Humans too insignificant to cause global warming?

Question

Humans are too insignificant to cause global warming, or so many of the sceptics would have you believe. I've never seen any studies supporting the claim that man is incapable of affecting the climate of the planet, so I'm not sure where this information comes from, and is probably based on nothing other than opinion by, oh I don't know maybe....Rush or O'Reilly?
Ok sceptics, now's your chance, convince me.

Now I wonder how many didn’t bother reading my question this far and are going to give me an answer base on nothing more than its title.

Jello- “Why bother? Your mind is made up."
Now that's a defeatist attitude isn't it?

Tomcat, you said "climate is forecast to take a dive." So if it's forecast, who exactly made that forcast?
and
"global warming hinges on the fact that the world began warming from the little Ice Age" SO tell me Tomcat seeing you are tossing these tidbit of info out, what was the cause of the Little Ice age and can you show proof that the same mechanism is affecting our climate today? Take a look at IPCC AR4 chapt. 2, page 188, para 2.7.1. They make it quite clear with referances to source journals that solar irradiane is not to blame.

Answer 1

They would have your believe we are nothing more then a small infection...yet infections can be fatal if not treated properly or left to simmer.

Answer 2

Oh Gwen, Gwen, Gwen do you really want to be convinced?

If the Suns magnetic field stayed constant, and Total Solar Irradiance stayed constant. If ocean circulation patterns remained constant as well as cloud cover, humidity, volcanic aerosols, anthropogenic aerosols and atmospheric circulation patterns. There is very little doubt rising anthropogenic CO2 emissions will contribute to an increase in global temperatures throughout this century. But none of those are constant, and the climate record indicates that wild plunges in temperature can and do occur regardless of what atmospheric CO2 concentrations are. And in the very near future the climate is forecast to take a dive, so we can alter climate, but we cannot prevent it from shifting to a cooling cycle any more than we could prevent it from shifting to a warming cycle. The whole theory of global warming hinges on the fact that the world began warming from the little Ice Age because of a natural cycle, just when was that cycle supposed to end, is my second question?

EDIT:

There is no proof of anything when it comes to climate Gwen, just data to support theories. As far as what caused the LIA, we are not in LIA conditions presently because the SUN has increased it's output by 3 watts meter^2 over the last two hundred years. It would only be logical to conclude that solar variability caused the LIA, ended the LIA and caused a significant percentage of the warming that we are experiencing.

http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=bfeddc8e-90d7-4f54-9ca7-1f56fadc7c2b

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10may_longrange.htm

http://bourabai.georisk.kz/landscheidt/new-e.htm

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/GL264W01.pdf

EDIT FINAL:

Gwen,

Life is not just an accidental arrangement of atoms, there has to be more to it than that, part of you will continue for infinity, you should seriously think about the alternative reality that you have a soul.

.
.

Answer 3

The earth does struggle via organic cycles. something that cycles will do so greater or much less rather in case you adjust some thing that has effects on the biking - think of of pushing a new child on a swing. CO2 is a few thing that has effects on atmospheric capability retention, and all of us comprehend from advertisement documents that human beings have greater atmospheric CO2 very heavily considering that 1950. That, alongside with some concept of the dimensions of time that numerous organic cycles take, is what you ought to have discovered from this component to the technology classification.

Answer 4

We are hardly insignificant to global warming, we are contributing on an unrealized scale. We couldn't see it.

Solar radiation was deemed insignificant on the surface of the planet because it couldn't be qualified. Surface temperature monitoring is seriously flawed and doesn't incorporate the professionals doing the work on the surface of the planet.

The whole development and building industry is designed with temperature so we don't impact the environment. Did you know the entire process is taught and completed in a calculator...never verified.

Whoever determined UV was insignificant isn't considering that it burns you and it is in effect burning buildings. The significance of solar radiation needs to consider what material the radiation is interacting with because we are generating extreme heat on the surface of the planet.

Don't you ever think humans are insignificant, we can scrape the surface of the planet and create a heat generator with every building we put up...even in the winter. We have a toxicity ratio in newborns of 100% globally, how many species can do that?

Go to http://www.thermoguy.com/globalwarming-heatgain.html and see the science that has been missing. Go to http://www.thermoguy.com/pdfs/Western_Climate_Initiative_Partners_2007.pdf to see what should be in Bali. Policy can't be developed without the science.

Answer 5

No humans are too insignificant to reverse it.

All pollution contributes to the greenhouse effect, and because of the greenhouse effect all heat sources contribute to global warming.

All energy used in your home whether its for heat or lighting, it all eventually ends up in the environment. Even if it's a green source, with the present greenhouse effect, it will still end up in the environment, adding to global warming.

Nuclear energy is probably the worst offender. For all the heat that radiates into the surrounding area of a reactor, very little of the over all heat actually gets turned into useful energy, and when it gets used by the customers that heat also ends up in the environment.

Hydroelectric ,although non-polluting, still increases global warming once we consume that energy in our present predicament.

The only energy source that can actually reverse global warming is Pneumatic. The air car's engine works exactly opposite to the internal combustion engine. Internal combustion engine takes cold gases in, gets combusted to perform work, and exhausts dirty hot gases. The air car uses compressed atmospheric(solar) air. Air under pressure can perform work, pressure is stored heat. A pneumatic motor takes in heat(pressure), extracts work, exhausts expanded gases(air with the heat removed). Heat in, Cold out. Of course how green that is, depends on what energy source is utilized to compress the air.

http://www.aircaraccess.com/index.htm
http://www.aircaraccess.com/solar.htm
http://www.aircaraccess.com/nealtank.htm

Answer 6

Allow me to ask a question or two of my own. Why is the temp. rising on Mars as is demonstrated by the polar ice caps receding? Did man cause that? Next, what caused the end of the last ice age on Earth? Man wasn't even here at that time.

Now if you believe that man is so powerful as to effect the climate, why worry about the warming since we could then start causing a new ice age to compensate for it. HUMMMMMM

Answer 7

NOT insignificant

Look around Los Angeles or Tokyo there are cars everywhere in every street. Freeways are full of cars too.

Now check your garage, have you noticed how it stinks when you stop the engine only 5sec after you close the door?

Luckily you can open your garage and breath fresh air, but the earth can't, all the crap rises and gets trapped in the middle atmosphere which back-reflects the IR

Answer 8

I don't agree with that statement, but I don't agree that we are 'causing' it. I believe we are speeding up a natural process, and I think we should take steps to slow it down.

Look at my profile and see the debate I started on this topic. It is nice, though, to see that there are some of us who can have a healthy debate without resorting to name-calling :)

*I feel like a total idiot right now, but someone is going to have to refresh me on why CO2 is an issue in the first place? CO2 isn't toxic, and is what plants breathe in. It's necessary for photosynthesis that exists in nearly all plant life. It's CO (carbon monoxide) that is the problem, or so I've always believed.*

Answer 9

Humans pollute. The planet changes weather. The two are separate issues. We can try to stop polluting the planet, but we can't stop nature from growth, nurturing itself, changing, healing, or changing the weather. It's cyclical, historical, and will continue long after we as a species are a memory.

Answer 10

Why bother? Your mind is made up.

[Edit] Nickel - Nice try but the co2 that humans put into the air is removed by other sources. These sources increase as co2 increases, as co2 is also plant food.

Humans are far too insignificant to overcome the compensation that nature throws back at us.

Answer 11

If global warming cannot happen due to man's influence, then it cannot be shown to be happening. For example, a fair number of skeptics here seem to have read somewhere that the past 10 years have not been particularly warm. I looked into that point in case I could finally find something to hang my skeptical hat on.

What I found was about this article describing how Ross McKitrick had apparently discredited the common “hockey stick” temperature chart showing a dramatic rise in temperatures in the last decade, which is often shown as corresponding with increases in greenhouse gas levels:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/Climate_L.pdf

It looked really convincing... an associate professor at a university, challenging a leading scientist's analysis.

To ensure that I had the full picture I read Ross’ own account of the background:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/MM-W05-background.pdf
“The NWT article presents a history of our original interest in the problem, proceeding through our first analysis of MBH98 in 2003.”

“We (McIntyre and McKitrick) are profiled in the cover story of the Feb. 1, 2005 edition of Natuurwetenschap & Techniek (NWT), a prominent European science magazine (both Dutch and English versions are at www.natutech.nl). The cover story is based on two new peer-reviewed papers being published in the well-known science journals Geophysical Research Letters and Environment and Energy (see www.multiscience.co.uk).”

The article was well written, and the outlook seemed grim for the hockey stick.

Then I happened to be on the ExxonSectrets.org site, and on a whim searched for Ross McKitrick.

It turns out that Ross McKitrick is a senior fellow at the Frasier Intitute, which received the following funds from ExxonMobil:

2003
$60,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
Climate Change
Source: ExxonMobil 2003 Corporate Giving Report

2004
$60,000 Exxon Corporation
Climate Change
Source: Exxon Giving Report 2004

Hmm, interesting that ExxonMobil compensates the Frazier Institute at the same time Ross McKitrick (an economist) was attacking climate researchers, then again when he was submitting that criticism for publishing . Maybe that could be coincidence.

then I looked up Ross McKitrick’s co-author Stephen McIntyre, who describes himself as a mineral exploration consultant. Wikipedia however discloses him as the former president and founder of Northwest Exploration Company Limited and a director of its parent company, Northwest Explorations Inc. Northwest Explorations Inc. was taken over in 1998 by CGX Resources Inc. to form the oil and gas exploration company CGX Energy Inc.. McIntyre was a strategic advisor for CGX in 2000 through 2003.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_McIntyre

So one author is linked to a questionable organization, the other is a self-described brilliant mathemetician firmly entrenched in the petroleum industry (but obscures that particular tidbit in his own bio). Neither are scientists in an area relevant to the paper they attack, but they do have solid ties to the industry threatened, and with their math background run hundreds or thousands of scenarios to see how they might be able to find some that don't result in the IPCC conclusion.

People can decide for themselves, but every time that I find something that seems even mildly damaging to the credibility of the theory of global warming, there seems to be a slime trial leading right back to the oil industry and their paid deniers. There's so much misleading junk science and paid oil industry PR out there that it's to the point that when I see someone that isn't easily traceable back to ExxonMobil or the American Petroleum Institute, even that is tainted by the preponderence of issue-confusing activity that is. Surely it's only a matter of time before the dirt on them comes out as well.

Like you, I'd love to see something worth considering. I doubt you'll get a coherent answer. The deniers here are quick to throw out sound bytes or even numbers, but seem to be severly lacking in links to credible supporting sources.