Why do some people STILL say that global warming is a natural cycle.?

Question

These people are 100 years beind the times, natural cycles were ruled out in 1896. Cycles are repetitive, we know where we are in the natural cycles that cause global warming and cooling and we're nowhere near anything that could cause temps to rise at the rate they are doing.

To claim global warming is a natural cycle overlooks the role of increasing levels of greenhouse gases, how are the effects of this explained away by natural cycles?

Fair enough, many people don't understand global warming and don't profess to, that's fine. But there are also many people who pass comment on global warming and dismiss it as being a natural cycle - why?

Answer 1

some reasons WHY WE HAVE SKEPTICS

Some people are not after the truth
Some are afraid of it
And some cant afford it .
Some Scientists who get paid by politicians or Oil Companies ,have downplayed the facts because solutions are expensive and to admit to the reality ,means change .
,
Change effects many peoples incomes(especially rich people),and upsets profit margins,
We may be kept in the dark of the real things that are going on.for political , economic and even religious reasons.

There appears to be a giant propaganda machine operating that deals in misinformation,and skepticism.
Designed to prevent change and allow present behavior to continue ,such as deforestation,desertification ,over use of water ,irresponsible management of natural resources etc.

People who are in cahoots with the Environment ,who wish to conserve it ,preserve it and be responsible about using Natural resources are insulted ,ridiculed ,suspended and Global Warming has now been demoted to a conspiracy theory.

Just to answer this inflammatory question is risky
------------------------------...
I asked a question in polls and surveys and again in religion
who thought Global warming was a lie ,and who was religious .

granted many people who believed in God and also believed in climate change .

but
the fact emerged that ALL of the people who denied Global warming ,who said it was a hoax ,were without any exceptions ,religious.

Global Warming disagrees with what was written

Many People are used to fiction and they feel more comfortable with fairy tales instead of the truth.

Many believe that our fate is in Gods hands ,and they prefer to focus on the beautiful heaven that awaits.

It would be Ironic ,if Hell came to Earth instead ,and we would NOT have to die to get there.
Demonstrating that the god was either disloyal,unloving or incompetent.

Answer 2

Trevor, global warming does not have to be completely a result of natural cycles for it not to be catastrophic. Your claim that the warming is faster now than ever in the past is just not true.

Climate scientists typically underestimate the role of natural climate variation. Look at all of the hoopla around the Arctic Sea ice melt. "The Northwest Passage is beginning to open!" True, but then it has opened twice before - in 1905 and 1944. More than 60 ocean going vessels traveled the Northwest Passage during those years. Both times the ice came back the next year or so. Everyone agrees that the warming in those years was due to natural cycles.

The warming in Greenland happened much faster in the 1920s and 1930s than it has since 1990. Climate scientists like to ignore this fact.

Another reason people think natural cycles may play a large role is the PDO. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation switches from a warm phase to a cool phase and back again every 30 or 40 years. In the 20th century, the PDO had two warm phases. The first from 1905 to 1945. It went into a cool phase from 1946 to 1975 and back to a warm phase in 1976. It just switched back to a cool phase. Now compare those phases to the global temperature record. Every time the PDO is in the warm phase, global temps go up. When it is in the cool phase, temps go down. Yes, that is right. Temps went down for 30 years even when CO2 was rising.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation

The PDO is not the only natural cycle. The North Atlantic Oscillation (15-20 year phases) and the El Nino Southern Oscillation (phases just a few years long) are similar but have different lengths of time in their cycles. When all three are in their warm phase, the Earth can get quite warm indeed - like in years 1998 and 2006.

Like John Christy and Roy Spencer have said. We still do not know how much of the current warming is man-made and how much is from natural cycles. The biggest reason is the natural cycles and the interaction between natural cycles need to be studied more.

Answer 3

I'm certainly not an expert but I do try to keep up with new information on this issue. So here's my laymans term answer as I understand it: According to this program I saw on the history channel, they had some evidence that PART of global warming is due to a natural cycle. However, they said on this program that humans can take part of the blame and certainly are contributing, but some of it has to do with the sun. As you probably know, the sun rotates as it spins. Certain areas of the sun have more solar flares. The sun is rotating to the point where it is approaching the area where solar flares are really bad and this side of the sun is directly facing the earth. This section of the sun has not been exposed to the earth for over a hundred years. The last time this occured back in the late 1800s, you'll read about the hard winters, floods and droughts that made history. These solar flares can actually reach into our atmosphere and cause warming of gases, or global warming which effects our weather. Again, humans ARE NOT off the hook, but they are not totally to blame. Can they help by cutting back on emissions? Most certainly. Great question!

Answer 4

They are/have...

1. Been brainwashed by George Bush
2. Are too lazy to look after the Environment
3. Believe what the press says not what certified experts on the subject say (Ex Al Gore and IPCC)
4. There thick headed and too stubborn to notice the change.
5. There afraid to face the truth.



There is so many things that the public will believe just because the rich and famous say so. Today's society is based to much on what they say and not individuality anymore.

♥Edit♥

The earth does go through cycles of being hotter and cooler, but for those who believe that, show me a point in history where the temperature has gone up this fast in this short time span. Come on people were not talking about ice ages were talking about a time span of a fraction of an ice age.

Answer 5

Because people like you cannot answer the simple question, how warm should the world be. Reconstructed TSI over the last 100 years indicates that the sun is outputting anywhere from 1 to 2 watts meter^2 more energy than it was one hundred years ago. Obviously the world cannot remain the same temperature that it was 100 years ago. So how warm should it be?, should it have warmed only 0.5 degrees, .25 degrees. The sun is obviously outputting more energy that it did one hundred years ago, because of some natural cycle.

Bob:

Please stop saying recently, as in a few years, the climate does not instantaneously react to a slight change in TSI, you are expecting a shazaam event. That is not how climate works.

Answer 6

The problem is so big the average person just can’t deal with it. They go into denial.

If you accept environmentalism, and if you are honest with yourself, you can see that it's the way we've constructed our civilization. Everything is dependent on fossil fuels. You come to the conclusion that it really is a big problem and it means big changes for the way we live, our political systems, everything. That is too much of a shock.

Reactionary forces, who know what it means to their interests, have been violently opposed to environmentalism since day one. They use fear and misinformation to play on people’s natural resistance to change. The average Joe thinks this is about conservatives vs. liberals, capitalists vs. socialists, theists vs. atheists etc. etc. But it’s really much bigger than that. It’s the biggest problem we’ve ever faced.

If you are uneducated or lacking enough intelligence it doesn't even occur to you that there is a problem. If you are somewhat intelligent but still too ignorant and dogmatic, a little subconscious voice tells you where this is heading, but you can't accept that. It means that your world view has been incorrect; you would have to discard your beliefs and start over. That is too painful and difficult so you make a wall in your mind to block it out.

The idea that humans are changing the world is incomprehensible to many people. What is truly inconceivable is the idea that your very way of life is the source of the problem. The idea that everything you lived and believed has been a delusional folly; a wildly unsustainable flash in the pan. The sheer scale of our mass delusion is staggering. But we already know that. People only believe what they want to believe.

We can invent any sort of rationalization to justify the old worldview. This is a very common pathology. Why? It's easier than admitting you were wrong. And that is a big understatement. To have to accept that everything you believed is wrong is a convulsive experience; it can be a crushing burden and destroy a person. The scary part is that many people would rather spite themselves and everyone else to the grave rather than go through that crucible of change. I can't fault people for that, but what choice do we have?

Science is inherently agnostic and "liberal" because it is not constrained by political or religious dogma. Reactionaries conflate political and religious ideology with science and ascribe political and anti-religious motives to scientists and the environmentalists who bring the scientific message to the public. They don't understand the underlying problem or the reasons behind the message, so they just want to "shoot the messenger".

Sorry for being so long winded but I can't think of another way to explain it. It's a big, complicated and very important problem.

Answer 7

Because statistics and data presented are not convincing to them! Perhaps they are still ignorant with what is going on around the world. Mother Nature is knocking the door hardly and yet these people did not seem to notice it. They just stick with the natural cycle theory while others still agree that human activities are the key factor that lead to excessive carbon emission which causes environmental pollution! Many people still don't understand issues regarding global warming and don't profess to, that's fine. But one day, they will learn and get to know their so called natural cycle theory is wrong!

Answer 8

I've asked a lot of similar questions and concluded that it's a combination of reasons.

1) Lack of research. Many people simply don't take the time to learn about the science behind global warming.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AnxRBU2RzMydTSiCK08JtVDty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20071012135025AAHflpr

2) "Common sense". Many people try to draw conclusions on the issue based almost entirely on "common sense". They reason that the climate has changed naturally in the past, so the current climate change must also be natural. It's not a very logical thought process, and completely wrong because it ignores a vast amount of data, but that's the reasoning.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AmRC4woki.QadIUY2fk7kLPty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20071012113950AAbTf6b

3) Campaigns of misinformation. People like Rush Limbaugh make this same argument, spreading misinformation and adding credibility to this ridiculous argument.

4) Desire for denial. People simply don't want to believe that humans are to blame, and there aren't many possible alternative explanations. It's undeniable that the planet is warming, so what could be causing it? It's basically either natural cycles, solar variations, or human greenhouse gas emissions. Deniers have to lock on to one of the former two in order to deny the latter. They want it to be true, so they convince themselves that it is.

Answer 9

Because most people will believe whatever their culture/media feeds to them.

I was in an enivornmental studies program in highschool where were zealously opposed global warming, and I came to a point of opposition with most of the group over not wanting to make a tv commercial about why everyone needs to buy hybrids to save the environment (I argued they were not that great, and biodiesel was a much better and cheap alternative). When the point of contention came up, I realized that very few people held any opinion other than a paraphrasing of what they had been told, and would attack anything else and refuse to think about it. From this I learned to adopt the doctrine of "never completely believe something no matter how certain you are, and be willing to admit anything is a mistake, no matter how big it is."

Originally I had thought that global warming was real, and oil companies were trying to supress the evidence. Then a contrary impression started emerging a few years ago in the alternative media. Man made global warming was mostly faked, and being used as a justification for a lot of "bad deeds."

At some point I came across the mars ice cap melting data and went, "oh f**k, I was wrong." I also found out that the data used to show we were not in a natural cycle of all things, comes from a nasa scientists calculation, which recently was discoved to be wrong because of a y2k bug in the mix.

On the flip side however, a lot of people who deny global warming is unnatural really just do it so they can feel good about themselves for doing nothing at all.

So, that's why I doubt global warming. The bigger issue I have is the medias complete embrace of it (ie. now you're considered a better person if you buy a prius, when all they really do is create massive ammounts of polution from their batteries and get lower gas milage than a normal european car, or the fact that having a carbon tax created is a good thing). Whenever theres is suddenly a unilateral backing of something I have serious doubts it's for good intentions. Now everyones just using it as a justification for whatever stuff they want to pull. I spent a few hours talking to someone from the socialist club explain how we need a socialist one world government to prevent global warming, cause if we didn't everyone would die, and eventually gave up.

I think there are things which are causing climate change, but I highly doubt it comes from cars giving off gas. For instance did you know there are tons of jets flying around on a day to day basis putting tons of metals/aresols into the atmosphere. In my opinion that would do a lot of more than any ammount of carbon dioxide. In addition, other much more important pullutants are being ignored in the face of the great carbon scourge (ie. coal is bad now because it gives off CO2, not all the awful things that kill people and plant/animal life).

There is also this horrid double standard in the movement. Most of the liberal leaders are considered wonderful people for doing things like driving a prius, yet at the same time ignore the fact nanci pelosi also made the government give her a giant jet and a squadron of escorts so she could jump back and forth between california and dc when she felt like it (hint, thats a lot of carbon), or the fact that gore owns a few majorly polluting factories.

Eh, it's just a really frustrating movement to deal with. I worked in it for a long time, but found most people didn't actually want to address or care about the issues, and global warming is just the issue everyone is flocking too now. Try this simple fact: the burning of the amazon releases more carbon than all the cars we use (once you count that they trees are no longer around to absorb the increasing carbon concentrations). Why does the burning occur? The third world countries are in debt to the IMF and need to make as much money as possible to pay it off, with the most profitable mode being to slash and burn rainforest to get grass to raise beef. If draconian measures are implented to get everyone to have better driving, you might be able to shave the carbon produced there by 5%. On the flip side, if you did the simpler problem to fix (forgive parts of the debt and block imports of it)....you instantly accomplish infinitely more than getting people to try and cut down on their carbon a bit. Yet....
bring this up to a global warming activist, and you just get attacked, and they repeat one of the soundbites they've been told.
Sorry this is so cynical, but I wanted to give the opposing viewpoint a good case!

Answer 10

Because they choose to believe as they do. Considering the amount of controversy over the issue, why change every time someone says something new. The idea that people are lazy about the environment is pretty unfair. I wonder if the young lady who used that in her answer would care to come under the same scrutiny as she has dished out toward others.
Natural cycle, chicken little, is a part of the issue, but not all of it. Challenging that point of view is basically saying that this is all that anyone is saying that the problem stems from. It has been stated, and accepted by those with a level point of view that there is a lot more going on, but natural cycle is still a part of the issue. Be fair, don't pick on one point just because you disagree with it. The collective total of the issue concerns all points of the problem, from natural cycle to what man has added to it from the use of fossil fuels. The question that arises is, what are "you" doing about it, other than bleating about what others believe, have said, or in your exalted point of view, not doing? Just about everything in your life has a green house gas price tag on it. So, how much are you doing without? For the young lady that feels some people are to lazy to do anything for the environment, what are you doing? How much do you walk for any where that you have to go? Problem there is that you spew out carbon dioxide, which adds to the issue. Do you drive, even worse. Do you use electricity, any where, worse yet. Does the grocery store provide you as a place to get your groceries, more issues added to the issue. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. I think hypocrite would be a good label here since you are all still using the benefits of our society as we know them, but continue to knock them, and others while you continue to use the same things yourself. Calling attention to the issues is a worthless defense. What are "you" doing to curtail the problem? If nothing, then whine to yourself about it, and leave the rest of us alone.