Greenhouse effect or nature?

Question

In the hype of greenhouse gases that is suppose to be causing global warming, what about the other possibilty. could it be that the earth is under going another environmental change. Last year Mt. St. Helen started steaming, while other volcanoes around the world started erupting. Last year we only heard of five hurricanes when there were suppose to be more. This year not one to be seen or heard. Science has botched this up really bad. Yes pollution is bad, and we all should do our part to clean up the mess we and the generations before us made. But, don't be so quick to jump on the global warming band wagon.

Answer 1

"The science is overwhelming" my azz.

Every couple of months I get on this section of Y/A and ask for the PROOF that mankind causes global warming and every single time all I get is proof that it's warmer, proof that CO2 levels are higher, denial of the last few times (despite all the evidence) within the last 5,000 years that it's been warmer despite lower CO2 levels, and insults - - - everything from planet-hater to anti-science to far-right-Christian (I'm a Libertarian and a polytheist) to accusations of being funded by oil companies (I used to analyze them for a bank, was paid to be right not to justify deals already made, I am now a generalist, I still invest in the energy space but I can just as easily take a short position as a long one, so no, it doesn't affect my outlook).

Bottom line - yes CO2 traps heat, we've increased the level of CO2 in the atmosphere by 1/11,000th of the atmosphere, so on some level we must be contributing, but we do not know, nor is there a physical case, that we're a proximate or even material cause of the warming over the last 125 years (or should I say through 1998, the warmest year on record).

YES the CURRENT warming roughly correlates to the industrial age - - well, give or take a half-century - - but we were already starting to come out of the "Little Ice Age" - a period of abnormally COLD temperatures.

Dana dramatically overstates his case with "[t]here are no plausible alternative scientific explanations remaining." We can't prove it's something else, but he twists that to mean we've proved that it isn't anything else. I'd have loved to use that logic when I prosecuted - - "your Honor, I can't prove a case against anyone else, so this defendant should be found guilty." Yeah, that would have made my life a lot easier!

A technical but good website is www.climateaudit.com

Oh and you have to love references to "reputable" scientists - if someone doesn't agree with the person making the statement, that makes them not "reputable."

Answer 2

Climate looks at long term trends and within any trend there are troughs and peaks. Any reputable climatologist will tell you that the frequency and intensity of hurricanes is increasing but none would go so far as to say a particular year will be better or worse than normal - it's the media that likes to do that sort of thing.

To iron out anomalies climate looks at periods of time normally of at least 30 years duration. When we look at 30 year trends we see for example that temperatures are rising, not that each year is prorgrssively warmer than the preceding one but that the overall trend is an upward one. It's the same in respect of hurricanes and storms - an upward trend with some years peaking and others troughing, 2005 was a peak, 2006 was a trough; quite normal.

In short, decades of increasing storm acivity can't be considered as having come to an end because there was little activity in a single year. If there are many more years of below average activity then we can start to read something into it.

As for the Earth undergoing another environmental change... The Earth is never static, it's always changing in one way or another and always has done. These changes are occasioned by a multitude of factors, most of which are well documented, some of the less influential ones are little documented, there may be other factors we have yet to discover.

What we can say is that the current rate of environmental change far exceeds anything every before known about. For example, the world is warming 17 times as fast as when the glaciers were last retreating and 177 times as fast as in the 10,000 years prior to the onset of industrialisation. There's no great mystery as to why this is happening and stripped down to it's bare essentials the science of the greenhouse effect is a very simple one. If we release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over and above the levels that can be accommodated within natural cycles the planet has no option but to warm up. Last year we overloaded these natural cycles 9 times over.

Answer 3

There are no plausible alternative scientific explanations remaining.

"Man-made (anthropogenic) CO2 emissions overwhelm this [volcanic] estimate by at least 150 times."

http://www.gaspig.com/volcano.htm

"So we deliberately just kept it to a simple analysis of data which showed that since 1985 the Sun actually has been getting very, very slightly less bright. A very small effect, but it's in the wrong direction to help global warming, so that was one thing. And then the cosmic rays, having reached an all-time minimum, they've been recovering ever since."

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/1974497.htm

Global warming does not effect the frequency of hurricanes. It's been determined that global warming will likely increase the strength of hurricanes, but not how often they form.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/ap_050731_hurricanes_stronger.html

Humans are the primary cause of the current global warming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

Answer 4

The science is overwhelming that extinction rates are rising, the CO2 and methane are spiking because of human activity. Read the United Nations reports on climate change and know that they are very conservatively stated.

The extraction industry and the power generating industry fought with your words for decades and are now acknowledging the role of hydrocarbon consumption and the effects we are seeing.

Answer 5

Here are the effects varios sources have:

The major factors are:
Positive RF sources. (Sources that warm the Earth)
CO2 +1.66 W/m2.
CH4 +0.48 W/m2.
N2O +0.16 W/m2.
Halocarbons +0.337 W/m2.
Tropospheric Ozone +0.35 W/m2.
Black carbon on snow + 0.10 W/m2.
Linear contrails + 0.010 W/m2.
Solar irridiance + 0.12 W/m2.

Negative RF sources. ( sources that cool the Earth)
Land use - 0.20 W/m2.
Aerosols (direct and cloud effect) - 0.50, - 0.70 W/m2.


The combined anthropogenic RF is +1.6 [ -1.0, +0.8] W/m2.
The combined natural RF ( solar irridiance, volcanic aerosols) is + 0.12 [-0.06, +0.18].

* RF is defined as the change in net irridiance at the Tropopause (boundary between Troposphere and Stratosphere).

All measurements are showing the difference in RF between 1750 (preindustrial), and current (2005).

Radiative forcing is a measurement of how strong the factors that influence Earths climate by altering its energy balance are. A positive forcing increase the energy which will lead to a warming while a negative forcing reduces the energy and leads to a cooling.

truthisback:
"Oh and you have to love references to "reputable" scientists"
Well, it's better then no sources at all. Why don't you show some?

Answer 6

The answer is BOTH. Both man and nature are contributing to global warming.

Answer 7

How about saying it's God, since Mother Nature is not a real person.