Has global warming been around for 100's of years and just begun to be recognized,or is it really a new issue?

Answer 1

The person referencing the explorers needs to indicate the seasons of the explorations.

There is probably a certain amount of weather fluctuation that is normal but I think all the deforestation that was in the news a few decades ago, may have accelerated an inevitability based on the world's negative life styles. At this point in time, it has become a serious issue. People can po po it all they want. Some people never wake up to reality.

Answer 2

Yes and no.

There have been alternating ice ages and warming periods for billions of years.

Glaciers around the world have been retreating for well over 200 years, which is before any man made global warming had started. The explorer Captain George Vancouver found Icy Strait, at the south end of Glacier Bay, choked with ice in 1794. Glacier Bay itself was almost entirely iced over. In 1879 naturalist John Muir found that the ice had retreated almost all the way up the bay.

We have known since 1970 and possibly earlier that we are putting significant enough amounts of CO2 in the air that it could be a long term problem.

But it is only since Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" that the whole issue has become front page news.

Answer 3

There's global warming, and then there's anthropogenic (meaning man-made) global warming.

The Earth has been warming and cooling due to a variety of natural factors, for billions of years: output of the sun, changes in the orbit and tilt of the Earth, vulcanism, chemical changes in the atmosphere.

In the past 50 years or so, the number of humans has increased so much, and the amount of oil, coal, and natural gas burned has increased so much, that this "anthropogenic" emission of carbon dioxide has nearly doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Don't listen to anyone who says this is not so: the calculation is fairly simple. We know, from economic data from all over the globe, that each person burns (on average) about two tons of fuel per year. Your two tons of fuel is mostly in the powerplant that provides electricity, and the gasoline in the cars you use. The total amount from everyone is a bit more than the observed increase in carbon dioxide. It is that amount of carbon dioxide that has caused a small increase in average global temperatures. The physics of this is quite secure. The danger is that this may substantially increase temperatures in the future, as more and more fuel is burned.

Answer 4

We've been in a general warming trend since the little ice age ended, nearly two hundred years ago. The warming trend was most promenent in the early 20th century, and has slowed significantly in the last few decades. It's even gotten a little colder in the last ten years.

Answer 5

Global Warming started in the prehistoric period when a caveman known as Og Gore noticed that some other people were riding even bigger and more flatulent dinosaurs than he was. After inventing a stone-based internet, Og Gore realized he had also invented envy (his own), so to get the other cave people to stop riding their bigger gassier dinosaurs he invented Global Warming and used an expensive private catapult to fly around the world (it was much smaller then) and tell everybody else they had to give up their big dinosaurs so there would be more for Og Gore or everybody would be instantly incinerated as the planet warmed up. Og Gore would have made a movie about the whole thing, but he had to wait for his ancestor Al Gore to invent movies. Hope this clears things up for everybody.

Answer 6

Around for a wile but just starting to be noticeable to the eye . Winter seasons are allot shorter and summers allot longer

Answer 7

It was well known and well described (and a matter of concern) when I was in High School. (1963-1966). I'm an amateur astronomer, and I first read about it in books about other planets. It was one of many things that were observed first somewhere else, and then found to exist here. (Helium is another example of that). I don't know exactly when the connection was made, but I'm sure it was before I was born.

Answer 8

global warming took out the dinasours.did you read about the moose belches that efect greenhouse?. well the dino belched itself into global warming. ate all the trees witch produced the oxegen and emitted gas that blew up the atmousphere.hey!i solved it now we can spend all that research money on something productive

Answer 9

If it weren't for global warming, New York City would be under a mile thick ice sheet and the UK wouldn't be an island.

Global warming has been around for hundred of thousands of years.

Answer 10

The planet's climate is constantly evolving, a fact I learned in third grade science. Nothing we do can alter this in any way because the scale in far more grand than the trivial intrusions of man or animal. The current "issue" is nothing more than hysteria culled from selected data to create a circumstance to exploit the markets. In short, this is about money and the sale of new products.