Is global warming due to the activities of humans, or is it a normal cycle of the earth and our solar system?

Question

I think Al Gore wrote the book Inconvenient Truth a little early in the game. All the information is not in yet, so I am wondering what everyone else thinks, or has studied, about this subject. Some say there is a giant planet heading toward us that will affect our poles, weather, etc. It is called Nibiru, and could be the Sumerian's 'Planet X'.
There is little info at NASA about Nibiru.
http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/news_detail.cfm?ID=125

Other sites for information that is not official:
http://yowusa.com/video/survivng/1.shtml
http://www.halexandria.org/dward236.htm

Meanwhile, back on Earth-

According to NASA, it has been known that these climate changes would occur in this time frame.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10mar_stormwarning.htm
'Near Real Time' data is being observed and recorded to back up their scientific queries.

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/realtime-update.html#top

Our new global warming theory seems wrong. What do you think?

Please READ or at least LOOK at the NASA links on the sun's cycles. Don't assume that this is a question about Planet X, or Al Gore's book. It is not.

NASA's research has to do with sunspots that are coming in the future, please read their information. I am not saying Nibiru is coming, my opinion is that humans are not responsible for any of the cycle that is occuring, it is totally natural and has happened many times before, noted in history. NASA's opinion seems to be that these sunspots are going to cause drastic warming in the very near future and they are photographing them. Whether the Mayans or anyone else predicted it, thinks Nibiru is coming, or it is caused by cigarette smoke, what I am looking at seems to be concrete evidence from NASA that it is sunspots and there is nothing we did or can do about it. Please read links.

dana noted this:
"March 10, 2006: It's official: Solar minimum has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet."

But what it says after that is this is the calm before the storm.

RR-Thanks for great info. The AAPG (from your link) says in a new statement: "The new statement,[8] adopted July 2007, states that "Certain climate simulation models predict that the warming trend will continue, as reported through NAS, AGU, AAAS, and AMS. AAPG respects these scientific opinions but wants to add that the current climate warming projections could fall within well-documented natural variations in past climate and observed temperature data. These data do not necessarily support the maximum case scenarios forecast in some models."

Answer 1

You have to understand that information on Global Warming is highly political.

The IPCC (or International Panel on Climate Change) is the REAL source of all the information on Global Warming...

Over 250 teams of independant scientists and meteorologists from all over the world came to exactly the same conclusions.

1. The atmosphere globally is getting hotter on average. (by about 1 degree every 8 years)

2. The major causes of Global Warming are anthropogenic (means human-caused).

Now - For the politics... There is a group of pseudo-scientists (their studies are not peer-reviewed because they have no peers) called the AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists) that denies the claims of the IPCC.

Anyone with half a brain can figure out that the "petroleum geologists" are a lobbying group for the oil companies and they have a vested interest in your NOT believing in Global Warming.

Now - How NASA comes into play - NASA recieves and gives Government contracts with our Republican President and Lockheed Martin. These two entities have been working in close cooperation with the Oil industry for over 2 decades.... so the information from NASA on Global Warming *could be* incomplete or biased within reason.

Answer 2

Yes, I do accept the theory of anthropogenic global warming. There are a number of things we know for definite: 1. Light from the sun travels to earth. Some of it is absorbed by materials on the earth's surface and they get hot. These hot objects radiate heat back into space. Our atmosphere contains greenhouse gases that prevent some of this heat being lost. Hence the earth and the moon have very different average temperatures. 2. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We've known this since the 1850's when an Irish physicist named John Tyndall examined the properties of atmospheric gases. 3. Human activities (burning fossil fuels, for example) release huge quantities of CO2 into our atmosphere that wouldn't have been present had we not released them. The figure is currently close to 30 billion metric tonnes per year. Although some might dispute this specific number, the figure is definitely in the tens of billions of tonnes. 4. CO2 cannot just vanish. So the global warming theory is simple. If we pump gases into our atmosphere in large quantities, and we know some of those gases are greenhouse gases, and we know all that CO2 doesn't just vanish, then the laws of physics tell us our planet will get warmer. The problem with the skeptic view is that they must explain why, if CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we're pumping additional CO2 into the atmosphere, it is NOT having the warming effect the laws of physics tell us it should. This how science works - you don't just speculate but show the flaw in the theory. Skeptics pick away at graphs or papers or particular analysis methods but never deal with the actual issue they need to address - what is wrong with the laws of physics? They would have us believe that it is coincidence that CO2 levels are rising right when we're pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. They would have us believe that a natural cause is causing our planet to warm right when we're pumping huge quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. They'd have us believe that it is coincidence that the naturally occuring CO2 increase and naturally occuring temperature rise just happen to APPEAR exactly like what we'd expect if human activities were causing it. What they haven't shown is a. what are these natural causes and b. how do these natural causes fit the temperature and CO2 concentration data. Or they simply think thousands of scientists are lying to them (why would they lie about something that affects their own wallets? Scientists pay taxes too ...) Finally, in response to previous posters, there is a myth circulating the web that 'global warming has stopped for the last 15 years'. This is nonsense. The planet has warmed by 0.1 degrees in the last 15 years. The last 15 years were amongst the warmest in the last 130 years. What led to this claim was cherry-picking the data - if you isolate a few points close together on a curve they'll look nearly flat, whereas if you take lots of points (ie over a greater period of time) you'll see the actual curve.

Answer 3

Global Warming is not in any way science.
It's a religion.
Thanks to the efforts of a few lunatic fringe pseudo-scientists, the general public has been sufficiently scared into believing that man is cooking the Earth that they're willing to spend their hard earned cash on 'carbon offsets' that pad the pockets of a man who is more than happy to cash in on his scare tactics but is proving every day exactly what he really believes...
I mean, would a man who thought CARBON were doing this fly around in private jets and waste energy in a huge mansion that is unoccupied yet fully air conditioned with a heated pool and such? If he really believed his own rhetoric... of course not.
But you cannot tell this to them because they have made it into a religion. Several scientists have come forward and pointed out that there is NO EVIDENCE SUPPORTING MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING but they're being bullied by the mainstream GW nuts to keep quiet or risk their careers.
I have pointed out elsewhere, much to the chagrin of those who would use every single excuse in the book to discount this fact, that Mars and Venus are also heating. So the idiots ask "why is Mercury not?" and if they had half a clue, they'd know that temperatures on Mercury are so wildly varied due to proximity to the sun that they can only be estimated and not accurately measured... and if you're really asking about Jupiter and Saturn you have no idea whatsoever about planetary sciences... the THREE ROCKY PLANETS are heating.
Imagine that. What could be causing it?

The sun.
But wait... there's no one to BLAME for the sun causing it (unless you're one of the Bush-Blamers) and there's no MONEY to be made off the sun heating us up... so Gore and his ilk devise a plan to cash in.
He lost the Presidency but got a Nobel Prize and a ton of cash.
"But wait!" you say. "He BUYS Carbon Offsets"
From HIMSELF! He sits on the board of the company selling them so he's found a way to con you AND look like a saint in the process.

30 years ago, they were concerned we were headed into a new ice age. We are. Just not yet. We're in an inter-glacial phase of the Earth's climate. In other words, we're between ice ages. If these snake oil salesmen were gonna live long enough, I wonder if they'd be selling igloo blueprints?

Does anyone know how much carbon is thrown into the air from a single volcanic eruption? Do the research. We don't make enough of the stuff to make a difference.
But don't take my word for it. Read up on it as I did. Study.
I'm not selling you anything and don't stand to profit from this.
Consider the agenda and the motive of the scare mongers.

Answer 4

I'm a bit confused about your argument, because your NASA link seems to say the opposite of what you think.

"March 10, 2006: It's official: Solar minimum has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet."

Here's what global warming looks like:

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/

If global warming were due not to humans but instead due to the Sun, why would solar activity be at a minimum instead of a maximum?

I think you just proved that the current global warming is in fact NOT due to a normal cycle.

Answer 5

From what I've read & heard, its a combination of both.

Scientists have known for years that the earth is warming due to its rotation, gravitational pull, orbit & relationship with other planets in our solar system , etc. What has changed is that human's use of fossil, instead of natural (sun, wind & water), fuels has increased so much that it is pumping more pollutants into the air than all previous generations. This has exacerbated the situation & resulted in temperatures spiking higher than they were originally projected to be by this time.

So, if we start using natual sources - which I believe is the right direction to go - instead of fossil fuels we won't TOTALLY stop global warming, just delay it.

Either way, I'll be dead before it happens.

Answer 6

It's probably a combination of natural and man made causes. Nobody knows for sure because there's so many unknowns -- although many people pretend they know it all.

For example, the earth is like an egg full of hot molten stuff and we're standing on the thin shell. An increase in volcanic eruptions would warm the oceans (most volcanoes are submarine) and warmer ocean water would warm the atmosphere. Submarine volcanic activity is not well understood or closely monitored. This is just one example of a possible contributor to climate change which is typically ignored in climate models.

Answer 7

Both.
It is well known that much of the northern hemisphere was locked in an ice age, with glaciers covering all of Canada and part of the Unites States and Europe as recently as 10,000 years ago. We are still warming from that natural cold period.

But CO2 levels in the air started going up about 200 years ago and are now WAY above any natural level seen in the last 400,000 years and climbing fast, and that is contributing to the natural warming.

Answer 8

Al Gore wouldn't know the truth if it came up and kicked him in the balls.

Global Warming is part of a natural cycle. Ever hear of the Ice Ages? What do you think ended them? Global Warming.

What do you think will trigger the next Ice Age, Global Cooling.

It is nature and not cause or effected much by the actions of mankind.

Doc

Answer 9

Actually, it's because the natural cycle.
Our earth heated up and cooled down in a periodic cycle, since the earth was made.
However, humans' activities make the warming into a worse condition.

Answer 10

I think humans have simply sped the process up, but did not cause the process.