What is Global Warming?

Question

I only want a simple definition of global warming and the predicted result of global warming. Thanks.

Answer 1

Some gases ("greenhouse gases") let sunlight in, which warms the Earth, and then block that heat from leaving. That's the "greenhouse effect", and it's a natural thing, mostly caused by water vapor.

Man is making excessive amounts of greenhouse gases, mostly by burning fossil fuels. That causes the delicate natural balance to go out of whack and the Earth warms. That's global warming.

It won't be a Hollywood style disaster. Gradually coastal areas will flood and agriculture will be damaged. But it will be very bad. Rich countries will cope, but it will take huge amounts of money. In poor countries many people will die of starvation, but not all of them.

Most scientists say, in 20-50 years. But we need to start right now to fix it, fixing it will take even longer than that.

Really good website for more information here:

http://profend.com/global-warming/

Lots of numerical scientific data proving it real here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

Proof that most scientists think it's real and mostly caused by us here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

Answer 2

Global warming is natural. All planets change at one point or another it is just happening so fast cause we are such an industrialized world. The melting North and South Poles will make the oceans rise and for the U.S. that means don't live in either coast plus we willl have a earthquake on the east coast in the next few years because of the plates below the Appalachian trail have moved up and when they come down watch out!! take care and hope this helped a little.

Answer 3

Global warming could melt the ice at the poles. This would raise the level of the oceans. Water would then cover all the flat coastal lands. People would have less land on which to live in and grow food.

Plants and animals are adapted to their climates. If the climate changes rapidly, many may not be able to adapt. Some species will simply die out. Others may spread to cooler climates. There, however, they will be struggling with species already in place.

Answer 4

has been happening and cycling for years

nothing new - just a new platform to get someone a Nobel prize

and if we follow the Kyoto Protocol and spend 3 TRILLION $$$
we MAY - emphasis on the word may - reduce the increase
by 7/10's of a degree

wow - really makes it worth all those carbon credits - huh?

what about population as a cause?
1800 - world pop. 900 million
1900 - 1.6 billion
2000 - 6 billion
2005 6.5 billion

predicted result - the plankton in the Pacific Ocean will increase due to the warmer weather, thus triggering more water to evaporate into the atmosphere causing more rain to cool the earth - o yeah - a cycle

all the best

Answer 5

If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. -- Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)

This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976

Inaccuracies in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth
The decision by the government to distribute Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth has been the subject of a legal action by New Party member Stewart Dimmock. Although a full ruling has yet to be given, the Court found that the film was misleading in 11 respects and that the Guidance Notes drafted by the Education Secretary’s advisors served only to exacerbate the political propaganda in the film.
In order for the film to be shown, the Government must first amend their Guidance Notes to Teachers to make clear that 1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument. 2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination. 3.) Eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.
The inaccuracies are:
· The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
· The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
· The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
· The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.
· The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr. Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
· The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
· The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
· The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
· The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting; the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
· The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
· The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880- 1956 )
We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough--irrespective of the fact that in the course of the twentieth century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 percent--for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.

Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.

NewsAccording to the new data published by NASA, 1998 is no longer the hottest year ever. 1934 is.

Four of the top 10 years of US CONUS high temperature deviations are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900. (World rankings of temperature are calculated separately.)

Answer 6

Global warming refers to the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans in recent decades and its projected continuation.

The global average air temperature near the Earth's surface rose 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the last 100 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes, "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations"[1] via the greenhouse effect. Natural phenomena such as solar variation combined with volcanoes probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 and a small cooling effect from 1950 onward.[2][3] These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least 30 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries. A few individual scientists disagree with some of the main conclusions of the IPCC.

Climate model projections summarized by the IPCC indicate that average global surface temperature will likely rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the 21st century.[1] The range of values results from the use of differing scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions as well as models with differing climate sensitivity. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming and sea level rise are expected to continue for more than a millennium even if greenhouse gas levels are stabilized. The delay in reaching equilibrium is a result of the large heat capacity of the oceans.[1]

Increasing global temperatures will cause sea level to rise, and is expected to increase the intensity of extreme weather events[4] and to change the amount and pattern of precipitation. Other effects of global warming include changes in agricultural yields, glacier retreat, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors.

Remaining scientific uncertainties include the amount of warming expected in the future, and how warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe. There is ongoing political and public debate worldwide regarding what, if any, action should be taken to reduce or reverse future warming or to adapt to its expected consequences. Most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Answer 7

Global warming is when earth naturally becomes warmer. It is a cycle and has happend millions of years ago and may be happening now. A few million years ago we had the most recent ice age. The earth became naturally cold. Then it became hot and all melted. And it didn't become hot from cavemen and there Co2 output. Just the earths cycle.

Answer 8

Global Warming is the brainchild of Enron, which wanted to boost its natural gas industry. So they funded a study to demonize the CO2 from fossil fuels.

Although there is a definite correlation between CO2 and higher temperatures, scientific debate persists over cause and effect.

Answer 9

When we burn fossil fuels in our atmoshere two oxygen atoms are fused to one carcon atom and this molecule becomes unbreatable this fusion also happens when every living creature on the planet breathes this is why it is so important that this CO2 molecule is converted back to separated oxygen and carbon atoms as quickly as possible so that the oxygen will enrich our breathable air and permit every life form on the planet earth to continue living and that is where everything is going wrong, because of the destruction of the forests all over the world as trees are the only way that we have to separate this CO2 molecule and now because of the destruction that is being caused to the environment we have this big CO2 overload in the atmosphere , it's like a me gazillion tiny pieces of coal floating in the atmosphere suspended between two balloons absorbing all of those solar rays just getting hotter and hotter.and they are just multiplying as we have nothing left that can separated them and then we start to run out of balloons,,,,,
You want to reverse global warming be someone who starts the planting of a million trees or at least plant one yourself.

Answer 10

Global Warming is the heating of the earth. All the snow on the mountains are melting. The earth is getting hotter and will eventually lead to poverty and and lack of things we need. And it's because we as the human race are not doing much to prevent it.