Global warming

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

Clearly, the Earth is heating up to some extent. Are humans responsible?

Discuss.

 

There is no significant data since 1992 or 1996, I can't remember. I myself have a theory that since our population has grown, we ourselves have slowly made the world warmer. We use cement instead of dirt, it makes it hotter. 6.8 billion humans, at 98.6 farenheit, driving,moving,living might just bring the world alittle hotter. Just a thought.

 

Humans are responsible due to greenhouse gas emissions:

* No other known variable which affects global climate has significantly changed, except for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

* Greenhouse gases were given their name for a reason:

 

Is it not possible that there is another cause of this rise in gases, such as increased solar/geological activity?

 

Shredder: Yes, it still could

We should be making our own Ozone. That would be the shit. We could put it all over Sandistan. Troll them so hard.

 

I think that the earth is just going through it's natural cycle. For instance, we are coming out of a sort of ice age. Now that the earth is heating up and we are coming out of the stage where the earth is coldest, people are hysterical because, they think that the earth is warming for no reason. When in fact, this cycle has been happening for however long the Earth has been here.

Thats what I think. Correct me if you think I am wrong, however, I do not think I am.

~Deskull.

 

Scientists spend their whole lives studying this field. Your opinion isn't worth much here, since you haven't even supplied any evidence. Why would the Earth come out the ice age now? What has changed to make it do so?

Rise in gas concentrations is absolutely definitely due to humans. At least in the case of CO2. We have isotope-ratio measurements which effectively proves this, though atom-bomb testing has ruined this method. The ppm measurements are in line with estimated human output though.

Geological activity - absolutely not. If volcanoes were causing the rises, we'd know because there would be sudden leaps in ppm concentrations of CO2, and the isotope ratios in CO2 would have been completely different.

As for the Sun influencing global temperatures, well that would be a good alternative explanation - however there isn't any sort of correlation between temperature and sunspot activity.

 

I absolutely don't care to supply evidence of what "I think" because, of-course, it's what I THINK. It's but a theory. One I do not care to pursue and investigate.

 

Well it can't be a coincidence that as our use of fossil fuels increases so does co2 and as the co2 rises the slowly warming temperatures. And if those ocean temperatures warm up too much it could cause a large release of co2 from the ocean which could/would lead to probably another mass extinction....

Humans reducing the use of fossil fuels could only be good so we should at the very least try and delay it.
In which case if nothing major changes and it continues the Arctic will be gone within a few years then we will see a larger increase in temperatures because without the ice to reflect the heat from the sun back then were basically screwed either way.

 

People usually have reasons for thinking things in SFA The natural cycle theory doesn't stand up well anyway, since this current warming is so much faster than the warming at the end of the last ice age.

 

I think it is very possible that this is the result of the human race, yet at the same time, the earth has been through very drastic climate changes. Just take the ice age for an example. We could be going through a period of increased heat.

 

How do you prove that it's due to humans if atom-bomb testing has ruined your measurements? >_>

It might not necessarily be sudden volcanic eruptions - it could be a gradual increase in emissions from volcanoes, undersea activity that raises the ocean water's temperature, etc.

The Sun basically sets the weather patterns on Earth. Could there not be some sort of variation in solar output, now or in the past, that has set in motion the warming?

 

I do believe the world is heating up to an extent. You would have to be a moron not to while looking at the evidence. However I don't believe humans are as responsible as we make ourselves out to be. Yes, we may contribute minimally, but not to a point in which it's going to destroy the world as we know it. Carbon dioxide is a weak IR absorber, 380 ppm in air. Water is a powerful IR absorber, 30,000 ppm in air. Where are the hysterics about humidity?



The first chart shows temperatures during the past 250 years, relative to the mean temperature for 1951-70. The same chart shows the length of the solar magnetic cycle during the same period. Close correlation between these two parameters--the shorter the solar cycle (and hence the more active the sun), the higher the temperature--demonstrates, as do other studies, that the gradual warming since the Little Ice Age and the large fluctuations during that warming have been caused by changes in solar activity.

As Shredder mentioned before:

Yes, it is. My illustration above supports that it's increased solar activity. So our next question is.. why is there increased solar activity? and could THAT be something we should be more worried about?

I may just be waist deep in will-full ignorance, but I don't think global warming is going to be the death of us all -- and I certainly don't think it's a solid political argument for the democrats in any way.

Don't be too hard on me Shredder. I'm sure you'll find some flaw in my argument. ;D

 

i thought it was global farming?eh what do i know

 

I suggest reading over these sites carefully before getting too in depth on the subject here or anywhere.

Just to avoid ignorance, uneducated arguments, moronic statements, ect..

http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/evidenceforwarming.htm
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/vostok.html
http://polynya.gsfc.nasa.gov/seaice_projects_image_10.html

 

I think not. Despite this being controversial, I sincerely feel the heating of the Earth is a natural ''hot period''. Let us embrace this heat happily.

 

I believe that we are responsible for the sudden increase in temperatures and aren't doing much to change it.

 

They were measuring atmospheric CO2 concentrations before the bomb was tested. Anyway other isotope ratios weren't affected seemingly, and so there is much more recent and solid proof mentioned here:

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter1.pdf - see 1.3.1.

See above.

The Sun does have a net forcing effect, it is accounted for in GCMs. If the problem were solar activity, then the stratosphere would be warming, but in fact it has been cooling (as predicted by greenhouse gas theory) since at least the 1960s. Studies I've read have shown no correlation between cosmic rays and cloud formation, and discount the idea of variance in the 11-year cycle being the main cause of recent warming as absurd.

That link is for morons. It makes barefaced lies and many misleading claims, e.g:

Code:

Of the 186 billion tons of CO2 that enter earth's atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth's oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.

And approximately 180 billion tons of CO2 are absorbed each year... by growing plants and the earth's oceans. It's called the fricking carbon cycle. On the other hand, humans just emit CO2, and this CO2 has no sink in which to be absorbed - we are the ones who are disrupting the balance here.

The other links are alright though.

Water vapour is essentially a constant for the time frame we're looking at (last 200 years).

Also, please provide a link to where you got that image from with a source, it looks extremely questionable to me, especially since the graph on the right contradicts NASA GISS data.

 

No, they are not. Over 20,000 US scientists have said that Global Warming is not caused by humans.

 

No, over 20,000 people with degrees have said that global warming is not caused by humans. In a few years me and most of my classmates will be able to sign such a petition. Being a "scientist" doesn't stop you being an idiot who knows nothing about global warming.