Arguments for and against global warming, do you believe itor not?

Question

I'm curious as to a lot of the different arguments people have for and against global warming. Do you believe it? Does Al Gore's video add or lessen your opinion on global warming and does his credibility build or bring down your feelings... what about the polar bears? Please don't be deragatory to other people's opinions and be honest. I am researching to be more informed so I can make an informed decision on where I stand, and am curious to know others' arguments and opinions?

Answer 1

I believe that most of the pro-global warming arguments a fallacious. There is no evidence that the actions of mankind are causing the warming, but ample evidence that an increase in the sun's output is. Many of the pro-global warming crowd like to claim that it is warmer than ever before, or that the rate of warming is faster than ever before, or that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than ever before. All of the claims are simply false. The earth has experienced a little bit of warming over the last century following several centuries of cooling. The cooling period was caused by a reduction in the sun's output, and the warming corresponds to the sun's output increasing again.

Al Gore's video didn't really change my views on global warming, but it was good for several laughs. The computer animated polar bears were priceless. The polar bear populations are remaining steady, with some sub-populations growing and others decreasing. The polar bear has survived much warmer arctic temperatures, and will survive the current warming. His correlation of CO2 and temperature has been thoroughly debunked. His claim that increase in CO2 in the past his led to increase in temperature is wrong. Probably the biggest laugh in his movie was the idea that the oceans may rise by as much as 20 feet in the next 50 years and submerge Florida. The possibility of this happening is 0%.

Answer 2

How can we know for sure one way or the other? What is the normal temperature of the planet? Maybe we are warming up to the normal temperature and global warming isn't a problem at all. Until someone can answer that question with scientific fact and not hypothesis, I'm not too worried about anything. The fear mongering alarmists claim the earth has warmed up a whopping .7 degrees Celsius over the last 100 years. NASA just revised their last SEVEN years worth of data reducing that amount by 21%. If these alleged scientists are using invalid data and doing so for the better part of a decade and don't even realize it, then how can we believe anything they say.

My point is that the alarmists use both anecdotal evidence and a very, very small sample to allegedly come to a consensus. How many times have you heard that some city has had above average temperatures for some period of time and that shows global warming is occurring. Why do we never hear about the cities that have below average temperatures being evidence for global cooling? As far as the sample size goes, we have accurate temperature readings for about 100 years. Tree rings and core samples cannot give us temperature readings with the precision necessary to make any kind of scientific observation as to the exact temperature at the time. So, in essence we are basing the whole global warming theory on 100 years out of 4 billion years. To me that is the height of arrogance to say we know what is happening in the world when we don't even accurately know the global temperature 100 years ago.

Remember that there was a consensus that the world was flat at one time. When you can't prove something, you have to fall back on "consensus."

Anders: Maybe you ought to follow your own advice.

"Are you really thinking when typing this out? It has risen 0.1 degrees the last 10.000 years, yet 1.33 degrees F in the twentieth century? I hope you'll learn a bit and not just state facts that aren't correct. :)"

Let's actually think about this. If the temperature at the start of the 20th century was 1.23 degrees below the temperature 10,000 years ago and then we had a 1.33 degree increase in the 20the century, we would only have a .1 degree increase.

X - 1.23 + 1.33 = X + .10

I use X because the whole process is ludicrous because no one can tell me what X is. And if someone does tell me X, I would like to know how they were able to take global temperature readings 10,000 years ago.

Answer 3

Temperature changes has natural sources. They have, historically, been the cause of global warming and cooling. This is initiated by changes in solar radiation, or Milankovich cycles, etc. After the initial temperature rise (which can be quite small) other amplifying effects have taken place. In the case of global warming, the polar ice caps are reduced so the amount of solar radiation that is being reflected back in to space is reduced. Wast natural sources of green house gases are released, as well as other events. These amplifyers drives the climat to a new equlibrium (which is hotter). This is why CO2, historically, has shown up 200 - 1000 years after the initial temperature rise. Presently, the CO2 is released without any prior warming by manmade emissions. CO2 has taken on the role of both cause and amplifier, as there are still wast natural sources waiting to be released. When these amplifiers take over the development from are man made emissions, we've reached a tipping point. This is where any efforts to reduce global warming are severly hampered. CO2's, and other green house gases warming effect on the climate has been known for a long time. Simply put a miniature atmosphere in a laboratory, and add the CO2 levels. This then has a proven (warming) effect.
The argument against natural sources being the main culprit behind the current warming trend is that they can't be. Solar radiation is not increasing as of late. Volcano's emit roughly 1% of the CO2 human does. They also emit aerosols which cools the planet. Looking at the Milankovich cycles etc. it's clearly seen that they currently aren't. They have the potential for it, as seen in the past, but curently they aren't affecting the Earth in that way.
I can recommend NASA for viewing effects, and causes, for global warming. IPCC is also a good site, including its reports.

NVp3:
Basically everything you say is wrong.
One century is 100 years, not 1000.
The Earth is not moving closer to the Sun, we're actually moving further away from it. "that the yearly increase in the distance between the Earth and the Sun from this effect is only about one micrometer (a millionth of a meter, or a ten thousandth of a centimeter)."
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=317
Here are satellite images of the Arctic diminishing:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/arcticice_decline.html
"In the last 10,000 years, the temperature has gone up by about one tenth of a degree. That's what I was told. Wikipedia says that in the 20th century (meaning in 1000 years' time), the temperature has gone up by 1.33°F give or take 0.32."
Are you really thinking when typing this out? It has risen 0.1 degrees the last 10.000 years, yet 1.33 degrees F in the twentieth century? I hope you'll learn a bit and not just state facts that aren't correct. :)

Answer 4

There are many reasons that you should not believe the dire predictions made by the UN. The UN is a very corrupt organization that desires to control the US. The foolish conclusion that the AGW debate is settled rides on the principle, because hundreds of so called scientists support AGW, and why? Because they cannot explain the warming by any observed force, so it must be manmade CO2. I tell you honey that is not science, that is a procecutor in a court room with a very weak case.

Throughout history the scientists that turned out to be correct about the true nature of things were always in the minority of opinion. The Earth is not the center of universe, the Earth is not flat, humans will be able to fly someday and humans will break the sound barrier. Those are just a few of many examples in which the masses thought were not possible.

Some very bright people have made accurate predictions that tell us that the Earth is heading for a very dangerous cooling event in just a couple of decades, and that the sun is the cause of the warm epsiode that we have experienced. And that warm episode has passed us by, and soon it will only be a memory. If you look at data there is an undeniable correlation of Solar activity and climatic change, consequently if you attempt to find a similar correlation with CO2 and climatic change there is absolutely none.

Anthropogenic global warming (human caused) evidence is based soley on a collection of computer algorithms called climate models. There already have been a number of things occuring in direct contrast to the predictions of climate models.

The reason that climate models cannot be trusted is because they are incapable of modeling clouds, the reason that most scientists cannot explain solar variablity as the reason for climatic change is because they do not understand clouds.

Clouds are the missing piece of the puzzle, any simulation of our climate that does not include clouds cannot be trusted.

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCommentary.asp?Page=/Commentary/archive/200708/COM20070816c.html

And as far as Gore is concerned, he is lying to you. Perhaps it is not intentional, I would suspect it is because he is not a scientists and lacks the intellect to see the decpetion before him. The Earth in 1000 AD was much warmer than today. The UN intentionally is misleading people on that one important point. There is a graph in the paper below that shows the actual temperature differences between the modern ERA and when the Vikings were colonizing Greenland, and not the lies that people have been made to believe.



http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202004/Winter2003-4/global_warming.pdf

If you believe in forensic evidence, remember the Ice man found a few years back, that died 5000 years ago on a mountain pass. He essentially has been covered in snow for 5000 years. The pass that he traveled probably was clear of snow, why? Look at figure 5 in the paper above, 5000 years ago the Earth was much warmer than now. But began cooling right about that period.

If you look at the same graph on the expanded scale you will see that global warming has ended, and a new much more grim saga has begun, for the human race.

This is just one scientists opinion.

Answer 5

Human caused global warming is a reality. Al Gore's film didn't sway my opinion much one way or the other. I thought it was a very well made and convincing propaganda piece, but nothing more.


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 The planet's temperature has risen by .7 degrees centigrade over the past century as a result of an increased greenhouse effect. It is becoming ever more apparent that we humans are to blame.



Certain trace gases in Earth's atmosphere trap energy from the sun and regulate Earth's temperature; without them, Earth would be a frozen wasteland. Short wave radiation (mostly visible light) from the sun hits the surface of our planet and is subsequently reradiated back out as long wave (thermal, or heat) radiation. The so called "greenhouse gases" (scientists initially thought that the greenhouse effect worked in the same manner as an actually greenhouse, which was later found to be false. Actual greenhouses work by convection) absorb some of this radiation, trap it in Earth's atmosphere, and heat the planet. Adding more of these gases to the atmosphere will cause more radiation to be trapped, which in turn causes the atmosphere's temperature to rise.



These gases have increased by an alarming amount over the past century, and humans are mostly to blame. Scientists know this because the can analyze the geographic differences in the concentrations of these gases, and analyze the isotope ratio of the atmosphere, which distinguishes among sources of emissions. Scientists have found that these gases are most highly concentrated over land in the heavily populated northern hemisphere region, which indicates an origin form that region. And analysis of isotope ratios reveals that the majority of the increase in CO2 is from combustion of fossil fuels.



A third line of evidence for anthropogenic global warming comes from the science of climate modeling. Naturally we don't have another Earth we can run experiments on; so climate models are the next best thing. Climate models are mathematical models based on physical laws which scientists can use to experiment with different scenarios (say, by examining the effect of a doubling of atmospheric CO2).They can input various factors that affect the climate into the models, and observe the result. They have found that when only natural factors are included, the model projections do not match the observed data. But when they add both natural and anthropogenic factors into the models the projections match the observations almost perfectly. This strongly indicates that natural forcing alone isn't enough to account for the warming seen over the past century.



In summary, the greenhouse effect is responsible for warming the planet, and evidence strongly suggests that humans have been increasing this effect through combustion of fossil fuels used for industry and transportation. Scientists are now more sure than ever that the future of the human species is in our hands. The question is now, can we handle this enormous responsibility?


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Answer 6

I don't buy it. You hear a lot of people talking about how the earth is heating up and if we don't do something fast, the ice caps will melt and we will all die. Sure. Right. Think about this. Have you EVER heard anyone tell you exactly how much the temperature has risen? In the last 10,000 years, the temperature has gone up by about one tenth of a degree. That's what I was told. Wikipedia says that in the 20th century (meaning in 1000 years' time), the temperature has gone up by 1.33°F give or take 0.32. If what Wikipedia says is the worst-case senario, then that means that the temperature will go up by one degree every 750 years. In short, I believe that global warming may be a problem in the VERY far future, but it is not a huge problem right now. What I mean by the very far future is this: The sun is slowly pulling the earth closer to it every year, so of course it is going to get hotter! About 200 million years from now, every living thing on this planet will burn and die and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Of course, if you want to look into the even more very far future (yes, I think that's proper English), you'll see something very different. In about 10 billion years (give or take a billion), the sun will run out of fuel and will be unable to support itself. At this point, it will fizzle out and die. There. Problem solved, no more global warming.

As for the polar bears, I'm not too worried about them. They're tough, they'll be fine. Even if the ice caps did melt, polar bears can swim for days on end without stopping.

Answer 7

Forget Al Gore. He has nothing to do with the scientific facts in this answer. And the people I quote are less biased.

This is science and what counts is the data.

"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

It's (mostly) not the sun:

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/FAQ2.html

And the first graph aboves shows that the sun is responsible for about 10% of it. When someone says it's the sun they're saying that thousands of climatologists are stupid and don't look at the solar data. That's ridiculous.

Science is quite good about exposing bad science or hoaxes:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/ATG/polywater.html

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 three examples of many:

"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 8

I think it is myth. The earth climate goes in cycles. This is a proven fact. The majority of the people that support it state that the scientific community agrees on it, but they also agreed on the hole in the ozone layer which has since become a non issue. Some sites say that our action is what caused this, but there is no way that a problem that was created over years could have been solved in a few years. The same will end up happening here. The cycle will go back to being cooler and the liberals will take credit for it even though they had nothing to do with it. It gives all the liberals something to get excited about though.

Answer 9

We know from ice core samples that historically when global warming occurred, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations also increased, but not until about 800 years later.

http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/

Many global warming deniers think this is evidence that CO2 can’t cause global warming. In fact, that’s the very first argument in the terrible Great Global Warming Swindle. On the contrary, this is actually evidence that human greenhouse gas emissions are currently causing global warming. Compare the following global temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration plots from 1960-Present:

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png

As you can see they’re both rising – not with an 800 year delay, but at the same time. If CO2 wasn’t causing global warming as was the case in the past, then why is there no 800 year delay?

This only proves a correlation between CO2 and global warming and not a causality. The reason we’ve concluded that greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming (or more accurately, accelerating it) is because natural causes can’t account for the increase in global warming over the past 40-50 years. They account for most of the warming prior to that, but climate models have determined that greenhouse gases are responsible for about 80-90% of the recent global warming:

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

The very first inputs into climate models were solar, volcanic, and sunspot contributions, but they simply couldn’t account for the recent acceleration in global warming. Thus climate scientists have concluded that humans are the primary cause.

Answer 10

all of dana's links showed graphs starting before 1970, i'm not sure what the above answer is talking about. There was a period of cooling between 1950 and 1970, but there are a couple reasons for this, including an increase in solar dimming air poluution during this period.

If your not up to speed on global warming science, you need to stick to .gov or .edu sites (especially .gov), .org and .com sites often have an agenda, .gov gives you the facts.

here are a couple to start with:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/index.html
http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/GlobalWarming/



here is one trustworthy .org:

http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/facts_and_figures