What is the most interesting (TRUE) fact you've ever heard about global warming?

Question

Its for a speech. I need an intro that will grab the audience's attention. Please list your source if possible because obviously the professor is going to ask for the credibility of my statements. Thanks!

Answer 1

Temperatures were warmer than present in 1250 AD., (the Medieval Warm Period) and in less than fifty years plummeted and wiped out the vikings in Greenland, which lead to the period called the Little Ice Age. And all of this had nothing to do with greenhouse gases.

http://www.longrangeweather.com/images/GTEMPS.gif

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Answer 2

If you really want to grab their attention start off the speech with, "There is no scientific evidence supporting the theory of man made global warming." For that is the truth.

Answer 3

CO2 in the air is up 35% in the last 200 years and is rising faster and faster every year. And this is not based on computer models or projections or proxy indicators. It is direct chemical analysis of actual air samples. To get CO2 levels from early dates before the chemical tests were invented they drill ice cores in deep galciers, count the layers of ice like tree rings to get the year and analyze bubbles of actual 200 year old (of 200,000 year old) air trapped in the ice.

Now people may (and do) question that CO2 is anything to worry about, but it IS going up faster than any time ever in Earth's history. And others (at least one on this forum) claim that ice core air is different than present air. But many of the ice cores have bubbles of air trapped so recently that they can be compared to samples taken from the free air the same year, and THOSE agree perfectly. So I see no reason to believe that 200,000 year old air bubbbles in ice would show anything different than we would have measured in the open air at the time if we had been there.

Answer 4

We are on the verge of controlling earths temp. While we have big problems. Here is what we know: Blacktop (roads and parking lots) and buildings heat cities; Air pollution causes lung (And other) diseases, deforestation (causing more destruction -duststorms, hurricanes/cyclones all increasing deforestation) and destroys the ozone layer while heating earth surface; fires cause mud slides, deforestation and pollution-more heating surface temperatures; CFC's destroy the ozone layer raising skin cancer rates and killing off endanger species and increased surface temperatures; lighting produces ozone near the surface and raises air pollution levels-more heating, the suns increased magnetic field are causing increases in earthquakes (more destruction), volcanoes (wow), sun spots and more heating. Cars, airplanes, ships and most electricity production causes pollution, warmer temperatures and destruction...But most of this is in our control outside of the sun (Volcanoes and earthquakes are part of the sun magnetic strength): We need to fix it! That is why I founded CoolingEarth.org an geoengineering web sight.The Mayor's are on the right track, we can have control and economic growth. The fed gov is way out of step. We also need a pollution surcharge to balance the field and advance new technologies

Answer 5

It is a natural occurance and has happened many times in the last several millions of years -just like global cooling. Check any book on climatology and see for yourself.

Answer 6

Its true the Al Gore made more money than the average person will make in 10 generations for nothing.

Answer 7

The earth is a natural carbon sink. As fast as humans emit carbondioxide, it gets absorbed into the non-atmospheric environment at a comparible rate (Carbon leaves the atmosphere at about one third the rate we are putting it in there).

Answer 8

If the climate system flips to a new chaotic attractor, the Gulf Stream could shut down and in 3 years there could be no summer in the northern Europe, the previous winters snow wouldn't completely melt, surface albedo would become a positive feedback, and we'd have a new ice age. Very unlikely, but within the realm of possibility.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0130-11.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_thermohaline_circulation


Heres another. For three of the five big mass extinctions, no smoking gun has been found. A new theory posits that when CO2 reaches 900ppm, the chemistry of the oceans change, the chemocline flips making the entire ocean hospitible to anerobic bacteria from the deep, they multiply and emit planet suffocating masses of hydrogen sulfide. We might be causing the next big mass extinction.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=00037A5D-A938-150E-A93883414B7F0000&pageNumber=4&catID=2

Attention grabbing, if you can fit one of them into your speech.

Answer 9

We are headed for another Ice Age.

Answer 10

It is impossible to accurately predict the weather.