is global warming a hoax?

Question

newsweek read it!, i dont understand it... can anyone tell me if global warming is a hoax or not?

Answer 1

No. There is much misinformation on this, and so my answer is very long, with many links. You shouldn't trust me (or anyone else on Yahoo Answers) - you should read the links, at least some of them.

It takes time to become well enough informed on this to reach a good conclusion. I think it's worth it, and I hope you do too.

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

There have been natural changes before. But the above data proves this warming is mostly not natural.

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 2

It would be very nice if it were a hoax but sadly it's not. It's something that's been adversely affecting the planet for a couple of hundred years but the effects have been more pronounced in recent years as the warming trend continues to accelerate.

It's understandable that some people may not know whether to beleive global warming is real or not as there appears to be evidence supporting both the case for and against global warming. It's worth doing a little homework here and tracing the 'evidence' back to it's source. The arguments used to support the theory of global warming can be traced back to credible science from the world's leading experts, the arguments put forward to refute global warming have no scentific basis and often originate from the media and websites that are produced by journalists and lay people.

It doesn't help that in the past some major corporations and oil companies were engaged in a policy of discrediting the science of global warming and to this end a lot of misinformation and fabrications were released, much of which is still doing the rounds and trapping the unwary.

Bottom line - if someone tells you something about global warming or climate change then ask them to back it up with reliable sources.

Answer 3

I'm pretty sure that the Newsweek article you're referring to was actually saying that global warming is not a hoax, and investigating why some people claim that it is a hoax.

It's simply not possible for global warming to be a hoax. That's not how science works. Scientists don't gather together in a dark basement and ask 'okay, what should we do to trick everybody this week?'.

Scientists gather data, analyze the data, and draw unbiased conclusions based on that analysis. If they're found to have falsified data, their reputation is ruined and career is basically over. Scientists have to be unbiased. It's their job.

Climate scientists have done all of this and concluded that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming. There's no hoax about it, that's reality.

Answer 4

Man made global warming is a hoax, and the whole notion that if you change your lifestyle (driving hybrids, stop using the A/C, changing to flourecent light bulbs, etc.....) you are saving the enviroment is a hoax as well.

Answer 5

I do not know a lot approximately worldwide warming, however it sort of feels to me that guy is not liable. But im inclined to hear different arguments. As a ways as Horner being at the payroll of Exxon/Mobil, I do not know that he's, however the scientists you quote are in general at the payroll of anybody like greenpeace, every body has a revenue my peers. They do not do it at no cost. I do recognize that for each scientist that claims it is brought on by way of guy, a further does not feel so. That record the left consistently likes to cite, probably the most scientits on it sued to get their names taken off of it, due to the fact they did not accept as true with the abstract, best the aspect they'd written.

Answer 6

“Hoax” is probably too strong a word, but, in my opinion, it’s almost certainly grossly exaggerated. You are probably safe to ignore pretty much all the doom and gloom stuff you hear in the popular press. Anything you hear from Al Gore, for example, you are best advised to treat as a hoax. Even Gore himself admits that “I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous [global warming] is” – in other words: it’s okay to lie about it, because it’s so important. Hmmm, really?

So, what about the science?

Well, we don’t do an awful lot better here either. If you look at Bob’s answer above, he has a link (this one… http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/ATG/polywater.html ) which ends with the following statement…

“They had been misled by poorly controlled experiments and problems with experimental procedures. As the problems were resolved and experiments gained better controls, evidence for the existence of polywater disappeared.”

Now, while Bob uses this quote to support his opinion that global warming is not a hoax, I would argue that it actually suggests that it may well be. We have already had examples of scientific “evidence” of global warming that have misled people due to “poorly controlled experiments and problems with experimental procedures.” The classic example being the infamous “Hockey-stick” graph that used dodgy data, left out data the would have “ruined” it, and used a computer model that produced a hockey-stick even if you put random data into it. The graph was then “peer reviewed” (i.e. checked to make sure it was good science) and no one found anything wrong with it!

The Global Warming Alarmists will try to tell us the “Hockey-stick” graph fiasco isn’t important, but then, they would, wouldn’t they? I think it’s very important; it shows that some climate scientists are willing to effectively lie to try and con people.

If you look at the real science, it’s actually pretty inconclusive. Even the rise in temperature itself is pretty shaky. Temperature is supposed to have risen by about 0.7°C over the last century. But the error on that figure is +/- 0.5°C! That’s like getting a quote for something and being told “Somewhere between £2,000 and £12,000.” Would you accept that? Or would you say “Err? You’ll have to be a bit more precise than that if you want me to go for it?

There are only about three things we can say with any certainty…

1) CO2 levels have risen by around one third since the industrial revolution and mankind is the likely cause of most of this rise.

2) CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased, then we would expect it to cause some warming.

3) Temperatures do seem to have risen over the last few hundred years.

That’s it. You can’t even say with any certainty that it’s the rise in CO2 that’s caused the rise in temperature. Have a look at Bob’s link to Climate Change Attribution graph. (This one… http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png ) Look at the greenhouse gasses line and compare it to the temperature line. They’re not obviously linked, are they? From about 1920 to 1945 CO2 did nothing while temperature shot up. Then CO2 started rising sharply while temperature did nothing, or even fell slightly. So, the recent rise in both temperature and CO2 could be just a coincidence, couldn’t it? Certainly, the record of past CO2 and temperature shows that when temperature went up, CO2 went up 800+ years later. And, even more important, when temperatures went down again, CO2 continued to rise for 800+ years. Clearly CO2 wasn’t having much effect then.

All in all, we are being misled. Everything you see and hear is designed to make the problem appear worse than it is. Have a look at this graph of global temperatures over the last 150 years… http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Temperature_Record_png Looks pretty scary, doesn’t it? Well, now look at this one… http://www.michaelcrichton.com/NPC-NewVersion_files/image007.jpg It shows temperatures over a similar period (actually only 120 years). Are you scared now? Of course not! It looks completely trivial.

Now, to be fair, the second graph has been deliberately scaled to make global warming look insignificant, but, and lets be absolutely clear about this, the first graph has been just as deliberately scaled to make the warming look as large and frightening as possible.

In summary, for me the jury is still out. There is an awful lot of scare-mongering going on – even from top scientists. Until the science gets better I feel we should still be waiting and seeing.

Have a read of my sources if you want more information.

As ever with global warming - don't believe the hype.

Answer 7

Well Newsweek in in a class with People Magazine, or USA Today. I'd recommend Discover, Scientific American, or any source that publishes scientific articles, rather than just quoting from them.

Answer 8

Global warming has turned into a religion.

Everyone believes in it, even though there is no conclusive evidence. Anyone who says otherwise gets harassed. Or in my case a thumbs down.

I don't care how "compelling" the evidence is. Anyone who has watched a hate documentary knows how powerful spun statistics can be.

Answer 9

Unfortunately the information in the popular media is often unreliable.

The sources that you should be looking at are peer reviewed scientific media.

A good place to start is the IPCC reports. the IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

This material is available at any good University library.

For a fee most University libraries will let you use their facilities even if you are not a student or member of the faculty.

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Answer 10

It may be, it may not be. What we know is that we cannot determine if man made global warming is occurring, though some data indicates that there is a relationship.

The data is suspect as the data is reviewed by other climatologist and is not subject to the higher standard of blind testing. This conflict creates a political motive in the debate.

It's a shame that more work isn't being done to remove the human element from the science.