How can you prove that global warming exists and that it isn't just some trend to divert our attention?

Question

Dana,
The world is how old? Your graph only goes back 120 yrs, do you really think that is significant proof?

Thor,
I am glad to see that you cannot have an intelligent debate or discussion without name calling. Your statement is useless and meaningless, and you call others ignorant?

Permaculture,
I am asking a simple question, not attacking anyones beliefs. Why does everyone insist that questioning something, or debating something is immediate reason for attack. Someone asks a question, then immediately is the name calling and rude remarks, can't anyone act like an adult these days and talk like human beings instead of bashing each other?

Lots to read, I will choose a best answer soon. Thank you all for your time and comments

Answer 1

Did you know that 87% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Especially if they are 99% sure. As you see most supporters of glabal warming show short term graphs ie: 120 yrs. If you are charting the timeline of a company that is long term, but not if you are showing an earth climate trend. there are long term carts available for hundreds of thousands of years and they show cycles. Every one that wants to prove something can skew the data to their advantage to their benefit. You kinda have to go by faith on this issue, just like religion...

Answer 2

Global warming exists. So does global cooling and global just right. Who's to say what temperature is correct for this planet ?

History shows it's been a lot warmer and a lot cooler. You don't even need to be an "environmental scientist" to know that (whatever that is.)

Wait until the warming trend ends and we start cooling off again. The same nuts will be coming out of the woodwork saying we're going into an ice age. That's what they did in the 70's.

They never go away, even when we prove they're wrong.

Answer 3

There have been a lot of studies done to prove that global warming exists, but they are all conjecture. That really shouldn't be the point though. There is a saying, hope for the best, but plan for the worst. If global warming is an incorrect theory and we make changes it will waste money, but a lot of those changes would have other benefits so it wouldn't be that bad. If global warming is as bad or worse than predicted and we do nothing the consequences could be disastrous. Think of it as a basic cost-benefit analysis, is the cost of making changes based on a possibly incorrect theory greater than the cost of doing nothing and discovering that the theories were correct?

Answer 4

natural cycles are causing global warming.

man made global warming is caused by greed and poweron the part of environmental groups.

we can't change nature. the warming cycle IS natural, just like the big scare for global cooling was the biggest problem in the 70's.

it was a natural fluctuation too.

here are some of the predictions i grew up with over the past 40 years:

famine
mass death
shifting of food production regions
climate change
overpopulation
global cooling
mass starvation
massive glaciers
uninhabitable places on earth
running out of fossil fuel
pollution physically altering man (through adaptation)

all this was supposed to happen by the year 2000, and if man didn't stop using fossil fuels. we had 30+ years of "irrefutable data" showing that man caused it too.

but we didn't stop, we used more!

STRANGELY, NOT ONE PREDICTION HAS CAME TRUE YET!

now i'm supposed to "believe" global warming

Answer 5

The main cause of global warming are the 'greenhouse gases'. There's lots of them but the three main ones are carbon dioixide, methane and nitrous oxide.

Gases have amazing properties, some float, some sink, some explode, some react, some smell etc. One property common to the greenhouse gases is the ability to trap heat and it's this heat retaining property that keeps this planet at a habitable temperature.

If it weren't for naturally occuring greenhouse gases then the heat we receive from the sun would be lost back into space and Earth would be so cold that life would never have evolved.

If we alter the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere then it's heat retaining capiacity is also altered. Less greenhouse gases mean the planet cools, more mean it warms.

Our modern lifestyles mean we're releasing huge quantities of greenhouse gases (40 billion tons of them last year) and this is much more than can be handled by natural cycles. The result is that levels of these gases have rapidly increased. For millions of years the amount of greenhous gases in the atmosphere has been fairly stable but in the last 200 years levlel have taken off and gone way beyond where they should be.

It's this increase in levels of the greenhouse gases that is causing the planet to warm up. It's happened in the past through natural cycles but has occured over timespans of thousands and millions of years, not just a few decades as we're experiencing now.

The heat retaining capabilities of greenhouse gases can be proven in a reasonably well equipped science lab. The easiest way to demonstrate what happens is to measure the heat retaining capacity of clean air then compare it to what happens when carbon dioixide or some other greenhouse gas is added.

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Understandably, some people may think that global warming is a trend to divert our attention but here's an interesting thing.

Scieintists first hit upon the notion that the world would warm because of increased greenhouse gas concentrations way back in 1811. In 1896 the link between greenhouse gases and global warming was established by Svante Arhennius. The more that scientists looked into it the more worried they became. It took 50 years of pressure from the scientific community before the first government action (the UK government under Prime-minister Margaret Thatcher in 1988).

So whilst global warming may be something new to the media and the world in general it's been a scientific issue for a long time.

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EDIT: Have a look at the second graph that Mr Jello (above) links to, this shows the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere but doesn't include recent levels, if these were included they would go way off the top of the graph.

Answer 6

you can never completely prove anything, but there is an undeniably large body of evidence supporting global warmings existence along with a reasonable mechanism to explain it. we cannot prove that the earth is round and that someone in outerspace is not causing us through some unknown mechanism to believe this when it is actually flat, but the evidence leads me to believe the earth is round.

There was a huge short term political incentive for some folks to discount global warming but even that is in the past.

Most scientists that have an opinion believe global warming exists. you can reject what they believe to be the truth, it is good to be skeptical, but if you are not a scientist and don't form your opinions based on what scientists believe for scientific questions, and don't use solid objective evidence to base your decisisons on then your opinion will be considered trivial.

pick up a relevant issue of Nature or even Scientific American and read it... you wil either become confused due to lack of techincal skills or you will believe global warming exists. there are a number of models with various predictions but the vast majority of good peer reviewed articles strongly support that global warming is real and is likely caused by human activity

the tough part is those seeking the truth and those seeking power (and those who have trivial opinions) are often different people

thanks for asking the question... keep in mind that if you are not a Scientists and don't believe Scientists then your decision on the best answer is tri....

Answer 7

There's ample proof, but it's way too long for here. This answer will be too long, anyway. You actually have to read the links and/or the peer reviewed scientific literature for the details and the data. This is science and what counts is the data. I have included a good graph that gives you the idea.

"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

The fact that the graph only goes back 120 years is that's when we have reliable temperature measurements. Also, climate changes in the past had very different causes, mostly changes in solar radiation. Now, as the data shows, changes in solar radiation have simply been overpowered by the huge increase in burning fossil fuels.

See also:

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/FAQ2.html

The first graph aboves shows that changes in the sun are responsible for about 10% of it. When someone says it's the sun they're saying that thousands of climatologists are stupid and don't look at the solar data. That's ridiculous.

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://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/
http://www.realclimate.org
"climate science from climate scientists"

Answer 8

This is the equivalent of the tree falling in the woods but no one is there to hear it, all that argument has going for it is that you can't prove it, the dynamics of what happens when a tree falls in the woods doesn't change simply because someone is there to
hear it or not, that;s an absurd concept but the bone heads just keep saying "if no one's there how can you tell" and round and round and round we go. There is overwhelming evidence that global warming is real and getting more real every day but still there are the "but how can you tell" ers.

Answer 9

Of course they cannot have an intelligent debate or a respectful dialog with anyone. There is no reasoning with them, because they don't respond to reason, common sense or real science. They have chosen what they want to believe ( their political idelogy is a belief system). They cannot prove anything, because they are alarmists, ideological environmentalists propagating a political ideology and "junk science" as real science. Political ideologies are almost invariably wrong- the man made global warming ideology is no exception. There is no way they will be convinced that they are wrong, because the truth is that they don't care. They have and ideology, an agenda, and they will fight reason, true science, common sense, and reality even if another "Ice Age" would fall upon planet Earth!

Do they tell anyone that statements by ideological environmentalists that thousands of IPCC scientists agree on anything is simply untrue and misrepresents the process? Of course not!

None of the 122 lead authors of the latest IPCC report, released in August 2001, had the opportunity to place a stamp of approval on every statement. Though drafted by a small group of IPCC scientists, the brief account of the main points used by the media and called the Summary for Policymakers, was actually edited and approved by a political body.

Given this bit of background, it is somewhat of an overstatement when the IPCC 2001 says that "the increase in Northern Hemisphere temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years." ONE SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THE PAST CENTURY REPRESENTS THE ONLY PERIORD OF EXTENDED WARMING TO HAVE OCCURRED IN THE PREVIOUS 1,000 YEARS, WHICH WERE GENERALLY DOMINATED BY A COOLING TREND... YES, THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THE RECORD SAYS- A COOLING TREND!

If "dana1981" and the other members of his tribe really believed in man made global warming they would not be wasting so much time in Yahoo Answers trying to prove to others that they are right about this issue. They would be using their time and energies more wisely trying to do something about it. But because they are alarmists and propagandists, they alarm the public and propagate the man made global warming ideology, with a condescending and overbearing attitude, as if they had the unquestionable last word on the subject, even through Yahoo Answers.

You see, I don’t believe in man made global warming (after reading, for many years, hundreds of articles, dozens of reports and many books on the issue), therefore the only thing I do about it is confront and expose environmental alarmists like them, and have some fun with it. They are too young, too inexperienced and too far left ideologically to be objective about this issue (and for that matter about any issue at all).

By the way, have you read the latest data from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) now showing the hottest year since 1880 was 1934? Nineteen-ninety-eight dropped to second, while the third hottest year was way back in 1921. Indeed, four of the 10 hottest years were in the 1930s, while only three were in the past decade.

Also, the real 15 hottest years are spread over seven decades. Eight occurred before atmospheric carbon dioxide began its sharp rise; seven occurred afterwards.

If they have not read it, they should, and stop posting wrong and outdated information!

Answer 10

There are several proofs:
1. explicit climate statistics for at least a century
2. geologic evidence of the extent of glaciers, and their cyclical change, going back millenia
3. ice bores showing the concentration of CO2 back for many centuries, together with experimental and laboratory proof of the relation of CO2 to closed system temperatures.
4. Details like the disappearance of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

The list is much longer than I have given. BTW, it might be easier for you to accept the consensus view if you think of what is happening as "climate change" rather than just "warming". Yes, the earth's atmosphere is getting warmer; but the effects we see will be all over the lot, because the additional heat is adding more energy to a complex system that contains vast feedback mechanisms in one direction, and vast damping mechanisms in the other.