Do you think "Global Warming" started when cavemen started building fires?

Question

Hasn't the Earth been changing since day one? climates changing, continents shifting, etc. I do agree that there are many things we do that harm our environment but isn't it like trying to stop a speeding train that left the station millions of years before we got here?

Answer 1

No,it started with the industrial revolution over 200 years ago when coal was used to make steam to power machines. When oil was discovered and used ,the rate of CO2 from fossil fuels really jumped. It's the burning of fossil fuels that releases carbon that has been trapped in the Earth,and out of the atmosphere for millions of years. That increase can be measured by scientists and it correlates with the rise in the average world temps. Heat drives the weather,add more heat,and things speed up. More evaporation of ocean water during the winter ,will lead to more snow and ice on land.

Answer 2

Global Warming started as soon as we had an atmosphere, long before cavemen turned up.

The issue is not when it started, the issue is what temperature range is comfortable for all of us humans/animals/plants to live in, so that biodiversity can be maintained.

Whilst it is true that human activity only acounts for a tiny percentage of the total CO2 on the planet. The main issue is not how much CO2 we produce, its how much we produce that the earth cannot absorb, so the cavemans impact would have been minmal.

The problem we have today is that we are both increasing our production of CO2 (industrial pollution) and reducing the earths ability to absorb the CO2, by chopping down the trees.

We have started on a path that will force the Earth will have to find a new Equlibrium, one that might not be as comfortable for us Humans to live in.

All the doomsday senarios have one thing in common, far less habitable (comfortable) space for us to all live in.

And we know what man does when he doesn't have what he wants he takes it from someone else.

Answer 3

The current problem is caused by over 6 billion people relying on fossil fuels taken out of the ground (particularly coal, but also oil), and burned to produce energy and CO2.

The earth is a resilient system and can absorb a lot of minor variations in carbon, but it is only handling about half of the excess that we're generating.

So one way of looking at it would be that if world population stopped growing at 3 billion, producing half as much CO2, we'd be fine. That was approximately the world population in 1960. Before then it seems safe to say that the earth could handle our impact.

Since we already have overshot the 3 billion mark, the way to handle it now is to use technology to reduce the carbon impact of current and future populations.

Setting the CO2 limits to accomplish that and start those improvements is what all the fuss is about. The oil and coal industries have a lot to lose, so they're doing what the tobacco industry did and confusing the issue as much as they possibly can in the media.

Answer 4

Whether or not you believe in the politics of "global warming", anyone can plainly see that there is a climate crisis. All of the things that are suggested to reduce and/or reverse the effects of greenhouse gasses and the like are great for our environment. What reason is there to not do it, other than being lazy?

By your logic, you could reason that there is no use in quitting smoking because you've already damaged your lungs, although you know that quitting now would greatly reduce your risk of cancer, lung disease, emphysema and you could have clear lungs in just 7 years.

There is no reason not to take care of the Earth. It is the only one we've got, and if there are things we can do to reduce the amount of pollution, then there is no reason we shouldn't!

Answer 5

It's the speed of the change that is troubling.

During .001 or less of an eye blink geologically very major changes are happening.

Rapid climate changes have occurred throughout the history of the earth, but it has never happened when this much of the landmass was populated and negative climate change impacts to global food interdependence's could have catastrophic results to millions if not billions of people.

Whether it's human caused or not - the globe is definitely warming.

Read some of the facts regarding the amount of ice that has melted in the Arctic, Antarctica, Greenland - it's a huge potential problem in the near term (50 years).

I guess it shouldn't surprise me that people dependent on corporate owned media for information would think it wasn't an issue.

It is definitely in the short term best interests of their stock prices for you to think it's a silly liberal agenda

Answer 6

Global warming and cooling are an interplay of the cosmic energies released by the Sun and the Electro Magnetic fields of the Earth. Carbon released by the Earth as part of these interactions has been going on for eons.

Al Gore did not invent the Internet and he didn't tell you the truth about global warming either. Look how much money he has made fooling the world. Money is a very good motivator and over the years he made yearly salaries teaching this junk science. Many highly placed scientists have voiced their objection to the science presented by Gore.

Climatic sifts are a natural matter on Earth. Changes in temperature and rainfall amounts existed before humans and other animals roamed the Earth. To suggest we have something to do with it and more so that we can do something about it flys in the face of reliable scientific observations or in this case the lack of observations over a long enough period of time to be accurate.

So Global Cooling periods and Global Warming periods existed before the caveman.

Answer 7

We only started burning gasoline after World War Two. Before World War Two, most people didn't have automobiles. Presently, in United States, around 360 million gallons of gasoline is used daily. That's a lot of burning!

Previously it took many thousands of years for climates to change- we're changing the climate very rapidly in comparison. No one knows how it will turn out, but it ain't gonna be fun. Some places are already experiencing detrimental effects (floods, drought, species extinction, etc). On top of that, we're rapidly running out of gasoline and so far the only replacement fuel is WT (Wishful Thinking).

Answer 8

No.
The burning of wood is part of the carbon cycle and with so few people burning wood it would have had no effect on the climate. Due to man's small numbers at the time when he relied on wood as fuel, human emissions of CO2 would have been dwarfed by forest fires. The only way primitive man could have altered the climate was if he had slash burned much to the planet’s forests, and he did not do this.

Answer 9

Earth and nature have cycles, hotter and colder times. Global warming just gives business and governments another excuse to get money for research and new products we really don't need. It is very conceited of man to think that he can change the world. If everyone dropped dead this week. In 20 years the earth would have mostly obliterated most signs of man. As far as fire? Until man started trying to stop wildfires, those that raged before that never hurt earth. It actually allowed a cycle of cleansing and rebirth.

Answer 10

yeah, earth has been changing, and there are shifts in climate over millions of years... a lot of times caused by continental drift and the changing patterns of water flow, sometimes by ancient volcanic mega eruptions, etc.

think about it like this... at one point, the amount of microbial life on earth severely affected the climate on earth. if things as tiny as microbes can affect the climate so drastically, then human beings can do so aswell..

if you've seen the Al Gore movie, there scene that got my attention was the number of scientific papers that were in agreement over the source of climate change. it wa ssomething like 500 to 0...

yet the stories in the media were exactly 50-50... i'm far less inclined to believe the media's view on what is really happening with global warming..



it should also be noted that this is all from a skewed human perspective.. our time on earth is so short, we like to make it seem like everything that is happening is bad for the Earth... it is, ofcourse, but the earth is something like 8 billion years along.. 99.99% of the species that have ever lived, have died... the earth is going to be fine long after we are gone... life will continue without us