Which one....?

Question

We all concur that the planet is changing.....Do you believe it is Climate change which is a natural happening or Global Warming which we contributed to? And how so?

I know everyone has an opinion on this and I can wait to read your answers.

Answer 1

My personal belief is that humans are amplifying natural climate change, but for the sake of the global economy ( which relies on liquidity in the U.S. economy, ) the drastic changes being proposed do not justify the ends. Me and everyone else sane wants to save babies in africa from flood and drought, but we can only do that when the U.S. economy is robust and appealing to investors.

The answer lies in simply creating a workable incentive, which is already being done; not by that nut al gore, but by the climate change moderates. Al gore just wants tvtime.

I don't believe climate change should be about "saving our planet from destruction and ugliness." It should be about sustainable progression; the sciency mumbojumbo about "Ohhh the earth has been on its cycles" and "Ooooh look at these graphs" is detrimental to, everything.

Both camps need to step back and recognize the volatility of our most important commodity, and work towards eliminating that.

Answer 2

Yes, the planet always changes. I'm sure everyone agrees with that.
I believe that, although, currently, we are going through a temporary cooling trend, the long-term trend is one of slight warming. Just how much warming will occur per year is somewhat controversial.
http://www.letxa.com/articles/11
I also believe that the trend we are experiencing is natural, although, all else being equal, a dramatic increase in CO2 would cause slight warming. I say that it would need to be "dramatic" because CO2 is such a weak greenhouse gas, and takes up a very small part of the atmosphere.
Much evidence supports the fact that the sun (or the number of sunspots) would have a direct affect on temperature.
Here is a website giving an overall summary of the eleven-year sun cycle.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml
And here are some links showing the link between sunspots and temperature:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml
Another factor that seems to play a key, though somewhat confusing, role in climate change is the influence of cosmic rays, charged particles blasted to earth from far-away super-novae.
The first link is a bit about the science of cosmic rays, and the second is a story on the possible link between them and the climate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_rays
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,220341,00.html

I hope these links help you understand a bit more about how complex the climate is, and how difficult it is to diagnose the cause of the current warming trend.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and all the rest.
~~punker_rocker

(Bob: Do you just paste that answer into every question to which it applies? for the thousandth time, saying that there is less controversy in the real world than on Answers makes you sound completely ridiculous. I disagree with AGW just as much in real life as on Answers.
19,000 American scientists, disagreeing with the "mainstream" idea of global warming, have signed the "Petition Project," trying to persuade the U.S. from ratifying Kyoto, on the grounds that we don't know enough about the climate to act. Read about it here:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/
Also for the thousandth time, there is no consensus. It is complete hogwash. Even if there was, it wouldn't prove a thing, as even the largest consensus could be wrong.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597

Answer 3

As a geologist and environmental consultant, I understand that change is the norm. Our current climate is much warmer than it was 10,000 years ago when we were in a period of glaciation. It is still colder than 95 per cent of the planets history and CO2 levels are also relatively low. For those that focus on 10, 100, or even a thousand years, they fail to see the long term patterns that important indicators in our climate. They also demonstrate the current warming is nothing new or out of the ordinary in spite of shrill nonsense that tries to pass as science. Clearly man emitted CO2 warms the climate, but in my opinion, it's effect is practically not noticeable relative to the natural variation.
Note to Keith: your fear of CO2 and its moderating effect which you described is irrational and borders on paranoia. Alarmist see only negative consequences and refuse to look at benefits. I have previously noted that is akin to a devout christian admitting that there might be good qualities in the devil. Due to the emotionally held beliefs, an alarmists cannot admit to any possible benefits to CO2 even though they would be obvious to a child of 5 years old IMO.

Answer 4

Mostly (75-95%) us. The data proves it. Don't trust my words, the data is in the links.

"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/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.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 5

It's academic, and like asking "What would have happened if the Germans had won World War II". Humans should lessen polluting in any case, but human activity probably is no more the cause of Earth warming as it is on other planets. It might well have occurred anyway.

Answer 6

Scientists don't like to use the word "proof" because everything in science is subject to revision as new data comes in. But the case for human-caused global warming is about as strong as it gets.

1. If the Sun is causing the current warmth, then we're getting more energy, and the whole atmosphere should be getting warmer. If it's greenhouse, then we're getting the same amount of energy, but it's being distributed differently: more heat is trapped at the surface, and less heat is escaping to the stratosphere. So if it's the Sun, the stratosphere should be warming, but if it's greenhouse, the stratosphere should be cooling.

In fact, the stratosphere has been on a long-term cooling trend ever since we've been keeping radiosonde balloon records in the 1950's. Here's the data:
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/images/update_images/global_upper_air.png
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/hadat2/hadat2_monthly_global_mean.txt
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/sterin/sterin.html

2. If it's the Sun, we're getting more energy during the day, and daytime temperatures should be rising fastest. But if it's greenhouse, we're losing less heat at night, and nighttime temperatures should be rising fastest. So if it's the sun, the difference between day and night temperatures should be increasing, but if it's greenhouse, the day-night difference should be decreasing.

In fact, the daily temperature range has been decreasing throughout the 20th century. Here's the science:
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0450(1984)023%3C1489:DDTRIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0477(1993)074%3C1007%3AANPORG%3E2.0.CO%3B2
http://www.bom.gov.au/bmrc/clfor/cfstaff/jma/2004GL019998.pdf

3. Total solar irradiance has been measured by satellite since 1978, and during that time it has shown the normal 11-year cycle, but no long-term trend. Here's the data:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/solarda3.html

4. Scientists have looked closely at the solar hypothesis and have strongly refuted it. Here's the peer-reviewed science:
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf
http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/publications/preprints/pp2006/MPA2001.pdf

5. CO2 levels in the air were stable for 10,000 years prior to the industrial revolution, at about 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv). Since 1800, CO2 levels have risen 38%, to 384 ppmv, with no end in sight. Here's the modern data...
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
... and the ice core data ...
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/law/law.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/domec/domec_epica_data.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok_data.html
... and a graph showing how it fits together:
http://www.columbusnavigation.com/co2.html

6. We know that the excess CO2 in the air is caused by burning of fossil fuels, for two reasons. First, because the sharp rise in atmospheric CO2 started exactly when humans began burning coal in large quantities (see the graph linked above); and second, because when we do isotopic analysis of the CO2 we find increasing amounts of "old" carbon combined with "young" oxygen. Here are the peer-reviewed papers:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1984JGR....8911731S
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/mksg/teb/1999/00000051/00000002/art00005
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/256/5053/74

So what's left to prove?

Note to Jim Z:
The CO2 that we burn today will stay in the environment for hundreds or even thousands of years. And CO2 levels are currently rising at an exponential rate with no end in sight. So when will it end? And how hot will it be then?

Answer 7

It is global warming. IT is not man made. The last thing that I heard about it was that it was due to CO2 emissions from a bacteria and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. The thing that is a dead give away is the lack of linear comparability to the age of modernization and CO2 emissions.

Answer 8

I believe in Climat CHange becasue WE contribute plenty of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We use too much energy and oxygen on earth.