Global Warming: Who Do You Trust?

Question

How do you know who to trust when it come to the information you get about Global Warming? I mean both side for and against have, from what I've seen. Some pretty good facts. I don't know a whole bunch in depth about it. But from what I've seen . . . its hard to know who right and wrong. . . if anyone is either. THOUGHTS?

ANYONE ELSE WHO PUTS DOWN A ANSWER, DON'T MAKE IT LONG!!

Answer 1

i trust no one.

Answer 2

To me its not a matter of trust or miss trust because they have not a thing to gain from me either way that i believe .

I do believe that not polluting isn't going to hurt a thing and polluting will hurt things like my lungs for instance . Both sides do have pretty good facts but i just cant help but to feel we are missing something and i think allot of others are feeling the same thing but cant just put there finger on it .

In any case we are looking at 2 answers so far and either one of them are a definite thing so i am not going either way especially with the 2 sides fighting like kids ..

What is it with Grease burning all the way across there country whats the odds on that . How do we know that its not something internal heating up inside the earth itself causing the sea waters to warm making the temperature to go up .

Point is I'm just going to keep my options open and carry on like i have been for the past 51 years of my life what else can we do . But again clean air and water is allot better then dirty air and water any day . The sooner we stop polluting and come up with a clean energy the better off we will all be and the richer we will all become . That's where our money should be going

Answer 3

Ahh, the controversy continues. haha But seriously, both sides have compelling arguments to a certain extent. Yes, the earth has gone through many "natural" cycles of warming and cooling periods. However, it is the RATE at which all this is occurring that has scientists and environmentalists worried. Usually, it takes 100,000 years for small temperature changes to occur (whether its a higher temp or lower temp).

This is all documented in geological studies of sea level changes and rates of uplift in active geologic settings. So when scientists look at JUST the last 100-200 years, the temperature changes, the sea level changes, weather pattern disturbances, glacial changes - they note how rapid all this is occurring.

Do you know that over 50% of people in the U.S. alone lives within 50 miles of the coast. With the amount of rise in sea levels (SL) projected, many homes and people will be forced to move inland. Not only because of the rise in SL, but because SL rise will erode coastlines faster, and if the air temps increase - it will cause stronger hurricanes, thus, again increasing more erosion on the coasts, bringing SLs higher and reaching larger populations.

Its funny, sometimes if the weather is cool or cold, I hear people say "yeah right, global warming my a$%!" But the earth is still rotating and revolving around the sun - we're still going to have seasons. However, scientists now believe that global warming is affecting El Nino events. This means that areas that are usually dry will become wet, and areas usually wet will become dry. The amount of wildfires are rampant right now (whether or not they were started naturally or not). They are more difficult to extinguish because its been drier than usual there.

Even Hurricane Katrina should be a wake-up call. Yes, we've had many hurricanes go through New Orleans, but with New Orleans already below the current SL, and with SLs rising, theres no doubt that there will be more devastation there. Building levees and other man-made barriers are just false hopes to these people. I, for one, would love to see New Orleans flourish again, but worry that people are re-building on a bomb that may go off sooner rather than later.

Also, how can we, as humans, not believe that there is no Global warming going on here. The amount of fossil fuels that are burned every day. Where do you think those chemicals go? They are trapped in our atmosphere. All the trees we're cutting down that use CO2, are no longer there. So this extra CO2 is building up in the atmosphere forming a "blanket" around the earth.

The amount of extinctions that are happening are outrageous. Do some research people!! Scientific findings like these cannot be published by any Joe Schmoe, they have to go in front of a scientific board and they are bombarded with questions that need hard evidence before they can be published. So all the published scientific journals and articles should be enough to answer anyone with questions such as these.

I can go on and on, but I dont want to. Remember, its the RATE at which all of this is occuring that has created this Global Warming epidemic. Hope this helps.

Answer 4

Personally, I feel that the whole environmental awareness thing has gotten out of hand. Yes, we need to take care of our environment and use common sense, but I don't think we are in danger of obliterating the world as human beings.

The world has been going through climate changes for millenniums without human assistance. It happens whether we want it to or not. There is nothing we can do about it. All we can do is adapt to the new climate that develops around us. The evidence is there within glaciers and at various depths underground.

The Earth is vast. Any one of us barely rank as a speck. There is still unchartered and unaltered areas that have not been tapped in to.

That said, I think we do have responsibilities as human beings to keep things clean and as unpolluted as possible. IF a factory is dumping raw and dangerous chemicals into a stream, lake or ocean, I think they need to be given the choice to correct it. Its common sense. If not, shut them down. I have no problem with that.

Where I see a big dilemma is the carbon credits that are becoming big now. What that amounts to is giving each person a certain amount of credits that correspond to various energy sources they use. This can be electricity, water, and fuel. Here's the problem. Usually rich environmentalist buy up these credits from other countries and individuals to be used as their own. They have the money to do this and live comfortably. Others may not. Its a double standard.

If one has to change I say ALL have to. Even the rich, and especially the wealthy hypocrites in the environmental movement. They should ground their private jets, quit driving big SUV's and ride their bikes or take public transportation.

THAT will never happen. Why? Because it is a do as I say, not a do as I do attitude. Kind of like an elitest style.

No one should have to go to the extremes that these people are proposing. They sure aren't. What we could do is just use our own common sense. Don't waste. Just like the people that moved west in wagon trains and the Indians... they used all of what they had and left very little waste.

Answer 5

It is very important to go to the scientific literature.

The popular media primarily exist to sell advertising and make money for their sharholders, not provide accurate information.

Much of the misinformation on the issue of Global Warming comes from the popular media.

To get the scientific literature on the topic of Global Warming, go to any University library and ask if they will let you use the library.

Most University libraries will let you use their resources for research if you are willing to pay a small fee that helps support the library.

Ask a librarian for help finding the literature if you are not familiar with the resources for locating articles in the scientific literature.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports are a good place to start.

Answer 6

An easy solution - don't trust anybody. You don't even have to trust the scientists who say humans are the primary cause of the current global warming, because you can just go into their scientific papers and examine their data to see if they've collected and analyzed it correctly, and drawn correct conclusions.

However, this is almost always the case, because in order to be published, a scientific paper has to go through a peer-review process which checks to make sure the science in the paper is accurate. So if you don't want to independently check the data, you can trust most scientists (as long as their papers are going through the peer-review process).

Don't trust the media, don't trust Al Gore, certainly don't trust films like The Great Global Warming Swindle or people who say "trust me, I know what I'm talking about".

If somebody says something, make them prove it by giving their source of information. If somebody makes a claim without backing it up, more often than not they're wrong. Some good examples of that in the answers above mine.

Answer 7

There is no definitive answer yet. Your best option is probably to look up actual studies, because most of what you see on the news and internet sites is condensed to near uselessness and taken somewhat out of context. Once you have the studies, check out who funded the research, if the money comes from a group that stands to benefit one way or another, be skeptical. Also randomly check the source material, if the author has taken other studies or data out of context, than the whole study is suspect.

Answer 8

We are not a significant factor in the global warming thing. the sun's atmosphere is the main factor. there is an outer ring of the sun's effect that the earth is in and it shifts from century to century. it works as a shield from space gamma radiation and when its absent, we get hotter, under its sheild we are cooler. we are being constantly bombarded by one form or another of radiation and the fleeting seconds of existance that we are around in the grand scheme of it all does not amount to anything significant. in this time we are here the populus is just nervous because we dont know what source of information to beleive but it seems that the noisyiest information is deemed correct only because we all nod our heads to the same music. Crowd mentality. We have never had a taste of all the information we are getting than we are right now. Stick to your beleifs. try to live right and live for the day. anything is possible. Be careful. use sunscreen that is both UVA & UVB approved.

Answer 9

I don't trust either side. The pro-global warming research is being funded by environmental groups (some of them extremist groups like Greenpeace) and the anti-global warming research is largely being funded by industrialists. Science is up for sale to the highest bidder. The so-called "experts" are being paid to say what the folks with the money want them to say. We need to get a bunch of scientists from unrelated fields who are not under pressure from anyone else (and are getting paid the same amount regardless of their answers) to apply the scientific method and give us an honest, unbiased answer.

Answer 10

Not the greedy ones for sure.

Every study result can be manipulated to provide or deny credence to any cause. That is the law of statistical analysis.
It depends on who is paying for it.

Therefore trust in your heart and in your basic sense of honor. The earth is your mother. Do not harm her.
For centuries, man lived minimally without using too much resources.

As citizens, do we have any control over the huge pollution caused by manufacturing? All the dire doom and gloom predictions are merely reports, because life goes on.

What good comes out of it?

Awareness. When you are aware, you cease to overuse, you refrain from harming, you use up as little as you can.

So we might all be in a one way trip of self destruction. or as some pundits say, the earth will self destruct anyway with or without your help.

The awareness can make us create colonies elsewhere?, explore the galaxy?

Answer 11

The ONLY thing we should trust when it comes to ANY science is objective facts that can be independently verified.

Observations, opinions by others are nothing more than subjective interpretation are as good as any other soothsayer.

No one argues when it comes to the speed of light, because anyone can measure this value.