Man-made Global Warming Proof?

Question

I want convincing evidence that man is causing global warming. Clear proof, not just effects of it.

Answer 1

Just read The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming, you can no doubt borrow it for free from your library. People, like Kelly L should not act so smart when they obviously do NOT know what they are talking about at all. 40 mile tall plants? On what planet? Surely not earth. Airplanes can not even reach 40 miles high, that is 211,200 feet. Airlines typically fly around 30,000 feet. Ever see a tree at eye level from a plane? There is NO consensus among scientists that global warming is taking place, both sides have many people arguing their side and neither side has compelling evidence or the "argument" would be over. I bought a 2KW solar photo-voltaic system for my home, and only buy cars that get reasonable mileage, and try to reduce my "carbon footprint" as much as I can within cost effective limits. We all should do that. It will lower your utility bills and allow our natural resources to last longer. But I am not about to spend $50 on some device that will only save me $10 on energy usage, etc. You get the point I am trying to make, right? The people howling about global warming want everyone to go back to the stone age so we have small carbon footprints but that is just not my cup of tea. I like my modern lifestyle. You should enjoy your life too and not worry about global warming unless someone does one day come up with real evidence and not half baked theories.

Answer 2

First, if you really want "convincing evidence" you MUST find it yourself. Anything you read here you could dismiss with "that's your opinion, right?" You must go to a source you trust, your parents, teacher, etc., anyone whose technical judgement you trust. Since you know nothing about me, I am not the one.
Second, look for the data on Carbon Dioxide in the air we breath, in the atmosphere, since 1800 and look at the jump since 1850. Yes, the numbers are small but the graph climbs up to a near vertical line by the year 2000.
Third, look for the data for Carbon Dioxide EMISSIONS, produced by industries and transportation, this numbers are very big and often given in (you know about a million and a billion) GIGATONS (a million million tons) of Carbon Dioxide or Gigatons of Carbon put in the air and you will see a dramatic change beginning around 1850.
The question you want to anwer yourself is where did all that CO2 go?
Scientists say much went into the ocean but in 2007 the oceans reached their saturation point in the ability to absorb CO2.
They also say that a great amount is absorbed by trees and plants, like your biology teacher told you, and they emit Oxygen into the air and bury the rest on the ground. (It may help to note whatever pictures you have of coal mines and wonder how did it all get there and why much seems to be in layers. You could wonder if these layers could also be deeper into the soil and whether the pressure could convert them into oil. Check it out. Could the coal layers be huge forests that were buried underground?

Global Warming will occur because the oceans and the soil cannot absorb any more CO2 made since the Industrial Revolution in 1850.
Ask yourself, what big event happened around 1850 that produced so much CO2, and in greater amounts SINCE then. Some will tell you that volcanoes can emit CO2 and show you the proof from volcanos in Hawaii. Most volcanoes elsewhere emit very little CO2, why is that?
You might wonder if the lava flow to the volcano top could have gone through a coal layer and the temperature make the hot coal burn once it hits the air. But, don't take my word for it, check it out yourself.
You are your best teacher, the one you will need the most in the rest of your life.

Answer 3

Do you really believe that it is possible that man can know all the possible facts that affect nature and be able to say that this, that, or the other thing TOTALLY caused any kind of climate change? There are way too many variables ... it just is not possible. And yes, while I think it's very clear that man has impacted climate and is certainly responsible for global warming to a very large degree, you should keep an open mind because admitting that other factors may ALSO be a play here does not begate the fact that we all need to live cleaner and greener if we want to help our planet remain habitable. There may be something else we can help fix also, if we keep our minds open enough to discover it!

Answer 4

99+% of scientists around the world believe global warming is real and mostly caused by us. And any number of very distinguished people, too.

"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, short and long.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

"There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know - except maybe Newton's second law of dynamics. Global warming is almost a no-brainer at this point,You really can't find intelligent, quantitative arguments to make it go away."

Jerry Mahlman, NOAA

"Recently, NASA had to admit that it's own scientists had fudged global warming numbers for DECADES because of the scientists' personal agendas. They have shame-facedly admitted that their data cannot be relied upon. Unfortunately, most outside scientists have used NASA's data as a baseline, corrupting the whole argument."

This is nonsense, with just a tiny amount of truth. NASA made a very small technical error. Worldwide, it changed the data about 0.001 degree. It changed nothing at all about global warming science.

Good websites for more info:

http://profend.com/global-warming/
http://www.realclimate.org
"climate science from climate scientists"

Answer 5

Kelly L has a point, but is still wrong to yell at Jello, for one really good reason. Recently, NASA had to admit that it's own scientists had fudged global warming numbers for DECADES because of the scientists' personal agendas. They have shame-facedly admitted that their data cannot be relied upon. Unfortunately, most outside scientists have used NASA's data as a baseline, corrupting the whole argument.

Then you have to take into account that we've only been taking temperature readings for about a century or so; there are three basic temperature measurements (Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Kelvin), as well as several other scientific measuring sticks- none of which have proven accurately translatable between measurements. (nor have they been proven universally accurate)

Yes, the icecaps are melting. Yes, it's 90 degrees in the middle of October. But the Earth has been around for a very long time and we have a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the weather data we would need to accurately determine if this is normal or not.

Answer 6

Man made global warming is a myth and belief in it is almost a cult following.
We know the Earth has warmed and cooled many times on its own. It seems from the records kept from monks, scholars and historians that during the warmer periods the world was better off than when things were colder. Where I live I look forward to the warmer part of the earth's cycle.

Answer 7

It's very complicated and impossible to prove with 100% certainty, but I'll provide the basics of the evidence that's convinced almost all climate scientists that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming.

Basically we know it's warming, and we've measured how much:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2005/ann/global-blended-temp-pg.gif

Scientists have a good idea how the Sun and the Earth's natural cycles and volcanoes and all those natural effects change the global climate, so they've gone back and checked to see if they could be responsible for the current global warming. What they found is:

Over the past 30 years, all solar effects on the global climate have been in the direction of (slight) cooling, not warming. This is during a very rapid period of global warming.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6290228.stm
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf

So the Sun certainly isn't a large factor in the current warming. They've also looked at natural cycles, and found that we should be in the middle of a cooling period right now.

"An often-cited 1980 study by Imbrie and Imbrie determined that 'Ignoring anthropogenic and other possible sources of variation acting at frequencies higher than one cycle per 19,000 years, this model predicts that the long-term cooling trend which began some 6,000 years ago will continue for the next 23,000 years.'"

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

So it's definitely not the Earth's natural cycles. They looked at volcanoes, and found that

a) volcanoes cause more global cooling than warming, because the particles they emit block sunlight

b) humans emit over 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes annually

http://www.gaspig.com/volcano.htm

So it's certainly not due to volcanoes. Then they looked at human greenhouse gas emissions. We know how much atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased over the past 50 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png

And we know from isotope ratios that this increase is due entirely to human emissions from burning fossil fuels. We know how much of a greenhouse effect these gases like carbon dioxide have, and the increase we've seen is enough to have caused almost all of the warming we've seen over the past 30 years (about 80-90%). You can see a model of the various factors over the past century here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

This is enough evidence to convince almost all climate scientists that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming.

Answer 8

This is all media hype..... there is absolutely NO proof of man made global warming.... i encourage anyone to show some. Scientists cannot conclude anything. And anyway the earth's average temperature has only risen by one half of one degree in as long as modern man has been around...... There was no carbon emissions 100 million years ago when the earth's climate had a violent shift. The earth is a dying planet. all planets eventually die out as do stars..... check the science...

Answer 9

The earth has gone through periods of warming and cooling several times, long before man was on Earth.
Any evidence presented today is strictly opinions and can not be based on facts since the factors being used do not have a long enough time period to be useful.

Answer 10

Oh MFG!
I cant even believe I'm going to waste my time on this question, but that dumb @ss Mr. Jello answered and just not a little bit wrong, but a total disregarded to science and its checks and balances by peer reviews that are tested and retested time and again. Over whelming the majority of scientists believe humans are altering the worlds climates by releasing 400 million year old stored carbon (CO2). The problem with that is 400 million years ago the earth was a very different place hot and humid with higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, Plants were 40 miles tall! This is the oil and gas we are burning today. Those tall plants removed the CO2 from the atmosphere to about postindustrial revolution concentrations. Making the planet cooler by reducing it's atmospheric thermal blanket (CO2).
Going to college helps understand this if you find it too abstract, I put this in as simple of terms as one could.