Will anyone ever come up with proof of manmade climate change/global warming/cooling?

Question

Every link that is put forward to show proof of global warming ends up being a political statement. And all the proponents like to claim that 99% of all scientists believe in it.
If that were true, then why is it so hard to find one scientist that will make a statement that global warming/cooling/climate change is effected by man?

Answer 1

I am a recent graduate from MS State university with a degree in meteorology. Ok first off, all you hear about is CO2 in the atmosphere. Well that is not the dominant factor in Global warming. Its is water vapor!!!!! Water vapor makes up 90% of the gas in the atmosphere. With that being said has humans and our man made pollution only contribute a small fraction of the percentage of water vapor in the atmosphere. Oceans produce the majority. Another quick fact. CO2 levels do no rise before temperature rises. CO2 levels rise after the temperature rises. Its has for millions of years just like the climate has changed for millions of years. The government and the press are just trying to use scare tactics. You have to know all the facts before you can blame man for the temperature rise. If man made the temperature rise then how come we had a cold period during the 70's when they thought we were in a global cooling phase and then the 80's and 90's temps got warmer so now were in a global warming phase!!! CO2 levels have been rising since the industrial revolution but temperature has fluctuated over the 20th century. Another thing... The weather stations the show temperatures are located at airports!!!!!!!!! Surrounded by concrete!! You can't get an accurate reading from those things. You have to go on satellite temperature readings which show not much of a change over the 20th century. There are countless ways temperature can change.. Global orbit of earth around the son, sun outputs energy at higher and lower levels. There is a lot to comprehend when debating global warming so you can't just off and blame the human race when you have other factors at play.. The biggest thing is the CO2 levels rise after Temperature rises!!! With that said no you cannot blame the human race!!!!!!!!! Here is a good site to read up on global warmin. http://mysite.verizon.net/mhieb/WVFossils/global_warming.html

You will not find a scientist publicly say it's man made b/c there are so many other scientist that feel differently and not enough facts!!!!!!

Answer 2

man made global warming is caused by greed and power on the part of environmental groups. the first real attempt was the big scare for global cooling in the 70's. fllow the track record of the movement, see how accurate these "experts" have been. 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 we're suppose to "believe" in global warming?

Answer 3

There is no question that humanity is not kind to the environment and that we in general are having a negative impact.

However, factual arguments do not yet exist that I am aware of that we are actually responsible for the increase in the temperature and the much reported affects.

Scientists that "agree" have come to a consensus not a conclusion. if they had proof, they would present facts and the replicatable process used to come to those conclusions.

Do we need to be better stewards, absolutely, but let's do it because it's the right thing to do, not because of a notion or a fad or what ever global warming factually is.

You know when they have facts, we'll hear them, with a healthy helping of "we told you so's"

Answer 4

Keith:

The stratosphere is practically invisible to incoming solar radiation except for a tiny amount of UV energy captured by ozone. Please stop saying the stratosphere should heat up because of an increase in solar energy. If what your saying is true the stratosphere should warm and cool every 11 years, because the sun has about 0.8 watts meter^2 of variability within a solar cycle.

EDIT:

Keith

Except for ozone depletion from volcanics the stratosphere overall shows warming. The last 13 years the stratosphere most certainly shows warming. I don't think the stratosphere is proof for the AGW argument one way or the other. Another decade without any major volcanics, then I think we will know. If I were biased, I would be jumping up and down yelling why has the stratosphere not been cooling for the last 14 years, but I know this not enough data to draw any conclusions.

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog/popup_slideshow.html?p=17&id=Qx7Sa2YldKu7ue9FhL7qzjDSjWGsxC4xYA--

As far as analysis of land based temperature measurements, I cannot accept that as proof, it is definetly corrupted.

http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/weather_stations/

As far as solar trends, there is a valid argument for that as well. Scafetta and West paper supports solar warming contribution at 50% since 1900.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/0313irradiance.html

http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/2006GL027142.pdf

But I agree that a portion of the atmospheric CO2 increase since the industrial revolution is because human activities, but not all of it.
.

Answer 5

That entirely depends on your definition of "proof".

If you mean the layman definition, where 100% certainty is necessary, then the answer to your question is no. Just like there's no proof that the evolutionary theory is true. There's just overwhelming evidence supporting both theories, which in the scientific world is what's considered proof.

Your comment about global warming links all being political is simply wrong. Perhaps you've spent too much time in the Politics section and not enough in the Environment section, but we all provide scientific links here. Try the IPCC report, for starters:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf

Here's a scientific paper discussing how the recent global warming is not due to the Sun:

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf

Here's one saying that the recent global warming is primarily due to human greenhouse gas emissions:

http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/prrl0319.html

In comparison, look at Batman's answer. He claims (wrongly) that the 3 hottest years happened prior to 1940. Does he provide any evidence to support this claim? Of course not, because there is none, because it's entirely wrong. You tell me which answer has more scientific evidence to support it.

Scientists don't have to claim that global warming is due to humans, because they all accept it as true (with a few exceptions). When was the last time you said 'I breathe oxygen' or 'sugar tastes sweet'? When something is widely accepted as accurate, you don't continue to state the obvious.

You hear skeptics saying that humans aren't causing global warming because that's the unconventional view. It's like when people say the Earth was created 6,000 years ago. It seems like people say it all the time because it's the unconventional view, so people make a big deal out of it when someone says something like that.

Answer 6

There are thousands of scientists who say man is most (not all) of the cause. Let me answer your question directly with just a few individual names.

This is one of the basic papers, proving that man is mostly the cause.

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

Their work is summarized at:

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

Here's are bios of the the climatologists that run a website that exists to explain the science showing global warming is mostly man made.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?cat=10

"climate science from climate scientists"

Here is the list of authors and reviewers (24 pages long) of a thousand page report that proves global warming is mostly man made. You'll need adobe acrobat to read it.

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Annexes.pdf

Here's a list of major scientific organizations that have issued statements that global warming is mostly man made:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

Here are a two very clear quotes, from two very prominent scientists:

"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

"Global warming is already starting, and there's going to be more of it. I think there is still time to deal with global warming, but we need to act soon. Humans now control global climate, for better or worse."

James Hansen, Ph.D. climate scientist, NASA

Finally this. He's referring to man made global warming, he's one of the guys behind realclimate.org.

"The fact that the community overwhelmingly supports the consensus is evidenced by picking up any copy of Journal of Climate or similar, any scientific program at the meetings, or simply going to talk to scientists. I challenge you, if you think there is some un-reported division, show me the hundreds of abstracts that support your view - you won't be able to. You can argue whether the consensus is correct, or what it really implies, but you can't credibly argue it doesn't exist."

Dr. Gavin Schmidt, NASA

Answer 7

You can see the proof - glaciers that are gone and are not coming back. People whose life work is to study ecosystems see radical change and extinction of these ecosystems. There is a list a mile long of the changes occurring locally, internationally and globally that are caused by humanity's destruction of the natural world - forests, rivers, lakes, coastlines, etc...Just because the emissions produced by industrialized counties are less tangible to you, makes its damaging effects on the earth no less real.

Unfortunately, it will take further disasters, like flooding, heatwaves, uncontrollable forest fires, and increased violence in weather patterns for those who refuse to realize that global warming is effected by man. And even then, those who refuse to see will try and find other excuses for humanity's destructiion of the very world humanity lives in.

Personally, I have witnessed the destruction of a forest where I live. In its place was paved nothing but parking lots and the storefronts for some major corporations. I stood in those parking lots one summer and noticed that the temperature was over 100 degrees farenheit. The forecast for that day was for the 80s, and indeed, in nearby forests that hadn't been cut down yet, the temperature was indeed in the 80s, and it felt much cooler than the hellish parking lot. I realized I was witnessing first hand and on a local level - say it with me now - YES!!!!!!! - it was MAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING AND CLIMATE CHANGE!!!!!!!!!

I realized that if you multiplied the heat from that one parking lot and the roads surrounding it by all the thousands of paved surfaces and by all the emissions produced by all the cars and factories that made this pavement necessary, you had proof of the negative impact of "man" on his environment, otherwise known as "gobal warming". Somehow, once a piece of land has been paved over or a building built on it, we forget that the land once had a cooling forest or some kind of vegetation on it. Oh well... It doesn't seem likely that this trend of paving over cooling forests will stop anytime soon, and it's double the heat. Replacement of cooling forest with a heat producing industrial strength infrastructure. Unless something definitive happens that makes us realize that we need to stop destroying our world now, we can expect more of the same disasters in the present and in the near future. We also need to find a way to build an infrastructure that allows for and promotes cooling such as some of the structures major corporations have built now.

Thanks for letting me help you in your disbelief.

Answer 8

I think if you work hard enough at it you can "not find" anything you want to "not find".

Bush proved that when as a Governor of Texas he introduced The Renewable Portfolio Standards Act that provided incentives for alternate energy production, but as Persident provided political payoffs to the major Greenhouse Gas producers of the USA, blocking most international efforts addressing the problem, and blocking inforecement of most domestic laws on the issue, and declaring "the jury is still out on Global Warming". This made him the intellectual and spiritual mentor of the deniers and skeptics while keeping the rest of the world waiting for nearly 8 years. It also broke the campaign promises he had made on Global Warming and the environment.

Now that all the people he was paying off have long since reversed their stance on Anthropogenic Global Warming, Bush has lackadaisically called his own conference on the subject and declared it to be a serious problem requiring urgent action, the jury having been suddenly discovered not to be out at all.

So you see, what was easy to find prior to taking office became impossible to find while in office, and was suddenly once again easy to find as the door hit him in the butt on the way out. What is sad is that he cannot return the 8 years he has made the rest of the human race delay action on a problem that places their lives at risk.

Yes, this is a political statement. Global Warming has been treated as a political issue, not a scientific issue since Bush took office. The reasons used to block action are no more reasonable or legitimate then intelligent design, creationism, abstinence as the only form of contraception, or the bans on stem cell research.These things can only become scientific issues once more when he and all his kind are banished from positions of power, permanently.

Answer 9

There is proof of global warming. For something to warm, there has to be a heat source made by man.

The science has been lacking because we can't see temperature beyond our visible spectrum. Go to http://www.thermoguy.com/globalwarming-heatgain.html and see the science that has been missing.

UV and solar radiation isn't reflecting off the earth, it is causing buildings to generate heat they aren't designed for. We are using air conditioning to treat the heat symptom and ir conditioning is really refrigeration using ozone depleting halocarbons, massive electrical waste, more GHG emissions, etc. No one is discussing the fact we are generating heat on every building that is just short of boiling temperature.

Look at the link and I have a time-lapsed video being prepared for youtube now. It will shock you to know the entire process is calculated and assumed compliant.

Answer 10

There is one group, I think it is the league of scientists but I don't recall at the moment that is a group of scientists from around the world regardless of political beliefs or nationality that has studied this and do indeed state that global warming is man made.
Stop and think of it this way, put too many people in a room and the room becomes too warm simply because of the body heat of the people in the room. Now multiply that by billions, add car and factory emissions, forest fires around the world and so on and it is easy to understand that we are indeed destroying the planet through global warming.