Global warming *rolls eyes*. 5 scientists views on the subject? You dont need to be an expert?

Question

I need to find out five ways in which scientists believe climate change is affecting our planet. Please could you help? State your sources clearly.

Just so you know, i believe the whole thing is a load of rubbish - its a cycle, its happened before it WILL happen again, and theres nothing we can do about it.

BUT
im 14 and this is for help with my physics so I need five ways in which scientists believe climate change is AFFECTING our planet, not what its caused by

Thanks

Answer 1

With all due respect, it appears that you've already decided that climate change is not occurring and have decided that it's due to natural variations.

We know about the natural variations that cause the planet to warm and cool, they're a series of cycles that both Earth and the Sun go through. We know whereabouts within these cycles the planet is, just as we can plot the movement of planets in space, so too can we plot the effects of these natural cycles. Consequently we know what the planet would be doing even if humans didn't exist on it and that would be to be warming very slowly.

To put it into context, in the last 50 years average global temps have risen by as much as they did in the previous 10,000 years. No natural cycle is capable of producing such a sudden change.

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Five ways in which our planet has already changed and will continue to do so into the future...

● Spread of diseases. As temps rise there are more and more places in which certain diseases can become established. Malaria for instance has spread to high altitudes and latitudes as these places warm up. The spread of the disease correlates with how global temperatures have changed. The World Health Organisation has calculated that global warming has led to an additional 10 million cases of malaria ecah year.

Here in the UK (where I am) we have several new diseases that only exist in warmer climates. In the last few days there has been an outbreak of bluetongue disease caused by culicoides imicola (a relative of the mosquito). It should exist in the tropics and sun tropics but over recent decades has been slowly spreading northwards through Europe keeping track of rising temperatures.

● Water shortages. About one on three people in the world rely on water sources that originate in glacial mountain regions, most notably in the Himalayas and the Andes. Six of the world's greatest rivers are fed by meltwater from glaciers. In recent years almost every glacier has been retreating, some so fast that you can actually see them retreat (up to one inch every minute). Huge numbers of glaciers have disappeared completely and the rivers they supplied with water are seeing water levels drop. This has disrupted water supplies and irrigation for many people.

In the US the effects of glacial retreat is very evident at Glacier National Park. Until recently there were some 150 glaciers but today there are just 4.

There are many other circumstances that lead to water shortages, glacial retreat is just one of them.

● Desertification. There are many factors that lead to land being lost to advancing deserts. One of them is a fall in river levels but others include changes in rainfall patterns, crop failure occasioned by drought, disease or heat, erosion, receding water tables and the inability of plant species to exist in warmer environments. In China alone more than a million people have been displaced by advancing deserts, it's not just China that is affected, this is happening worldwide but most notably in Africa and Asia.

● More agricultural land. Whilst advancing deserts may be eating away at available land there is something of a balance occurring. The rising temperatures are melting huge areas of permafrost, over a million square kilometres just in Siberia in the last few years.

Ordinarily crops can't be grown on permafrost but as it melts it is providing additional land for gorwing crops and grazing cattle. The melting in Siberia has created more than 1000 new lakes.

● Thickening of the polar ice caps. As the planet warms more water is evapourated from the seas and oceans and this subsequently falls as rain or snow. Globally there has been increased rainfall which, for many, has led to devastating flooding.

At the same time, increased precipitation has led to a thickening of the polar ice caps (more seasonal in the Arctic, permanent in Antarctica). In places where temps rarely or never get above freezing any snow that falls simple accumulates over time. In the Antarctic interior temps average -45°C, the ice here is the result of millions of years snowfall accumulation that has never melted, simply turned to ice (largely through the effects of gravity).

Answer 2

bravozulu writes: <> Your last sentence is most interesting, being that it is YOU who is failing to understand. You seem to think that because taxes are collected on tobacco--not even enough to pay for the health care costs--that claims that the tobacco executives were acting fraudulently in denying the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke could not possibly be valid. That makes no sense. It also is strange that you start a post where you yell about leftists (above) and even about "Marxists" (later) with little basis in facts --indeed the surgeons general that made the strongest statements on secondhand smoke were appointed by Reagan and George W. Bush and were personally very conservative-- with this claim by you: <> The reality is that it is YOU that is a political activist who does not care about science!!!!

Answer 3

Global warming has occurred in varying cycle lengths in the past. In the past there has never been any correlation with changes in atmospheric composition and climate change. Anthropogenic greenhouse gases are speculated as the cause because no other theory can be mathematically described to account for the temperature increase, but natural climate variability is still a subject of much debate. Personally I think it's a cycle that involves a variety of factors that are to complicated to model. The ocean's and their heat retention capability of modulating solar radiation, by their very nature is the driving force behind regulating our climate.
There are signs that global warming has reversed.

Climatology is such a new science, that has continually been wrong about predictions of future climatic change, anyone claiming to be an expert should be viewed with much skepticism.

Answer 4

What you want is here, in detail. The first link may be all you need.

http://profend.com/global-warming/pages/effects.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL052735320070407
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM6avr07.pdf

The scientific data shows that, this time, it's NOT a natural cycle. Proof here:

Meehl, G.A., W.M. Washington, C.A. Ammann, J.M. Arblaster, T.M.L. Wigleym and C. Tebaldi (2004). "Combinations of Natural and Anthropogenic Forcings in Twentieth-Century Climate". Journal of Climate 17: 3721-3727

summarized at:

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

Answer 5

I totally agree with the *rolls eyes* thing! Global Warming is a hoax if I ever saw one. How do they know that "this time" it's NOT a natural cycle? This warming trend is no more significant than those of the past, so why are we worried? Good grief, if people would just research both sides of the debate, they'd get it.
As for your actual question, I don't see ANY ways how a scientist could possibly believe this. I have a suspicion that a lot of them don't, but it's just good for their paycheck to say that they do. Sorry, don't mean to be attacking them, I know its a logical fallacy, but I think it's true.

Answer 6

Give me a break. Global warming is such a crock. There is so much evidence to prove that global climate fluctuations are natural, and naturally happen every so often, and that we were long overdue for the next warm up anyway, that it is just ridiculous to believe that this is anything more than a politically biased load of bull, designed to help the Dems at the polls. Also I recently read in my local paper that even if the entire world stopped emitting emissions today, it would have NO effect on the planet for thousands of years. Good Grief!

Answer 7

http://www.pewclimate.org/what_s_being_done/in_the_congress/science_7_20_06.cfm

There's no need for me to summarize for you. Read it. If you search "visible effects of climate change" many sites will come up... some obviously biased, but some that are also legit.

Answer 8

I am doing my part! As I speak (well type) I have some of the abusive cattle (whose farts add greatly to the gas that causes global warming) on my grill. Thanks to me, and the nice cattleman, this particular cow will no longer threaten our future.

Answer 9

if u r already rolling ur eyes, that means u r skeptical. u don't need any answers.

Answer 10

1. the sun
2. happened before industrialization
3.will happen again
4.it will disappear for a while
5. what can we do abou it? (rhetorical)