Global Warming: True or a Hoax?

[NALs]

First and foremost, let's be clear that climate change of any sort affects everyone and every place on earth, including the DR; so this is on topic to be on DR1 and since its an environment issue, its on topic to be in the Environment forum.

Now to the point.

An interesting article was recently published by Newsweek magazine titled "The Truth About Denial" concerning the Global Warming agenda and how there are, supposedly, groups who are hell bent on doing anything to disprove this theory that has gained momentum in recent years.

I simply would like to hear the opinions of DR1ers concerning this, but first please read the follow two articles:

Newsweek in 1975: "The Cooling World"

Newsweek in 2007: "Global Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine"

My questions is this:

DO YOU TRUST NEWSWEEK, GIVEN THE HISTORY THEY HAVE OF PUBLISHING ARTICLES PREDICTING A DOOMSDAY SCENARIO?

DO YOU THINK GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL OR SIMPLY A FAD? PLEASE BRIEFLY EXPLAIN WHY?

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Click here to cast your vote.

-NALs

[DAKRA]

I beleive that there is SOMETHING going on.... After all of the fossil fuels that we are burning, the nuclear power we are using, the chemical that we are releasing into the air, SOMETHING is happening.

[A.Hidalgo]

Originally Posted by NALs

An interesting article was recently published by Newsweek magazine titled "The Truth About Denial" concerning the Global Warming agenda and how there are, supposedly, groups who are hell bent on doing anything to disprove this theory that has gained momentum in recent years.

Supposedly? Think tanks were named in the article. Just google a few and you will clearly see their conservative corporate ties.

DO YOU TRUST NEWSWEEK, GIVEN THE HISTORY THEY HAVE OF PUBLISHING ARTICLES PREDICTING A DOOMSDAY SCENARIO?

I don't particularly read mainstream mags like Newsweek, but they do print interesting articles now and then. In the first article dated 1975, I think they went a bit over the top. Hyping the story helps to attract someones attention and sell more of the magazine. In the magazines defense, the data given by the National Center for Atmospheric Research was the best data at the time and the cooling trend was a reality. The following quote from the NCAR explains why that was so.

As industrial activity increased following World War II, sun-blocking sulfates and other aerosol emissions helped lead to a slight global cooling from the 1940s to 1970s.

Climate Change and Global Warming - Present: Earth is Warming

The greenhouse effects started to be detected in the 80's according to scientific data.

DO YOU THINK GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL OR SIMPLY A FAD? PLEASE BRIEFLY EXPLAIN WHY?

Global warming is real because I had a dream were God spoke to me.

Kidding...its real because of this.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

[Chirimoya]

Most scientists agree that the climate is changing.The debate is about whether it is a just part of a natural pattern or whether it is caused by humans.

Nuclear power has never been cited as a cause, which weakens the argument about 'man'-made global warning being part of an anti-capitalist, neo-luddite agenda.

However, I am interested in hearing both sides of the argument because as a non-scientist, how do you know which side to believe?

[heldengebroed]

I believe that we are withnessing a change in climate. Which way i don't know. I've heard arguments in favour of both ways. But here is a thought; the CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels causes the changes (nutshell statement). Where did this CO2 originated from? nature...

Other thing: i recently came past an official metreologic mesuring post. Haven't been there for 20 years or so. 2 years ago it wa beside a small road in the mids of nowhere. only locals and tanks( yes tanks) used that road. Now the same station is in a develloped area. with a bussy road nearby and the opposit of the road is filled with houses. Don't uyou think that this will effect mesurements?
Both points make me rather sceptic to the doomsday scenario's.

...but then again i'm no scientist

Greetings

Johan

[mart1n]

When you look for evidence on a certain subject you will find proof that it exist. Scientist disregards any fact that does not prove they point. So if you look for global warming you will find proof and if you look for proof that global warning doesn’t exist your will find that. The history is full of scientific mistakes and some of the leading scientists have been proved wrong through time. They is an interesting movie call 23.

[Chris]

Follow the money. The scientists that are arguing for global warming have nothing to lose, excepting their jobs. The ones that argue against global warming invariably on the payrolls of big oil or big mining or big something or other. A further issue here is that just too many scientists in too many disciplines (climate, oceanography, etc) are saying that they were muzzled and not allowed to present their research -- in order not to panic people.

From about two years ago, the fact of global warming was established beyond a shadow of a doubt. Actual records show that for the past 50 years or so, the warming trend has sped up greatly. This was done through the convergence of large sets of data, looking at the ecological impacts. So, climate scientists put their numbers through the models that we have today for predicting weather as there is nothing else to really measure the impact of the changes.
The fact is that there are climatic changes, staggering changes.

There is however great uncertainty about the effects of these climate changes.
There is great uncertainty about what to do.

We'd be fools not to be quite skeptical about anyone and everyone in this field as we've already seen scientists being muzzled by governments. Quite frankly, I'd rather be 'panicked' and know the facts than to be left in the dark like a mushroom.


The debate still raging is whether the global warming pattern is man-made, or as a result of long term earth climatics.

Either way we are in trouble, because the climatic changes are factual. The historical numbers are real and the methods used to extract these numbers have been with us for at least 50 years. It is not the facts to global warming that is at question, it is the prediction to further climatic and planetary pattern changes and effects that is the problem. No-one has done this before.

Facts
The glacier ice is melting.
Sea salinity is decreasing because of this.
Seas are rising.
Sea temperatures in the North is increasing.
Sea creatures and smaller stuff like plankton show migrating patterns to areas that they've never been before to escape warming waters.
The permafrost is melting both North and South.
Large lakes of water that has served mankind for hundreds of years is drying up.
The groundwater is decreasing in many places.
There is not yet sufficient evidence that the crazy storms that we've seen in the past number of years is as a result of anything else but long-term cyclical patterns. The eminent Western scientist in the field is now devoting himself to studying this.

Perhaps mankind is industrializing ourselves out of existence.
Perhaps the planet is undergoing some kind of normal cyclical change. Perhaps it is man made, perhaps not. Again, that does not matter as we are in trouble any way you look at it, because the climatic changes are real and factual.

Anyway, we can sit on our duffs and debate for years, or we can take one thing out of the equation to verify at least something. If we reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere, will this trend reverse, or not? This is about the only aspect that we (mankind) have control over. Other than that, a new business opportunity soon will be to grow oranges in New York! (For the non US savvy amongst us, this is a joke ... oranges are generally grown in Florida and California)

[AnnaC]

I stopped using hairspray 30 years ago so it can't be me.

But seriously I think the earth is changing and rapidly but my instincts say it's not due to anything we humans have contributed to. I do think that the global warming scare tactics are doing great things for the quality of our air & water though.

Forcing factories to clean up their act and the controlling of polluters have done some good in the control of air and water qualities. Can you imagine the mess we'd be in if that haven't taken place.

We now have mandatory testing of car emissions every two years ( at least in Ontario) .


Is global warming a hoax. I don't think so, it's going to hit a high of 33 degree celsius today. Do I think we humans contributed to it? I think not

[sjh]

First: the trend pattern showing CO2 levels and climate temperature is very very clear and well documented over something like 300,000 years.

Right now CO2 levels are so high that we have never seen anything close to these levels EVER. Comparing the chart to the start of human industrial activity over time makes it clear that something we are doing is causeing the rise in CO2 (burning carbon)

Second: stop looking at the temperature outside. This means nothing. The average temperature of the earth may only change by 2-3 degrees. This change still would have catastrophic effects on the planet.

Local temperatures may actually drop in some areas and rise in others. I am so sick of idiots in the media confirming/denying global warming everytime we hit a hot/cold spell. Chances are the temperature change will occur and global catastrophy will be inevitable BEFORE you are able to feel the change in your local climate.

Third: we really dont know what will happen during and after global warming. There are many interesting and conflicting theories out there. What is fairly certain is that water levels will rise. Some theories pretty massive hurricane like storms, others predict a new ice age would quickly follow.

Fourth: At the time of the ice age the sea level was 75 or more feet lower than now. Evidence of cave dwelling humans liveing in locations well below sea level is well documented. In the 1700's Europe was in a mini ice age. Paintings during the time routinely show people skating on rivers that never freeze today. The Neopoleonic wars and Revolutionary war in the US were fought during this period and the winters were the cause of tremendous loss of life.

In conclusion: Our planet is undergoing constant climate change. Ice age/warm age comes and goes every 10-50 thousand years. These minor temperature changes cause major climatic change. The best fit data shows CO2 levels are a excellent preindicator of temperature change. We are dumping CO2 into the atmosphere at unprecidented levels and reducing the planets ability to metabolise it at a period of time when the global temperature is rising at unprecidented rates.

This is a formula for disaster.
Only people working for Big oil/coal deny what is happening.

[Rafael Rothschild]

All the claims about human activities being responsible for Global Warming are only theories.

Everyone involved in a debate or discussion about GW, should learn about the ICE AGES, how are they produced and how it affects the climate in our planet.

AN INTERPLAY OF CELESTIAL EFFECTS
The first step toward the astronomical theory of the ice ages was taken 2,000 years ago, when the Grek astronomer Hipparchus discovered that the earth wobbles like a top as it whirls through space. By the end of the 19th Century, astronomers had described in detail three critical ways in which the earth's position in space and its orbit around the sun changes in response to the gravitational tugs of sun, moon and planets.
The first, Hipparchus' discovery, is called axial precesion. The second is tilt (an ever changinf angle between the earth axis and the plane of the planet's orbit around the sun. The third factor is the eccentricity, or varying shape, of the orbit itself, which ranges from nearly circular to a pronounced ellipse.
Between 1912 and 1941, mathematician Milutin Milankovitch performed exhaustive calculations to show how all of these factors (precesion, tilt and eccentricity) could cause changes in the intensity of summer sunshine extreme enough to explain the recurrence of ice ages. Extensive geological evidence discovered since Milankovitch's time confirms the impact of these celestial cycles on the earth's climate.

THE 100,000-YEAR STRETCH
The orbit of the earth gradually stretches from nearly circular to an elliptical shape and back again in a cycle of approximately 100,000 years. During the cycle, the distance between earth and sun varies by as much as 11 million miles.

THE 41,0000-YEAR TILT
The earth's axis is never perpendicular to the plane of its orbit; over the course of about 41,000 years the angle varies between 21.5 and 24.5 deegres. Because of the tilt, the solar radiation striking any point on earth fluctuates during the yearly orbit, producing seasons. When the tilt is greatest, summers are hotter, winter are coldest.

THE 22,000-YEAR WOBBLE
Even while the shape of its orbit and the tilt of its axis are changing, the earth wobbles slowly in space, its axis describing a circle once every 22,000 years. Because of this movement known as axial precesion, the distance between the earth and the sun in a given season slowly changes. Today, for instance, the shape of the orbit places the planet closest to the sun in the Northern Hemisphere's winter and farthest away in summer.

Ice ages could last thousands of years, while it is also possible to experience mini ice ages, lasting a few hundred.

We can add to the above reality, any theory we want, involving, tectonic plate movements, volcanic eruptions, human activities, etc, etc...but up to date they are just that: only theories.

We should pay attention to the natural violence of the universe, and its lack of romanticism to "freeze the image" as we would like it to be.

For those who claim the the oceans will raise a few feet en the next few years..... I have news for you: You better move inland, because it's been happening for millions of years.