is climate change realy happening?

Question

and what is in store for the future and how bad will it get let me no what you all think thanks in advance

Answer 1

If you want to believe the DOOM AND GLOOM people then go ahead. they will always be around to jump on some politician's overinflated hype to get young people pissed off at the establishment. Meanwhile he quietly becomes a VENTURE CAPITALIST looking to make millions on a new industry he helped create by making a lot of false statements he never would debate or defend in a public forum. I'm talkin about Al Gore and his " An Inconvenient Truth" book and DVD.
Read the following article and the recent article in the source below about Gore's new VENTURE

By RICHARD S. LINDZEN

The Wall Street Journal, 26 June 2006


According to Al Gore's new film "An Inconvenient
Truth," we're in for "a planetary emergency": melting
ice sheets, huge increases in sea levels, more and
stronger hurricanes and invasions of tropical disease,
among other cataclysms -- unless we change the way we
live now.

Bill Clinton has become the latest evangelist for Mr.
Gore's gospel, proclaiming that current weather events
show that he and Mr. Gore were right about global
warming, and we are all suffering the consequences of
President Bush's obtuseness on the matter. And why
not? Mr. Gore assures us that "the debate in the
scientific community is over."

That statement, which Mr. Gore made in an interview
with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, ought to have been
followed by an asterisk. What exactly is this debate
that Mr. Gore is referring to? Is there really a
scientific community that is debating all these issues
and then somehow agreeing in unison? Far from such a
thing being over, it has never been clear to me what
this "debate" actually is in the first place.

The media rarely help, of course. When Newsweek
featured global warming in a 1988 issue, it was
claimed that all scientists agreed. Periodically
thereafter it was revealed that although there had
been lingering doubts beforehand, now all scientists
did indeed agree. Even Mr. Gore qualified his
statement on ABC only a few minutes after he made it,
clarifying things in an important way. When Mr.
Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that
the best estimates of rising sea levels are far less
dire than he suggests in his movie, Mr. Gore defended
his claims by noting that scientists "don't have any
models that give them a high level of confidence" one
way or the other and went on to claim -- in his
defense -- that scientists "don't know. They just
don't know."

So, presumably, those scientists do not belong to the
"consensus." Yet their research is forced, whether the
evidence supports it or not, into Mr. Gore's preferred
global-warming template -- namely, shrill alarmism. To
believe it requires that one ignore the truly
inconvenient facts. To take the issue of rising sea
levels, these include: that the Arctic was as warm or
warmer in 1940; that icebergs have been known since
time immemorial; that the evidence so far suggests
that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on
average. A likely result of all this is increased
pressure pushing ice off the coastal perimeter of that
country, which is depicted so ominously in Mr. Gore's
movie. In the absence of factual context, these images
are perhaps dire or
alarming.

They are less so otherwise. Alpine glaciers have been
retreating since the early 19th century, and were
advancing for several centuries before that. Since
about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped
retreating and some are now advancing again. And,
frankly, we don't know why.

The other elements of the global-warming scare
scenario are predicated on similar oversights.
Malaria, claimed as a byproduct of warming, was once
common in Michigan and Siberia and remains common in
Siberia -- mosquitoes don't require tropical warmth.
Hurricanes, too, vary on multidecadal time scales;
sea-surface temperature is likely to be an important
factor. This temperature, itself, varies on
multidecadal time scales. However, questions
concerning the origin of the relevant sea-surface
temperatures and the nature of trends in hurricane
intensity are being hotly argued within the
profession.

Even among those arguing, there is general agreement
that we can't attribute any particular hurricane to
global warming. To be sure, there is one exception,
Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric
Research in Boulder, Colo., who argues that it must be
global warming because he can't think of anything
else. While arguments like these, based on lassitude,
are becoming rather common in climate assessments,
such claims, given the primitive state of weather and
climate science, are hardly compelling.

A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to
assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its
climate are dynamic; they are always changing even
without any external forcing. To treat all change as
something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to
exploit that fear is much worse. Regardless, these
items are clearly not issues over which debate is
ended -- at least not in terms of the actual science.

A clearer claim as to what debate has ended is
provided by the environmental journalist Gregg
Easterbrook. He concludes that the scientific
community now agrees that significant warming is
occurring, and that there is clear evidence of human
influences on the climate system. This is still a most
peculiar claim. At some level, it has never been
widely contested. Most of the climate community has
agreed since 1988 that global mean temperatures have
increased on the order of one degree Fahrenheit over
the past century, having risen significantly from
about 1919 to 1940, decreased between 1940 and the
early '70s, increased again until the '90s, and
remaining essentially flat since 1998.

There is also little disagreement that levels of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen from about
280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) in the 19th
century to about 387 ppmv today. Finally, there has
been no question whatsoever that carbon dioxide is an
infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas -- albeit a
minor one), and its increase should theoretically
contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept
equal, the increase in carbon dioxide should have led
to somewhat more warming than has been observed,
assuming that the small observed increase was in fact
due to increasing carbon dioxide rather than a natural
fluctuation in the climate system. Although no cause
for alarm rests on this issue, there has been an
intense effort to claim that the theoretically
expected contribution from additional carbon dioxide
has actually been detected.

Given that we do not understand the natural internal
variability of climate change, this task is currently
impossible. Nevertheless there has been a persistent
effort to suggest otherwise, and with surprising
impact. Thus, although the conflicted state of the
affair was accurately presented in the 1996 text of
the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the infamous "summary
for policy makers" reported ambiguously that "The
balance of evidence suggests a discernible human
influence on global climate." This sufficed as the
smoking gun for Kyoto.

The next IPCC report again described the problems
surrounding what has become known as the attribution
issue: that is, to explain what mechanisms are
responsible for observed changes in climate. Some
deployed the lassitude argument -- e.g., we can't
think of an alternative -- to support human
attribution. But the "summary for policy makers"
claimed in a manner largely unrelated to the actual
text of the report that "In the light of new evidence
and taking into account the remaining uncertainties,
most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is
likely to have been due to the increase in
greenhouse gas concentrations."

In a similar vein, the National Academy of Sciences
issued a brief (15-page) report responding to
questions from the White House. It again enumerated
the difficulties with attribution, but again the
report was preceded by a front end that ambiguously
claimed that "The changes observed over the last
several decades are likely mostly due to human
activities, but we cannot rule out that some
significant part of these changes is also a reflection
of natural variability." This was sufficient for CNN's
Michelle Mitchell to presciently declare that the
report represented a "unanimous decision that global
warming is real, is getting worse and is due to man.
There is no wiggle room." Well, no.

More recently, a study in the journal Science by the
social scientist [Naomi] Oreskes claimed that a search
of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years
1993 to 2003 under the key words "global climate
change" produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts
supported what she referred to as the consensus view.
A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her
procedure and found that only 905 of the 928 articles
had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the
remaining 905 explicitly endorsed the so-called
consensus view. Several actually
opposed it.

Even more recently, the Climate Change Science
Program, the Bush administration's coordinating agency
for global-warming research, declared it had found
"clear evidence of human influences on the climate
system." This, for Mr. Easterbrook, meant: "Case
closed." What exactly was this evidence? The models
imply that greenhouse warming should impact
atmospheric temperatures more than surface
temperatures, and yet satellite data showed no warming
in the atmosphere since 1979. The report showed that
selective corrections to the atmospheric data could
lead to some warming, thus reducing the conflict
between observations and models descriptions of what
greenhouse warming should look like. That, to me,
means the case is still very much open.

So what, then, is one to make of this alleged debate?
I would suggest at least three points.

First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother
with understanding the science. Claims of consensus
relieve policy types, environmental advocates and
politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also
serve to intimidate the public and even scientists --
especially those outside the area of climate dynamics.
Secondly, given that the question of human attribution
largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting
visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a
bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious
beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political
issue but a "moral" crusade.

Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth
not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition.
An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy.
Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have
farce -- if we're lucky.

Mr. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of
Atmospheric Science at MIT.

Copyright 2006, WSJ

Answer 2

Yes, climate change is really happening, and there is little doubt that the change is being driven by humans. No one can dispute the Keeling Curve, and no one that knows anything about the role of carbon dioxide in climate can dispute the importance of that. I can't believe some of the completely wacko responses to this question, but people like tankgirl and alec a are just deluded.

On a somewhat positive note, there actually may not be enough fossil fuels around to completely screw up earth's climate. Reserves of coal and petroleum appear to be grossly overestimated. That doesn't mean that things won't get bad, though--the world's economy relies on cheap energy and the lack of it might cause economic collapse.

Answer 3

Global warming is a myth. FACT. Weather systems have existed since the planet was created and these have evolved into patterns featuring intense and quiet weather periods.

Governments use global warming as a means to introduce taxes to bolster their treasury's coffers.

Dinosaurs were made extinct by an ice age of the type dramatised in recent Hollywood films. However, this ice age was the result of a massive meteor strike on the planet and had nothing to do with carbon footprints, pawprints or wheel tracks... actually I don't recall any undisputed evidence that may suggest dinosaurs used the internal combustion engine...

In the words of Mr Lydon (aka Jonny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) "ever feel like you been cheated?" - rely on western governments to ensure we feel nothing but cheated.

Answer 4

Global warming came about when Margret Thatcher wanted to break the strength of the Miners union. She employed scientists to prove that there is a connection between carbon emissions and the rise in the global temperatures, thus giving her a reason to champion the building of nuclear power stations, making the need for coal to be less important. Did you know that farm animal waste and insects produce co2's and no one has tried to tax or ban them! also volcano's produce millions of tonnes more co2s than humans and and farm animals and insects. The biggest surprise is that the sea produces more co2s than the rest put together. As the Earths temperature rises the sea releases more co2s not as senator Al Gore stated in his video. The answer to your question is climate change is happening but it is natural. At the beginning of the last century the Earths temperature was higher than it was in the 1970's, and only at this point did it start to rise. I do believe that we should do more to reduce the pollution of the worlds atmosphere.

Answer 5

It is because, of Global Warming. People don't seem to care but, they should it affects Al Gore no longer needs to make claims about creating the Internet, because the former Vice President deserves much of the credit for creating an entire new industry -- the global warming business.

And like the energy barons of an earlier age, Mr. Gore has the chance to achieve enormous wealth after being named last week as a new partner at the famously successful venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. No fewer than three of his new colleagues sit on the Forbes list of wealthiest Americans. If Mr. Gore can develop market-based solutions to environmental challenges, we will cheer the well-deserved riches flowing his way. On the other hand, if he monetizes his Nobel Peace Prize by securing permanent government subsidies for nonmarket science projects, he'll have earned a different judgment.

There's no shortage of new capital pouring into alternative energy projects these days. According to the National Venture Capital Association, "clean tech" start-ups attracted more than $800 million in venture capital last quarter, a new record. What's not clear is whether these are fundamentally energy ventures or political ventures. The Manhattan Institute's Peter Huber, a former engineering professor at MIT, exaggerates only slightly when he says that "Basically, 'alternative' means stuff that nobody actually uses." If that turns out to be true, then alternative energy companies could struggle for market share without government assistance.

Those doubts exist even for the companies backed by Kleiner Perkins. After making more than a dozen "green tech" investments, Kleiner is still waiting for its first exit. According to a Kleiner spokeswoman, many companies in its portfolio are "in stealth mode." The firm will "neither name nor comment on them." So it's impossible to determine precisely how much the Kleiner-backed firms will benefit from either current federal subsidies, or new provisions that are part of the House and Senate versions of the stalled energy bill. But we do have some hints.

Of the portfolio companies acknowledged publicly by Kleiner, at least two, Altra and Mascoma, are involved in the production of ethanol, which is already heavily subsidized and would get more subsidies in the House bill and higher mandates in the Senate version. A third firm in the portfolio, Amyris Biotechnologies, is developing a biofuel that will provide "more energy than ethanol," according to its Web site, and should be just as eligible for government set-asides.

Two portfolio companies in the solar energy field, Miasole and Ausra, should benefit if a House provision requiring investor-owned utilities to generate 15% of their power from wind, solar or geothermal sources becomes law. The same is true for Altarock Energy, a Kleiner-backed geothermal company. Lux Research analyst Ying Wu reports that "company valuations will take a pretty big hit" in Miasole's market segment if Washington turns off the subsidy spigot.

To put it another way, Kleiner's "risk-taking" here isn't all economic. When everything is going according to plan, do venture capitalists normally turn to a politician/filmmaker to help them cash out of engineering firms?

Nope, but then again alternative energy has never fit the usual venture model. Jack Biddle, co-founder of Novak Biddle Venture Partners, says there's a reason few start-up companies try to build commercial jetliners. "Large, complex systems with slow deployment cycles do not play to venture's strengths. The whole idea with venture-backed companies is speed, speed, speed." Mr. Biddle says the size and complexity of energy systems "make 787s look like tinker toys. You need lots of capital, lots of time, lots of people."

Mr. Gore seems to grasp the scale of the challenge, and the need for government help, telling Fortune magazine, "What we are going to have to put in place is a combination of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Project and the Marshall Plan, and scale it globally." That's the kind of "green" vision that will require a lot of greenbacks.

We'll be as happy as the Sierra Club if one or more of these new technologies turns out to solve the secrets of cheap, efficient energy. But we recall the same technological promises being made in the 1970s, the last time the feds poured subsidies into alternative fuels.

Which leads us to suspect that maybe Mr. Gore has been hired by Kleiner Perkins for more than his technological knowhow, investment acumen, or global vision. His new partners may have hired him for the more prosaic task of getting 60 Senate votes to keep those taxpayer greenbacks coming.

Earth every-second.

Answer 6

Despite what some say, the evidence that global warming is happening is overwhelming.

Some of it is caused by natural events and some by human activity. There is some uncertainty about how much is caused by each of these.

Answer 7

Yes, and it's sad because no one seems to really care about it. Global warming is affecting our planet everyday, and sure, people make all these petitions to stop things that contribute to it, but no one really DOES anything. In the future, I don't know, probably most of our planet will be under water.


You should watch an Inconvenient Truth. It'll tell you everything you need to know about climate change.

Answer 8

HOW ABOUT THIS

Suppose you got a bit of dirt on your skin, and the dirt started multiplying. It spreads faster and faster until it has covered your whole body.

The dirt fills your lungs with CO2 so you can hardly breathe.

It shaves off most of your hair. etc

What do you do to get rid of it?

Wash it off.

That's exactly what our planet is doing.

Answer 9

It may be due to the fact that the Sun is getting closer to earth, that is why when it does come out we burn faster, and the glasiers are melting.

Answer 10

The unfortunate thing about tankgirl's answer is that she is intellectually dishonest. "You may choose your opinions but may not choose your facts".....Winston Churchill