Global Warming...? How is it unproven?

Question

OK well what about the last ice age... are we still warming from that?

Answer 1

This is actually an excellent question, and if you can handle a semi-technical answer without dozing off, read on.

If you discount research published by non-atmospheric scientists (meteorologists, ecologists, physical oceanographers, etc), this will cut the body of available data by about a third.
Atmospheric science is physics, pure physics, which relies on cutting-edge mathematics to sort the data collected into usable form- this is predictive modeling.

Of the remaining 2/3 of the original data, the existing data today is micro in scale, focusing on specific events. When scientists analyze data, that data gets averaged- in other words, if you analzye your data to compress it into a meaningful figure, detail gets lost. If you take your data sets and combine them to create a bigger picture, more data gets lost, and the accuracy of your results declines. If you combine groups of data sets, then attempt to relate them to time, you again create more uncertainty.

Because there is no uniform way to average out data sets, people are free to attack the data, because there are always other ways to interpret it. This is why statistics are misleading.

The one thing that most atmospheric scientists can agree on is that there isn't a reliable way to put the body of data together in such a way that all the pieces fit reasonably well.

In other words, the very best predictive models we have today can't make 1+1+1+1 = 4 yet. Somewhere along the way, existing models are missing a piece, and therefore, they suffer from averaging errors, just like the scientist who did his calculations by hand.

Come back in 20 years, and I think we'll have this issue closer to a settlement, at least in the scientific community.

Answer 2

To keep it simple, This warming is just another Earth's cycle. In the 1950's scientist were worried about another Ice age, but they were wrong. The earth will reflex or contitue its cycle.

The earth is warming, its normal and it will cool. After our sea temperatures rise (from the melting of Greenland's ice sheet and Antartica's ice) the ocean's thermohaline circulation will stop and will cause climate change to the other extreme -Cold.

the Thermohaline circulation is also knowen as the 'North Atlantic heat belt' or the 'Ocean convarablet.' It transfers the warm waters to cold waters.
click this link to see a picture:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl/images/belt.jpg
1/3 of this system has already slowed down. It has stopped a long long time ago and it is time that it can happen again.

When wind blows over the Atlantic (Winds move from west to east) the wind brings warm air across Europe and Asia, from the ocean temperatures. But, when the circulation stops the wind will blow over the Atlantic and this air will be cold, (because the current stopped and the cold water will bring cold wind) making the entire tops of the Northern and Southern hemisphere colder and the equator regions desert climate.

Answer 3

It's not unproven, and it's not some anomalous warming period that we're in. There's a direct correlation between human produced green house gases and global average atmospheric temperatures (even President Bush has acknowledged it). We know this to be true from sattelite data and other means. The fact is man is pumping so much oil and coal into the atmosphere that it's literally changing the chemistry of our air. Why is it so hard for people to conceptualize that? I've always said that if we could somehow color dye all the carbon dioxide at once, let's say in the color red, we'd see just how much of it is out there. But because C02 is clear, people think nothing of it-- "if I can't see it then it doesn't really exist."



Look at Bob's answer above. He's done his homework on this.

Answer 4

Even the best of the scientific minds can't agree on this one, so just take your pick of the answers. The world has been getting warmer since the end of the last ice age, so if you believe the cause is man made, what could man have done thousands of years ago the cause this warming trend.?
To my mind, this has not been proven, nor disproven, it's all still a theory.

Answer 5

It's proven scientific fact. "Skeptics" have words, global warming scientists have the data.

"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 and the vast majority of the scientific community, short and long.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html
summarized at:
http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

It's not recovering from an ice age. We've actually been pretty steady in temperature until recently. Details:

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11645

There's a lot less controversy about this is the real world than there is on Yahoo answers:

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/home_page/412.php?lb=hmpg1&pnt=412&nid=&id=

And vastly less controversy in the scientific community than you might guess from the few skeptics talked about here:

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

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

Dr. Jerry Mahlman, NOAA

Good website for more info:

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

Answer 6

Over the last few years there has been some warming. So what? It's just natural warming.

Over the long term there is nothing unusual going on.

Some people blame man, but it's the Sun that has a greater impact on the climate than man.

Answer 7

It's proven by History, it the 70's they cried about the planet being too cold so by now it should be the oposite

Answer 8

basically we are sure it is getting hotter in many areas, but there is no consensus on the exact cause

Answer 9

sudden rise in temperature.....
melting of the ice caps....
rising sea level....