what's the evidence for the claim that global wrming is a consequence of human activities?

Question

let me know if anyone has any research or article on it.

Answer 1

It is just a natural cycle were humans are not involved whatsoever.

Answer 2

Weather is the interaction of 3 things. They are air, water vapor and heat. Change any of these variables and weather changes. If you add heat to the formula, it changes weather.

Human activities are designed in theory to not contribute heat to the formula because that would change weather, ultimately warm the atmosphere and change climate. That would interfere with entire eco systems and could change the planet.

The surface of the planet is where we live and we measure the surface temperature because weather is the result of the interaction between water as well as land temperature.

It is thought and taught that the surface of the planet absorbs the sun's rays. It is thought and taught that buildings and development absorb the sun's rays. Then the surface of the planet radiates the absorbed heat contributing to low pressure atmospherically.

Weather is changing all over the world so we look for cause. Unfortunately Co2 got thrown into the mix and that confuses a lot of scientists including me. The UN and the entire world is looking at the issue while the science argument continues.

Unfortunately the science that was missing was because professionals are educated in a calculator, that was all we had for temperature considerations. My own extensive background in architecture, building engineering and electrical energy provision(emissions) include temperature considerations in a calculator.

I participated in several years of temperature research using the most advanced temperature imaging applications in the world. I have to tell you the information we gathered and the results conflicted with my own education in the calculator.

The results of the research showed the same UV that burns our skin was doing the same thing to the surface of the planet. Solar exposed areas were generating extreme heat while trees or green areas fluctuated with atmospheric temperatures.

It was the rule and not the exception that the heat generated by buildings and development was several times atmospheric temperature which means weather impact with the massive heat dump.

Source: Go to http://www.thermoguy.com/globalwarming-heatgain.html and see temperature imaging that is accurate to +-2%. This dramatically changes the weather formula and shows meteorologists and environment scientists where there is a real source of heat that could impact the world's climate. Buildings and the surface of the planet are contributing extreme heat atmospherically. I have a hard time with the Co2 theory while we generate heat close to boiling temperature and react to the symptoms.

Human activity is contributing heat atmospherically that can be close to boiling temperature and it isn't natural in any way. I have been asked for a professional opinion on the massive heat radiation and it means one thing. We will heat up until our temperatures are somewhere between what we have now and boiling temperature. Everything on the planet is temperature sensitive including us.

Global warming is very real and hell is coming if we keep arguing about the science. Try this home experiment, put the kids, pets, plants and fish in a room and put 200 degree F heaters in the room. Treat the heat symptoms with air conditioning which is really refrigeration that is associated with ozone depletion. Put a portable generator in the room with the family so you can cool the room down with the air conditioner except exhaust the generator's emissions into the room with the family. What do you think would be the end result?

We are in this together, there won't be a magical place for celebrities or the wealthiest people in the world to avoid what we are doing. This affects all water land and air.

I can also say that the company I work for is representing this information to government, UN or any policy as an unprecedented environmental emergency. We are going to back it up with 17,000 plus hours of what you will see at the link.

Answer 3

Basically we know it's warming, and we've measured how much:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2005/ann/global-blended-temp-pg.gif

Scientists have a good idea how the Sun and the Earth's natural cycles and volcanoes and all those natural effects change the global climate, so they've gone back and checked to see if they could be responsible for the current global warming. What they found is:

Over the past 30 years, all solar effects on the global climate have been in the direction of (slight) cooling, not warming. This is during a very rapid period of global warming.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6290228.stm
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf

So the Sun certainly isn't a large factor in the current warming. They've also looked at natural cycles, and found that we should be in the middle of a cooling period right now.

"An often-cited 1980 study by Imbrie and Imbrie determined that 'Ignoring anthropogenic and other possible sources of variation acting at frequencies higher than one cycle per 19,000 years, this model predicts that the long-term cooling trend which began some 6,000 years ago will continue for the next 23,000 years.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycle

So it's definitely not the Earth's natural cycles. They looked at volcanoes, and found that

a) volcanoes cause more global cooling than warming, because the particles they emit block sunlight

b) humans emit over 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes annually

http://www.gaspig.com/volcano.htm

So it's certainly not due to volcanoes. Then they looked at human greenhouse gas emissions. We know how much atmospheric CO2 concentrations have increased over the past 50 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png

And we know from isotope ratios that this increase is due entirely to human emissions from burning fossil fuels. We know how much of a greenhouse effect these gases like carbon dioxide have, and the increase we've seen is enough to have caused almost all of the warming we've seen over the past 30 years (about 80-90%). You can see a model of the various factors over the past century here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

This is enough evidence to convince almost all climate scientists that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming.

Answer 4

It never ceases to amaze me the level of ignorance and even those that know something of the subject don't have enough background in general science to make an informed opinion it seems. Some people are just eager to believe the worst about anything especially if it implies how bad humanity is. At best, the evidence for human caused global warming is theoretical. Obviously since we emit CO2 and CO2 is a greenhouse gas, there should be some consequence. The problem is determining how much. There is really no way for to know with our present state of knowledge. Be extremely skeptical of those that pretend to know or who push a consensus. They are more interested in an agenda than science. With this crowd any warming is likely to cause the earth to burst into flames (OK a little exaggeration there). It is against their religion to acknowledge that any warming might be useful. It would be like a Christian acknowledging that the devil might do something nice I suppose. The global warming house of cards will crumble if they admit that there might be some benefits to the warming.

Answer 5

How long of an answer do you really want?
There are so many factors involved it would take a large volume of text to show the evidence.
In extremely brief terms, what used to be a natural cycle of events that occurred over eons, is now a process that will happen in millenia due to humans.

(1) Humans produce more green house gases than anything else on the planet. Either through biological processes or through manufacturing processes.
(2) Deciduous trees (leaf bearing trees, not evergreens) and many plants absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. Humans have destroyed more than 75% of the plant life that has that capability over course of about 4 thousand years.
(3) As long as fossil fuels are used in any manufacturing process, forests continue to be plowed under, and the oceans continue to be polluted, the green house gases are going to get worse.

That information is available in any scientific publication printed over the past 30 years (probably more), and across the internet in little bits and pieces.

Answer 6

Well, even though the earth has had enormous climate changes (the Ice age, for example), they were over a long period of time. If you were to look at a chart of the average global climate, in the last fifty years or so, the temperature and the CO2 levels have gone up way more than they did when then during the millenia long climate shifts.

And we know that coal and gasoline have TONS of carbon in them, and when we burn them, they release CO2 into the air, which cover the earth like a blanket and enhance the greenhouse effect.

Answer 7

It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources. But the fact that CO2 levels have remained steady until very recently shows that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions. Now slightly more CO2 must be entering the atmosphere than is being soaked up by carbon "sinks".

The consumption of terrestrial vegetation by animals and by microbes (rotting, in other words) emits about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 every year, while respiration by vegetation emits another 220 Gt. These huge amounts are balanced by the 440 Gt of carbon absorbed from the atmosphere each year as land plants photosynthesise.

Similarly, parts of the oceans release about 330 Gt of CO2 per year, depending on temperature and rates of photosynthesis by phytoplankton, but other parts usually soak up just as much – and are now soaking up slightly more.

Human emissions of CO2 are now estimated to be 26.4 Gt per year, up from 23.5 Gt in the 1990s.

Answer 8

Watch Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth. It explains the consequences of massive carbon dioxide pollution very well, step by step. The Union of Concerned Scientists has a good site with information here: http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/ . Also, Wikipedia has a good article on Global Warming which gives both sides and lots of references.

Answer 9

There's a huge amount of evidence. Way too much for here, you'll have to read the links. Start with the first and the last ones.

This is science and what counts is 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

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

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 websites for more info:

http://profend.com/global-warming/
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/
http://www.realclimate.org
"climate science from climate scientists"
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462

Answer 10

Global warming happins naturally. However due to humans we have speed up the process thus causing a irreversible effect on the planet.

Answer 11

Greenhouse gases are the reason Earth isn't a giant ice ball. The gases in our atmosphere trap heat, giving us the only climate we know of in the universe that can support life. The extreme of this is the planet Venus, which is so enveloped in heat-trapping gases it's average temperature is around 900 degrees.

Natural changes in the climate over the Earth's billion year history were often driven by fluctuations in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Whether through the creation of Methane from biological activity, or through carbon dioxide from volcanoes, greenhouse gases have always played an important role in natural climate change.

The greenhouse gases people are pouring in massive amounts into the atmosphere as we speak are not magically different from those the Earth releases naturally.