global climate change pre industrialization????

Question

Im amazed at the hysteria around co2 emissions.....
im all in favour of cutting pollution of riviers, making air better....
but this freakout in north america is really confusing me.

In the worlds history the climate naturally has quite widely changed, and this is way before industry and the demonized SUV's .Trying to stop it seems to me like trying to stop the earth turning too.

has anyone really looked at history and still thinks that its human co2 and not a natural inevitable cycle?

Answer 1

Right. Alarmist use the last 100 years because this short time period is when the industrial revolution took place. If you were to look back 200 years instead, you would find it's cooler today then during the Revolutionary War.

The argument for "global warming" depends on selective sampling of the data.

You will hear that the number of hurricanes has been increasing for the last 30 years. Sure, but compared the the frequency of storms in the 1930's and 1940's, we're far below number AND intensity.

It's mind boggling that anyone with a IQ could believe in so-called warming.

Answer 2

There's been a lot of rush to judgment in finding man-made CO2 guilty of the current global warming trends. No they haven't really looked at the history - they have a lot of data but the entirety of their conclusions are based on a number of computer models that fail to agree with each other with any reliability past the last 50 years. The further back and forward you run these models, the more their data diverge.

And regardless of any claims here, we do not have the resolution to accurately gauge paleoclimatic data in order to compare decade long trends. Even the analysis of current temperature data requires "smoothing" in order to make sense of it. Just take a look at this popular chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png
If you take away the 5-year average, it's not very clear. If you decide to use a 10 or 20 year average, the data is not nearly as convincing. It's also not as convincing if you take a look at the actual temperature variation vs the "anomaly" arbitrarily set at the 1951-80 average temperature:
http://www.crichton-official.com/NPC-NewVersion_files/image007.jpg
Looks pretty scary, huh? That's the same data from the previous chart.

But, you did ask about preindustrial climate. Take a look at this:
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V9/N50/C1.jsp
This study suggests warmer global climate prior to the Little Ice Age in the last 2000 years - a notion vehemently denied by most alarmists. It also demonstrates that the LIA was significantly colder than the alarmists' interpretation of the data.

Funny to think that man made it through that time in a less advanced age with hardly a mention of catastrophic heat.

Answer 3

The fundemental difference between what's happening now and what has happened in the past is one of speed.

We have at our disposal over half a billion years of climate data and in all this huge amount of time there's nothing to suggest the planet has warmed up at anything like the rate it's doing now. We have 800,000 years of accurate climate data and certainly the planet has never warmed so fast during this time.

We know how and why the planet's warming up, this is something that was established over 100 years ago - greenhouse gases. We also know that we're producing them many times faster than natural cycles can 'dispose' of them and consequently a surplus is accumulating in the atmosphere. When this happens the planet has no option but to warm up - it all comes down to a simple physical property which if it didn't exist there's be no natural greenhouse effect and Earth would be an uninhabited frozen wilderness.

Certainly nature has a role to play but the extent of this role has been very carefully studied by a large number of scientists. Nature goes through a series of regular cycles, because they're regular we know whereabout the planet is within each of these cycles and can calculate the extent of natural warming (or cooling) that would occur. There are other factors that are taken into account as well. Even if the Earth were at the peak of all warming cycles (it's not but assuming it were) then the planet would still be warming but not even close to the rate at which it's warming now.

To put it into context, natural cycles change the climate over thousands and millions of years. The same sort of change that occurred in the 10,000 years prior to industrialisation has occured in just a few decades.

Answer 4

"has anyone really looked at history and still thinks that its human co2 and not a natural inevitable cycle?"

Sure. All the global warming scientists. The IPCC reports have sections on history.

The problem with the theories that this is a natural cycle is they don't work. The numbers don't come out right.

Theories that say 80-90% of the problem is man made greenhouse gases do work. Here's one example, from the Source below:

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

The inability of natural theories to match the observed data is the reason why the vast majority of scientists think global warming is mostly man made. The key word in this quote is "quantitative" (numerically correct):

"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 5

Yes, paleoclimatologists have looked at history and still think that the current global warming is primarily caused by humans. The first answer has a good discussion of Milankovich Cycles, and Trevor has a good summary of the science.

A couple of useful links - here's a plot of global temperatures from ice core samples over the past 450,000 years. Notice we're in the middle of a warm period and thus global warming shouldn't be rapidly accelerating, as the second link shows is the case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

Scientists have determined that natural causes cannot account for this acceleration. It's primarily due to greenhouse gas emissions:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6290228.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

To address Jello...what the heck are you talking about?? 200 years ago it was about 1°C colder than it is right now. Also scientists have concluded that hurricane intensity (not frequency) increases due to global warming. You're talking about selective sampling of data while you just pull fake data out of your rear end?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c1/2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/01/europe/EU-GEN-France-Climate-Change-Hurricanes.php

Answer 6

yes, when climate changed before there was a "natural" reason, now the reason is human activity.

since the sun is ruled out and orbital cycles are ruled out, the next guess would be the same force that has caused rapid climate change in the past as well: the greenhouse effect

the problem is in the past there were reasons for increased greenhouse effect ie volcano's, co2 spewing from the ground, methane clathrate decomposistion. This enhanced greenhouse effect led to mass extinction. Today only one source of additional greenhouse gas is known with 100% certainty: the human source.

Answer 7

so you're one who preaches it is natural? ok look up milankovitch cycles....these are the "natural" cycles of climate....they are caused by changes in the shape of earths orbit around the sun, wobbles along the axis, and changes in the tilt earth has on its axis. these cycles are found to occur in 20k year, 40k, 100k, 200k and 400k. the cycles over lap each other but have been pin point accurate on changes in our climate long before humans were around. these are so accurate that we can tell what should be happening next on our planet. for example, thousands of years ago there was a mile of ice over the northern half of the U.S. (ice age). since then we have been melting away those glaciers (inter-glacial period). We are coming to an END of a warm cycle as we speak.....we SHOULD be heading into an ice age, but instead we are warming. it doesnt matter if its a lot of warming or a little because we shouldnt be warming AT ALL. we should be cooling so obviously we are not following these natural cycles anymore and obviously this is new territory. we do not know what our ecosystems can hold or tolerate.....for those that admit there is warming, but say it is cyclical....look up Milankovitch cycles and see that what is happening around us is not cyclical and might be a problem

Answer 8

The IPCC became popular in 1988 to learn climate replace extra frequently than not, yet in 1988, the technological information became already settled that the planet became warming, and that anthropogenic CO2 emissions accounted for component of that warming. in accordance to the IPCC's First assessment checklist in 1990, what became doubtful became how a great style of the warming became organic and organic and how lots became anthropogenic -- inspite of if it became organic and organic warming and anthropogenic warming extra mutually, or inspite of if it became organic and organic cooling offsetting a kind of anthropogenic warming.

Answer 9

You really have to work pretty hard to believe anything other than the humans caused it. North America is the last holdout against a planetary agenda.