Global Warming. What if in 50 years, the earth is much colder than now.?

Question

And this with no reduction in CO2 release globally, maybe even an increase. What will the people of that time say? I'll be 79 years old, hopefully, and some people now will be dead. Even though the consensus of scientists say this would be unlikely, how would they explain the current hysteria in light of this hypothetical future?

I meant, what if they are wrong about greenhouse gases causing global warming.

Answer 1

Imagine if it happened in only 20. Solar cycle 25 will be here before you know it.

Quick...Read this link quickly before Hansen has it removed.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10may_longrange.htm

http://www.physorg.com/news66581392.html

http://bourabai.georisk.kz/landscheidt/new-e.htm

The sun's brightness in just 4 years has dropped more than half a watt per square meter. Imagine if it dropped by a few watts over the next two decades. That is what is forecast, and that is what caused the little ice age.

http://lasp.colorado.edu/cgi-bin/ion-p?ION__E1=PLOT%3Aplot_tsi_data.ion&ION__E2=PRINT%3Aprint_tsi_data.ion&ION__E3=BOTH%3Aplot_and_print_tsi_data.ion&START_DATE=&STOP_DATE=&PLOT=Plot+Data

Don't let these people tell you that they know the warming is not because of the sun. Reconstructed Total solar Irradiance over the last 200 years shows an increase of 6 watts. Doubling of CO2 would not even equate to 1 watt of additional heat captured.

Fig. 4 in the following PDF

http://www.agu.org/pubs/toc/gl/gl/gl9916/1999GL900370/1999GL900370.pdf#search='Total%20Solar%20Irradiance%20reconstructed'

Solanki did some brilliant work and admits that the Sun could of only caused 50% of the heating. But there is more to the sun than light, and Solanki knows this, it is a shame that people like him are bullied into making political statements. The concept of the suns magentic field within our solar system as an additional means of transferring energy is beyond the intellectual capacity of most IPCC followers.

Answer 2

A proper answer would take a lot of explaining so forgive me for missing out most of the details.

There's three things that cause our planet to warm up or cool down - the sun and the cycles it goes through, the cycles the earth goes through and the composition of the atmosphere (four things if you include feedback mechanisms).

The effect of the sun is minute over short periods of time, the variation from peak to trough in an eleven year sunspot cycle is a deviation from the mean of less than one two-thousandth (±0.65 from the mean of 1366 Watts per square metre per year). Over thousands and millions of years the sun can and does have a profound effect on our climate, not over 50 years.

Simialry the cycles that the Earth goes through affect our climate. The shortest one is a precessional cycle of 19,000 years; so again, not enough to cause a change in just 50 years.

The third consideration is the atmosphere, this governs all life on earth and our weather and climate. It is the most dynamic of the factors and can quickly be affected.

We're at a situation now where the greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere since the onset of industrialisation, and most notably in recent decades, have acumulated to such an extent that they're affecting our climate. Nature can recycle a small amount of our emissions each year but we've seriously overloaded these natural recycling mechanisms, so much so that if we never produced another unit of greenhouse gas it would be years before nature could clean up the atmosphere.

Whilst this hypothetical clean up were going on the planet would still be warming because of the surplus gases still in the atmosphere. Warming would only stop when nature had removed all excess greenhouse gases. But even then, natural cycles would continue to warm the planet.

CO2 has an atmospheric lifespan of 115 years, it's a strange concept but each time you breath out you're contributing to global warming that will affect the planet until 2122 (assuming some process doesn't remove the CO2 beforehand).

In short, if there were no humans on the planet it would continue warming of it's own accord for many thousands of years (very slowly). We are here and we are pumping out greenhouse gas emissions, even if we stopped doing so those already in the atmosphere will keep warming the planet for a long time to come.

Cooling could only come about through our tampering with the atmopshere (physically removing the greenhouse gases) or some natural event of a magnitude not seen on this planet for millions of years - asteroid or meteorite impact being the most probable.

Answer 3

The first thing is to realise that :
(1) Global warming is a fact as on date.
(2) Greenhouse effect is a fact

What more should be realised is whether this "warming" is short period or long period deviation from normal climatic variations or aberrations caused by rapid urbanisation and attendant needs. The current "hysteria" would compel us to enhance quality of life by efficient use of natural resources or else we go the “Dinosaurian way”—large body and a small cranial capacity.

What you are saying is quite possible but would be known 50-100 years down the time axis.
Thnks

Answer 4

So if they are wrong about greenhouse gases whats the worst that has happened their error caused humanity to take action to stop polluting the planet. I can live with that kind of mistake.
the other kind of mistake may be a little harder to live with in the long run.

Answer 5

It is possible that the current warming could lead to a cooling scenario, as happened during the little ice age following the medieval climate optimum. There was report done detailing this scenario (click on the PDF):

http://www.gbn.com/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=26231

Here it is on the History Channel too if you don't want to read all of that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xR7hQJUUTo

This could happen if the earth gets warm enough to melt sufficient amounts of glaciers to freshen the ocean water and shut down the system of ocean currents that keeps parts of the world warm.

Answer 6

There are many factors, or "forcings" that combine to set the average temperature of the Earth. The largest effects are natural.

The current warming is caused by human release of greenhouse gasses, primarily carbon dioxide, on top of all the natural effects. The worry is that the unusually rapid warming now taking place will cause even more greenhouse gasses to be released, resulting in a partial runaway effect.

The warning by climate scientists is just that: a warning that things may go wrong, perhaps very wrong.

Consider it like a warning from your local fire chief: he says that if you continue to store that huge pile of oily rags in your basement, your house might catch fire. Maybe it won't. But he's the expert, and you might be well advised to take his word for it.

It is possible that natural effects will save us even if we continue to burn fossil fuels. The question is: are you willing to bet the fate of the world and of all your progeny on what seems, given the best scientific evidence, to be unfavorable odds?

Consider, too, that the world economy must move away from fossil fuels sooner or later anyway, because the oil will run out. We may already be at "peak oil".

Answer 7

They said that where I live (Southern Spain) it would become like the sahara is now, but the last two summers have been cooler than usual. Last year it went over 38c once and this year not at all. Three years and more ago it would get to 45c. Now, you can't blame me for being sceptical. If scientist tell me one thing but I get another what should I believe.

Answer 8

there's always more to it than just CO2.
if a volcano blows, it's gasses actually reflect the sun's heat and things cool down.
we are putting more than just CO2 into the atmosphere, what effect over the long term isn't really known.
also we don't know how the planet will compensate.
the thing is we just don't know enough to really know either way.
to be definite is to be ignorant.

Answer 9

Huh? That is like saying what if in fifty years the sky was green. How would people explain that based on our current understanding of why it is blue? I guess the GW believers would say they were wrong and the deniers would say "neener, neener".

Answer 10

Scientists who now believe global warming is real and mostly caused by us (99+% of them) will be very relieved.

They'll also be very surprised. Man made global warming is scientifically proven:

"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

Not believing global warming is real is exactly like believing the Earth is 6000 years old, or that we didn't go to the Moon. You have to reject science and massive amounts of scientific data to do it.