Does anyone else think that Global Warming is a joke?

Question

I believe there may be global warming, but who is to blame?

Answer 1

It is a total joke. It is all about an attack on capitalism and modern conveniences. These cycles have been occurring naturally for hundreds of millions of years.

Answer 2

I don't beleive it's a joke. I've been involved with the study of GW for many years and each year the evidence gets more and more convincing (I have to examine all sides of the debate, the evidence against global warming gets less and less whilst that supporting the human contribution gets more and more).

As for who is to blame. There's an element of natural global warming, even if humans didn't exist the planet would be warming of it's own accord. Natural warming is fairly consistent, it only changes significantly over hundreds and thousands of years and changes occur within natural boundaries. The planet is now warming well outside of those boundaries and at a much faster rate than nature can account for.

It's hard to say just how much of the current warming is natural and how much is anthropogenic but the most liklely figures are between 10 and 20% natural, 80 to 90% anthropogenic. As you go back through recent decades the proportions change with humans having a less significant role. By the time you go back about 150 years nature becomes the primary contributor.

Answer 3

There's a fellow in Missouri named Coster who left the Republican party today to run as a Democrat the next time he's up for election. His stated reason is that the party has been taken over by the extreme right wing, and that the "anti-science" positions they have taken have made the Republicans the laughingstock of the developed countries. He's talking about stem cells, global warming, Creationism, and abstinence, and a number of others. "Anti-science" is exactly the right term for it. He's disgraced the party of Lincoln and the United States of America. It's like the Luddite movement, if you're familiar with that. This post is a great example.

Answer 4

Global warming is probably happening. It has happened before and the earth's climate is constantly fluctuating.

The joke is that some people are running around like Chicken Little, hyper-ventilating about some nonsense about it's being caused by mankind and the standard of living of the industrialized nations of the world, and that we can do anything about it.

The whole argument is strictly political and an effort to transfer wealth from the rich nations to the poor nations and give a world government control over our lives and prosperity.

Answer 5

I certainly hope its no joke! The way this country is may go, many people are going to make tremendous sacrifices just in case Global Warming is true.

Most businesses and companies need energy to run them. The heavy carbon taxation that will be put on energy will increase all the costs of running and maintaining a company. These expenses will be far too much for most mid sized to small companies to bare. They may need to buy carbon credits either from big companies like oil companies or through a system of carbon offsetting that may actually be bad for environments but good for absorption of CO2

see http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=16583&username=[e-mail]&password=9999&publish=Y

Most likely, small business will not survive. It will be easier to be employed.But companies are going to make costs cuts. Where will that happen? Guess? That means less money will be spent on employees paychecks.

Now this reduced paycheck (assuming that you are not unemployed) is going to have to deal with increased costs of goods and services. Manufactured items, food items, bottled water from a mountain source, herbal extracts, organic products, shipping from one place to another, computers, shopping mall electricity bills, everything will go up in price because energy is carbon taxed and that will be passed on to the consumer.

The fact is, if you think life is hard now, you haven't seen nothing yet!

The fact is, it will be expensive to build enough nuclear power plants to take care of our energy needs. It will also take a lot of time and carbon taxed energy. The US had stopped building nuclear reactors since the late seventies. We need more than 2000 of them quick! Even building one takes years!

Also, even though there is more funding for research on wind and solar energy, at the moment, these sources don't even cover a fraction of our current energy needs. The technology is not there yet. You need a lot of solar panels taking up vast amounts of land or windmills that take up vast quantities of land that may be equal to three large US States destroying much nature in the process (and costing carbon taxed energy to manufacture) to even meet all our countries needs maybe (there is still much doubt about this.) Let alone, the amount of energy needs of a growing population in the third world that will have more energy demands.

It would be great if this whole GW scare would force us to develope alternative energy source to fossil fuels. The fact is, such development is still further down the road. The rush for legistlation is not about that. It is about politicians and big business cash in in on the carbon market that will exist between that time before alternative sources have been developed.

This can be bad for the environment as given in the following article:

http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=16312&username=[e-mail]&password=9999&publish=Y

will not even make a dent on CO2 emissions:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/jun/16/climatechange.climatechange

and will make oil companies rich. The very companies most GW enthusiasts think they are punishing:

http://www.carbontradewatch.org/news/0707_A_gift_from_Scotland_to_Brazil_drought_and_despair.html

If GW is a joke, it's a bad one on all of us. So let's at least hope that it's true and the mess we get into actually has some purpose!

Answer 6

Not these guys:

"I wasn’t convinced by a person or any interest group—it was the data that got me. I was utterly convinced of this connection between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. And I was convinced that if we didn’t do something about this, we would be in deep trouble.”

Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)
Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut and the first Commander of the Naval Space Command

Here are two summaries of the mountain of peer reviewed data that convinced Admiral Truly and the vast majority of the scientific community, short and long.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

There's a large number of people who agree that it is real and mostly caused by us, who are not liberals, environmentalists, stupid, or conceivably part of a "conspiracy". Just four examples of many:

"Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich challenged fellow conservatives to stop resisting scientific evidence of global warming"

"Global warming is real, now, and it must be addressed."

Lee Scott, CEO, Wal-Mart

"Our nation has both an obligation and self-interest in facing head-on the serious environmental, economic and national security threat posed by global warming."

Senator John McCain, Republican, Arizona

“DuPont believes that action is warranted, not further debate."

Charles O. Holliday, Jr., CEO, DuPont

There's a lot less controversy about this is the real world than there is on Yahoo answers:

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/home_page/329.php?nid=&id=&pnt=329&lb=hmpg1

And vastly less controversy in the scientific community than you might guess from the few skeptics talked about here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686 and:

"There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know... Global warming is almost a no-brainer at this point. You really can't find intelligent, quantitative arguments to make it go away."

Dr. Jerry Mahlman, NOAA

Good websites for more info:

http://profend.com/global-warming/
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/
http://www.realclimate.org
"climate science from climate scientists"

Answer 7

ok so what exactly is your question?
Global warming is not a joke........ and does blaming someone make it go away?
It's a combination of many things that have created a situation that cannot continue.
Evolution suggests that the planet does have changes in temperature, unfortunately our abuse of this planet has sped up the process and the best we can hope for is to slow it down again.

Answer 8

the sun.....which is getting older and hotter....i would like people to change the phrase 'global warming' to 'global climate change' b.c. some places will be in a drought and others in floods and freezing conditions..........i don't think ppl are the cause of global warming.......and it is not a joke.........it's just a natural phenomenon

Answer 9

I sure do. The only proof given is that a "consensus" (50%+1 of a selected group) believe it's real, so it must be.

How many times does a "consensus" need to be wrong before we demand proof? Let these climatologist tell us at our current rate of pollution the temp of the climate will be xDegs 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, and 5 years from now first.

Answer 10

I dont think there is anything to really joke about.

Even if, like people are saying it wont affect us anytime soon...
why doesnt anyone care about whats happening to out earth!!? whether it'll be sooner or later, I think it'll only get worse! And the point is. WE SHOULD START DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT NOW!!!

Answer 11

Don't worry about it.. You will be dead and gone by the time the effect starts to wipe out life on this planet anyway. So why should you worry about it anyway?

Sell your stocks in nukes and oil and coal and buy solar and wind stocks. You will start talking the other way around because belifes are mostly money driven. If it will hurt your backpocket I can see why you would not want to believe in global warming.

Think about that for a minute.