What is global warming?

Question

totally simple english please:)

Answer 1

Global warming is a method used to take money from countries that do well for themselves to give to those who don't want to move into the modern era.

This is why people place more blame on the UK and USA rather than countries like China and Bangladesh.

Answer 2

Be wary of Jell-O this guy is a bit off. Here are 2 different Jell-O quotes from the past 24 hours.

Quote 1: "Here - This is a link showing that the sun is the cause for all of the Earth's warmth." - Link goes to article discussing how cosmic rays are the cause of global warming.

Quote 2: "This shows that the Earth has been cooling over the last few years, and co2 is not causing warming." - link showing that the Earth's climate is actually cooling.

These two statements clearly contradict eachother. If the climate is cooling, then why is he pointing to evidence explaining why the climate is warming? I don't know his motives, but please take his contradictions as notice to take what he/she says with a grain of salt. Or a box of it.

Here's another one for good measure:

"Co2 has increased from 280 ppm (parts per million) to 360ppm this century. This is an increase of just 80ppm or 0.008%."

280-360... .008%????? do you understand percentages Jell-O. Watch:
(360-280)/280 = 80/280 = .29 = 29% !!!!!!! Where does .008 come from? Maybe Yahoo! Answers knows...

Answer 3

First of all, "Global Warming" is a frame to make the concept harder to prove, for the benefit of the industries that currently contribute the most to "Global Climate Change".

Global Climate Change is the direct effect of human industrial activities. The biggest component of this activity is the combustion byproducts of fossil fuel consumption.

Now, framed as climate change, we can add all of the parts that are changing the planet from what we would like to have to what will ultimately kill us and most living things that call Earth home.

Let's just stick with fossil fuels for now, and look at some of the other direct effects the combustion byproducts do to change our world from what we want to what we now have.

I'm sure you've heard of smog... I'll use this because everyone can see it, right. It's actually a chemical reaction taking place when some of the fossil fuel combustion byproducts react with sun light and become other chemical combinations than when they were first burned.

One of these chemical changes creates mild acids in our atmosphere, and then condenses out in what is known as acid rain...

We know that acid rain eats away buildings and bridges and kills almost everything in some lakes. Now acid rain is changing our oceans and beginning to kill sea life just like it did in our lakes. Corals are dying, not just because the oceans are warming but also because the acidity of the oceans are increasing. This one is easy to prove, and is why many industries want you to be suckered by "Global Warming".

Have you ever heard the saying, "divide and conquer"?

It is a combat strategy used to defeat an adversary by breaking it's forces into smaller groups that are easier to fight than one big army. Check out some Roman history some time about this...

So, if the fossil fuel companys can break the issues into small ones, they keep people from seeing the "Big Picture" of how bad these fuels are in many many ways.

Now let's add some more parts of that "Big Picture"

Minning and drilling are bad when they remove whole mountain tops to get the coal, and go to places like wildlife preserves to drill for oil.

Transportation can be bad when huge oil tankers break up and release their toxic cargo and kill lots of plants and animals.

You said keep it simple, so I'll stop here.

Just remember that there are alternatives to fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industries do not want us to change to the alternatives. They will do just about anything to stop that.

They will lie, kill and cheat... just read any paper and if you know what you are looking for, the proof is there in black and white everyday.

Answer 4

Global warming is any warming of Earth's surface. Most often, the term refers to the most recent warming that started in the mid nineteenth century.

Global warming is caused by one thing and one thing only: changes in Earth's energy balance. Earth's energy balance is simply the ratio of incoming energy from the sun to the outgoing energy from the Earth's surface. When the incoming energy equals the outgoing energy, the temperature stays steady. When the outgoing energy is more or less than the incoming, the temperature will change.

There are three primary ways to change Earth's energy budget. The first is to change in the amount of energy reaching Earth; either by changing the amount of energy emitted by the sun, or by changing Earth's orbit around the sun. The second way is by changing Earth's "albedo," or reflectivity. Albedo can be changed by a large number of things, such as the amount of sunlight reflecting dust particles in the air, to the amount of ice covering Earth's surface, to the amount of cloud cover. The third and final way is by changes in Earth's "greenhouse effect."

All of these processes have played a role in temperature changes in the past, and all will play a role again in the future. However, the most important of these processes when talking about the current warming is the third: changes in Earth's greenhouse effect.

The greenhouse effect is a process in which certain trace gases in Earth's atmosphere, called the "greenhouse gases," trap outgoing energy in Earth's atmosphere, warming it. These gases all have the unique property of being transparent to the energy from the son (which is mostly in the visible spectrum), but being opaque to the energy radiated from Earth's surface (which is mostly in the infrared spectrum).

The greenhouse effect is important to the current change because humans have increased the effect a great deal over the past century. The burning of fossil fuels results in carbon dioxide, a very potent greenhouse gas. Humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over the past century and a half by about 35%. This addition of CO2 is believed to have warmed the Earth's surface by about .7ºC.

Of course, this is a very simplified overview of the science behind global warming theory. For a more detailed look, check out the "Frequently Asked Questions" section of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which you can read online for free here:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html

Hope this helps!

–EP–

Answer 5

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 movie 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 6

A load of rubbish, the govements of the world made up, to try and stop us worring about the threat of terroists and nuclear weapons.

Answer 7

the sun warming up ffs

Answer 8

plz read my blog 4 this-->>


http://blogs.ibibo.com/ViewComments.aspx?mid=0cb434aa-db31-47d9-a48f-9c6559a048c2&blogid=2a4a8f1d-8a39-4d7f-b0d9-04b7dca7eec6