warming over that period:

Sounds pretty scientific, doesn't it? I mean, doesn't every science exclude without a doubt all but one possible outcome? Nature drives climate for billions of years, but now that man is in charge, nature is not forced into the backseat - it's kicked out of the car! And computer models are always the preferred method over empirical measurements, right?

But, while we are talking about accounting, as long as we're talking about a portion of the Greenhouse effect attributable to man, why don't you ask these brilliant people to account for the amount of global temperature created by the Greenhouse effect...say within the 80-90% that they claim the effect has added in the last 40 years?

Answer 4

i find it amusing when people source Wikepedia as a credible website for this nonesense...

There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today. For example:

During the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 1800 ppm or about 4.7 times higher than today.

The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Cambrian Period, nearly 7000 ppm -- about 18 times higher than today.

The Carboniferous Period and the Ordovician Period were the only geological periods during the Paleozoic Era when global temperatures were as low as they are today. To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today-- 4400 ppm.

According to greenhouse theory, Earth should have been exceedingly hot. Instead, global temperatures were no warmer than today. Clearly, other factors besides atmospheric carbon influence earth temperatures and global warming.

Answer 5

A couple points people fail to mention.

1) There is no proof that CO2 causes an increase in temperature, in fact the data shows that CO2 increase happens AFTER temperature increase.

2) Since humans have heavily industrialized, there have been as many, or more, years of COOLING as there have been warming.

3) There have been rapid climate changes in the past ( see the medieval warm period and "little ice age" ) that clearly cannot be blamed on human industry.

Answer 6

1. CO2 is increasing in the air at an exponential rate, with no sign of slowing down.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
2. The amount of CO2 in the air has increased 37% since the industrial revolution.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/law/law.html
3. This rise is caused entirely by human beings. Isotopic analysis of the CO2 in the air shows that it increasingly contains "old" carbon combined with "young" oxygen. This is solid proof that the CO2 increase is caused by burning fossil fuels.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87
4. CO2 is a greenhouse gas which causes the planet to warm. That means that it is transparent to visible light, where most of the Sun's energy is, but absorbs infrared light, which are the wavelengths radiated by things that are warm. When the Sun shines in visible light, it makes the surface of the earth warm, but greenhouse gas in the atmosphere re-absorbs some of that heat instead of it radiating out into space. That makes the planet warmer. This effect has been known (and unchallenged) since the 19th century, so I won't post a link.
5. The planet is actually getting warmer.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
6. Natural climatic forcings can be ruled out as causes of the current warmth:
(6a). Ice ages and inter-glacial periods are triggered by small changes in Earth's orbit, called "orbital forcing." Since Earth's orbit can be computed for thousands of years into the past and future, we know that orbital forcing peaked 6000 years ago, and should be slowly cooling the planet right now.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/207/4434/943
(6b). Solar activity peaked in 1957-58, and has been unsteadily declining since that time.
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/solarda3.html
7. If the warmth is due to the greenhouse effect, we should see the stratosphere getting cooler as more heat is trapped at the surface. This is in fact exactly what we have seen. This also refutes non-GHG causes for the current warmth.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/sterin/sterin.html

In addition to the peer-reviewed science cited above, a good overview of the attribution evidence (including much more subtle statistical tests) can be found here:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_Ch09.pdf

I invite you to compare the quality of sources cited in this answer with anything cited by GW skeptics. Then draw your own conclusions.

Answer 7

Maybe it's not man made, who knows exactly. What's so wrong with trying to conserve though? I don't agree with the Al Gore offset idea, it's only been proven to line his pockets and nothing else.
BUT - you've gotta buy lightbulbs anyway, so why not fluorescent? You change them less and save money too. You want hardwood floors in your home, why not bamboo? They're more durable, less expensive and look just as nice.
There's always a chance you're wrong about thinking global warming is a total farce, so why not just try to be conscientious about what you buy and how you live? Maybe you won't do any good at all, but it certainly won't hurt anything either. Who knows, you might just save some money too.

Answer 8

No one is going to prove global warming to you, it can't be proved! They'll talk about co2 and the ozone layer and all that, but you could find exactly that in a local newspaper. This planet is dying out according to the second law of thermodynamics, but its not due to global warming. Everyone'll get mad at me about this, but try digging a little deeper. I don't see anything wrong with conserving or taking care of the planet, however. That's just common sense. I really don't think that people should be paranoid about this. It's like thinking a temporary solar eclipse is the end of the world.

Answer 9

Keith P, above, says… “I invite you to compare the quality of sources cited in this answer with anything cited by GW skeptics.”

OK, let’s go through what he said…

1. Agreed. Though I would discourage the use of the word “exponential”. Since this is a scientific discussion, it suggests the scientific definition of the word: which is obviously incorrect. Since you mean at a “growing” rate, I feel that the use of the word exponential is inappropriate. A minor point, to be sure, but I think it’s important to avoid misleading statements.

2. That seems about right, so no argument here.

3. Again, I agree, other than to add an “almost” before “entirely”. I’m sure you wouldn’t claim that, without the human contribution, CO2 levels would never change? They clearly have in the past, so I think it would be prudent to say “almost entirely” to allow for natural changes.

4. Ah, now, here we go; the crux of the problem. Your answer is absolutely correct, as far as it goes, but doesn’t mention the main problem. The scientific understanding of the effect of CO2 on global temperature is so crude that the central question – by how much can the temperature be expected to rise as a result of a given additional amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere – has not been definitively established either empirically or theoretically. It has been established by laboratory experiment that increased CO2 concentrations can cause additional scattering of outgoing longwave radiation at the tropopause, but not at or near the surface, and only at the fringes of one of the three principal absorption bands of CO2.

Furthermore, real-world observation suggests that CO2 is not a major influence on temperature. Ice core data shows that, in the past, changes in temperature preceded changes in CO2 by 800+ years. Thus, we have the real-world observation of CO2 levels going up, while temperature goes down. More recently we have the period from the 1940s to the 1970s when, again, CO2 went up during the Post War Economic Boom, while global temperatures fell. Currently, CO2 continues to rise faster than ever before, while temperatures have not been rising (see below).

See further contradictory evidence in 7., below.

Thus, I am of the opinion that the evidence supporting the theory that CO2 is having a major influence on global temperature is far from conclusive.

5. Agreed. However, it is debatable how much it is warming; different sources say different things: NCDC US global mean temperature anomaly 0.3°C, AccuWeather from land-based stations 0.45°C, NCDC global mean 0.53°C; UN 0.6°C. Notice that *everybody* quotes the highest figure though.

6. (6a) Agreed – there seems to be little debate on this subject.

(6b). Sadly, I disagree. There is still much debate over the role of the Sun in global warming. Your own link, which supposedly proves that the Sun is not a factor, yields the following link on Total Solar Irradiance - http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/IRRADIANCE/irrad.html Clearly, Solar Irradiance has reached a peak around 2002. Bare this in mind as we come to the final point, below.

7. Another crucial point here. You say: “If the warmth is due to the greenhouse effect, we should see the stratosphere getting cooler as more heat is trapped at the surface.” I agree with this. However, to show that this is what is happening, you provided possibly the most un-user friendly link imaginable. I doubt that many people who clicked that link had any idea at all what it was saying. I persevered with it and found the raw data (see - http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/sterin/2005.dat ) and I then checked the “Global Strat.” figures to ensure that they agreed with the link that I’m about to post (they do).

For an easier to understand link that shows what the Stratosphere is doing, look at this: http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html and scroll down to Figure 7 at the bottom. This shows the data in a more user friendly graph format. And you can see that the stratosphere is indeed cooling (it’s the bottom graph, labelled Ch. TLS).

However, look at the graph again and you’ll notice that the stratosphere *stopped* cooling in about 1995. So, we’ve had no cooling for 12 years. Thus, if we accept that “If the warmth is due to the greenhouse effect, we should see the stratosphere getting cooler” and we accept that the stratosphere is no longer cooling, then we must concluded that the warming is *not* due to the greenhouse effect. Yes?

Finally, you remember that I asked you to bare in mind that Solar Irradiance reached a peak in around 2002? Well, have another look at figure 7 in the link above, and have a look at the top 2 graphs. They show the temperature of the Lower and Middle Troposphere (the part of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface). Notice how they show no statistically significant warming since 2002. So, global warming stopped in 2002, just at the time when Solar Irradiance reached its peak.

Now, you may say I’m leaping to conclusions here, but that seems to be one hell of a coincidence, doesn’t it?

It is for just this sort of reason that I believe it is far to early, and the science far to weak, for us to start spending billions trying to solve a “problem” that may be nothing at all to do with us.

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

Answer 10

For example you got two fuels, One of them emits gases which are not poisonous to nature(yourself, your family, and others around you), and other one does in slow doses(like a mercury contamination in water).

Would you still drink the same water which has got mercury in it, even thought it is harmful to you and your family?

Congratulations on your physics degree. When is science and spirituality(especially altruism,etc) going to be complementary to each other? Science without spiritually is a egocentric, narcissistic force, which is self-destructive.

How did the DDT used in a Asia end up in penguins stomach in Antartica? How is the small atols and islands in Indian ocean, Arabian Sea, and other seas in the world are lose to the rising water level? Why the corals are dying, which protect the beaches from erosion?

"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" This has to be a brilliant hypothesis which suits science and nature. Please do individual investigation, and hope you make a wise choice. Proud of your achievement, hopefully you set a good example to others in your community.