Global warming con?

Question

The whole thing is a con. Another thing to put fear into the population of dozens of countries. Like terrorism - I read yesterday that you've got more chance of winning the lottery 6 times in a row, than getting killed by terrorists. Just hype to control the people, put fear into them so they will readily settle for higher taxes and less services.

I genuinely believe this, there's firm evidence from lots of sources that these temperature changes are cyclical and occur naturally.

Are you one of ones who's been conned?

Answer 1

I am not. I agree that changes in the earth's climate are cyclical. However, you can't say that the actions of man have absolutely no effect on the climate. I just think it's not an extremely significant effect; not yet anyway.

Many people see things like melting of ice caps, weird weather and other such occurences as undeniable proof of global warming (because of what humans are doing). Those people refuse to accept the fact that, it might just be a coincidence and even if there wasn't a human being on earth right now, the same things could be going on because it really is part of the natural cycle.

And it is a good idea for humans to change their habits, just because it's right, not because we have to do whatever to stop "the sky from falling."

I also agree that liberals are using global warming as a fear tactic.

Answer 2

Who benefits from the great con?

Most scientists agree that global warming is happening. Most do NOT believe it is caused by human activity. EVERY scientist who thinks so is receiving government research money to show it is true and to give politicians easy sound-bites for their own purposes. These scientific groups receive over 20 billion dollars every year across the world to show that humans cause global climate change. All the independent evidence is that climate change is cyclical and natural but there is no money in researching that and no fame in producing scholarly papers to say that nothing can be done about it.

Also, the lobby in favour of limiting or ceasing production of fossil fuels. They want everyone to believe that their products are solutions to a major environmental problem caused by humans.

Do you know how much energy it takes to build and operate wind farms, or tidal generators, or photoelectic cells? This is not a rhetorical question: do you actually know? These technologies are not energy-saving. They are not even energy-neutral. They are energy-hungry. We shall all be poorer if these technologies take over. In particular, entire populations in the poor hungry marginal economies of the southern hemisphere will die out because they don't have the wealth to introduce these energy-hungry technologies.

The only electricity producing technology that could lay claim to being energy-saving is nuclear. Does the anti-carbon lobby realise that this is the direction in which they are forcing the governments of poorer countries to make decisions? India, Korea and China already. Will it be Zimbabwe, Indonesia and Myan Mar next?

Climate change is happening, I feel sure, but it is unavoidable and no one is to blame. The secret of the next hundred years will be how to live with a new climate.

Answer 3

It's not a con! Take a look out of ur window and c 4 ur self! There's more rain, floods and hot weather! Scientists and politicians firmly believe that global warming is caused by an increasing CO2 LEVELS. Scientific data backs them up! They have recently dismissed the sun as the reason 4 climate change. However, not everyone is convinced. It's the cause that is disputed.

Answer 4

It's the entire CO2 agenda that's the CON, because CO2 is neither the cause nor the 'cure'. However, the global climate is indeed changing and there are properly valid reasons for this happening.

You say yourself that you believe it's a cyclic event, so therefore you DO actually believe in climate change yourself, it's just the panic tactics and commercialism you hate, as do I.

Answer 5

You are absolutely correct Global warming / Global cooling is a natural cycle. There have been many times in the past when Alaska was a warm and other time when the Great Lakes were frozen over glaciers. I don’t like the term global warming but prefer to think of it as climate rate change.

The real question is if mans involvement has increased the rate of change so as to upset that cycle. It is clear that man has in point of fact increased the rate, but what is not clear is what effect that will have. We don’t understand what controls the cycle yet and so don’t know what the effects are.

I don’t subscribe to the sky is falling group, but if you look at the recommended first steps they generally make common sense no mater what you feel about climate rate change. Less pollution and more trees are just a good thing.

Man did not cause global warming. Man is causing the events of global warming to happen sooner. For those that need detail can you see the pattern:

Name-Climate-Time Spanned (years ago)
Wisconsinan-ice age-75,000 - 10,000
Sangamonian-predominantly warm-120,000 - 75,000
Illinoisan-ice age-170,000 - 120,000
Yarmouthian-predominantly warm-230,000 - 170,000
Kansan-ice age-480,000 - 230,000
Aftonian-predominantly warm-600,000 - 480,000
Nebraskan-ice age-800,000 - 600,000
pre-Nebraskan-predominantly warm-1,600,000 - 800,000

from: http://www.amnh.org/science/biodiversity/extinction/Intro/Iceage.html

We now know that the cold stages were not uniformly cold, nor were the warmer spans continuously warm. In fact, there is evidence that at least two dozen warm-cold cycles have occurred during the past 1.6 million years, and that some of the changeovers occurred within the period of a century or so. From the standpoint of Quaternary extinctions, it is interesting to note that only the close of the last major glaciations can be correlated with widespread mammal extinctions at high latitudes.

From those that still persist in thinking man caused global warming I want the name of the guy from Wisconsin that melted all the ice 10,000 years ago? And if that is different than explain why?

Answer 6

I dont know if its a con or not but I think there will definitely be a negative impact if we continue to pollute the earth. The whole global warming thing could be a con but event if it is we still need to look for alternative fuel sources and stop large corporations from polluting the environment.

Answer 7

What you read yesterday is complete garbage. When you work out the actual odds of winning the lottery six times in a row and compare it to the chances of being killed by terrorists it equates to one person being killed by a terrorist every 4.8 tredecillion years (4.8 million, million, million, million, million, million, million years). To put it into context, multiply the number of grains of sand in the world by the number of drops of water in the ocean and you're in the right sort of area.

Source which state anything like that are truly beyond comprehension and seem to think their readers are complete morons who are incapable of performing simple math.

Turning to the more sensible aspect of your question. There are indeed many cycles which affect the climate and throughout history they have caused ice ages to come and go. Over long periods of time their effects are dramatic. However, in the half billion years for which we have climate data there is nothing to suggest that they cycles have ever caused our climate to change as rapidly as it has been doing in recent decades. In fact, the world is warming up 177 times as fast as it did in the 10,000 years prior to the onset of the Industrial Revolution and 17 times as fast as has ever before been known.

It's no great mystery as to why - greenhouse gases. We know they trap heat, this can be demonstarted by means of a simple experiment. An increase in the levels of atmosphereic greenhouse gases can't do anything other than contribute to the warming of the planet and currently levels are rising faster than has ever before been known.

Answer 8

To the true cynic nothing is ever revealed.

PS I wrote that lottery rubbish I was only joking if the truth be told it's 10 times in a row. You believe all you read me thinks.

Answer 9

hhmmm you do have a point exterme weather condition could occure naturally such the ice ages but i never heard of anyone winning the lottry 6 times in a row however people are bieng killed by acts of terrorism on regular basis

Answer 10

There is absolutely no relation between terrorism and global warming. Yes the dangers from terrorism are grossly overstated by politicians, but scientists are the ones explaining the threats of global warming. Politicians actually play down the threats because they know there's only so much they can realistically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. You say

"I genuinely believe this, there's firm evidence from lots of sources that these temperature changes are cyclical and occur naturally."

First off, I notice you don't provide any such evidence. Not a good way to convince people that you know what you're talking about. Secondly, your statement is simply untrue.

It's true that global warming and cooling has occurred in the past without human intervention. However, there is no evidence that the current acceleration in global warming "are cyclical and occur naturally". Quite the opposite - natural causes have been ruled out as possibly accounting for the current global warming. Solar activity decreased while global warming increased, for example:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6290228.stm

And the very first inputs into climate models were these natural causes such as solar and volcanic activity, and they could not account for the acceleration in global warming over the past 40 years, as shown on page 9 here:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/v16165n11948081m/fulltext.pdf

or on this plot:

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

Are you the one who's been conned?