Global warming & abrupt climate change - Fact or fiction?
Answers:
Yes, good answer nomark. Where did you get that from?
I read a piece in the Telegraph today. Have a look at the web version.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jht. It makes for very interesting reading!
What I hear said about the whole climate change debate leaves me with two prevailing thoughts;
Firstly, that there certainly appears to be enough doubt about what's going on that it seems to me it would be insane to spend billions of pounds on the problem at this stage.
And second, the people who are trying to convince us that it's a big problem are frequently giving us "facts" that are at best misleading and possibly blatant lies. If global warming is such a "fact", why do they need to lie to us to try to convince us?
A classic example is Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." I've only seen the trailer for the film, but even that had me rolling my eyes when I was faced with him talking about the melting icecap of Mount Kilimanjaro as proof of the consequences of climate change. But this has nothing to do with Global Warming! It's caused by deforestation of the mountain's foothills. Now, either Al Gore didn't know this, so he's a moron (which I don't believe), or he's deliberately lying to us, because it sounds plausible - and he's hoping no one bothers to check his "facts"!
Another example is the now famous "hockey stick" graph that was produced by the UN and seems to show very clearly a sharp rise in temperatures in the last century. When I first saw it I immediately thought to myself "Hang on, wasn't it warmer in the Middle Ages than it is now? Where's that warm period on this graph?" It was quite a while before I found out what had happened. The UN had "massaged" the software that produced the graph to get rid of the warm period, because it spoiled what they wanted their graph to look like!!
In fact, it turns out that they massaged the software so much that if you put completely random figures into it, you still get a hockey stick graph as a result!! Have a look at the link above and there's a graphic showing the UN's graph and another without the UN "massaging".
And recently things are getting somewhat darker. Since the sceptics are doing rather too good a job at creating doubt, the "doomsday harbingers" as you describe them are now trying to censor those sceptics. Some have even suggested that it be made *illegal* to speak out against Global Warming!! Frankly, that kind of talk scares me far more that Global Warming does!
i asked a similar q. i dont beleive in it.
Global warming is a natural phenomenon, however, the earth has never seen a warming like this. Man is speeding up the natural rate of progression
It is a fact, read Al Gore, Arnie Schwarzenegger on the subject,
for your information Al Gore is Tony Blair‘s consultant on the
this matter and, apparently all three are in constant contact on
what and how to go about the problem.
Global Warming - fact.
Whether there will suddenly be a dramatic change, like the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" is another matter.
It could be interesting if it does happen all at once.
It is Fact since, the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The Bible talks of this. True.
seems to me that the earth warms up and cools down over great periods of time, only 10,000 years ago most of the planet was iced in, even now we are still recovering from such a event so things will get warmer, if man made events are speeding this up is prob true but I would think it was a mix of man and nature. of course taking better care of the planet we live on would help not just climate change but a better place to live for all.
Silly fabricated fiction invented by ignorant fools to get even more ignorant and more foolish noobs to vote for them.
fact
the government will wave the green flag in one hand and take your money with the other.. so i think it is fiction. but a very good way to get your dosh. YOU HAVE TO PAY IF YOU POLLUTE. what a load of bull.
The Earth is going through a cycle of warming.
Although I'm against pollution, Man's contribution to global warming is almost negligible 97% coming from natural sources.
So called Green taxes are therefore a con and are just another excuse to take your money!
Fact, here in the uk it has never been so hot and people will just remain ignorant until it is to late, and then start blaming other people because nobody did anything about it, but we are all guilty. People think i am crazy beacuse I am 30 and have never learnt how to drive because I don't want to add to pollution and I can honestly say I have never really needed to drive about everyday, (and I'm not fat because I can't be bothered to walk to the shop!), but i do like to travel so my plane flights are helping to spew out a load of gunk, but it's not juts global warming we need to worry about, we are over fishing the seas which will eventualy break the food chain in the oceans which will then in turn mean species will start dieing out which then in turn leads to poorer quality water and costal damage. If you think about the amount of money inviolved in oil, coal, cars, nuclear power and then look at qwho exactly sponsors us presidental campaigns then its easy to see why it just carrys on, Mr Bush isn't going to say thanks for giving me millions of dollars to sponsor my election campaign I'm now going to pass law to make life harder for you and stop you making as much money. But there money isn't going to help them when it all goes **** up
Fact - it's been a concern for the last 30 years. Where have you been? .or maybe you're just a child?
A load of tosh. Mother Nature has been dealing with the ups and downs of climate change for millions of years with no problem. 20 goevrnment reports so far with dire warnings but oddly no action-now they want to tax us for something that may never happen-scary.It opens up a real Big Brother scenario of taxes against things that may occur one day in THEIR opinion. We are on a dangerous course.... but not fron the climate.
Definitely! Blame the skangers
global warming may or may not be a fact. the theory is based on rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. actually though i have done a little research on the subject. between 1880 and 2000 the global temperature has actually only risen about a third of a degreee Celsius. the whole time the carbon dioxide levels have been rising. the funny thing is tha between 1940 and 1970, even the carbon dioxide was rising, the temperature actually FELL. you be the judge
Even if you want to completely disbelieve that global warming is true, we do have limited fossil fuels, we are very inefficient at the way we use them, and could save oursolves money by taking steps to reduce our CO2 emmsions.
Check out this short film on YouTube narrated by Clive Anderson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kloors-jj.
Definitely fiction. Governments love it as it's a good excuse to create new taxes and to interfere in and control people's lifestyles.
So, greenhouse is all about carbon dioxide, right?
Wrong. The most important players on the greenhouse stage are water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide has been increased to about 0.038% of the atmosphere (possibly from about 0.028% pre-Industrial Revolution) while water in its various forms ranges from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere and its properties vary by what form it is in and even at what altitude it is found in the atmosphere. In simple terms, however, the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total greenhouse effect. The remaining portion comes from carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and miscellaneous other "minor greenhouse gases." As an example of the relative importance of water it should be noted that changes in the relative humidity on the order of 1.3-4% are equivalent to the effect of doubling CO2.
Well, I heard that carbon dioxide is bad -- it's pollution, isn't it?
There seem to be a few things that your informant forgot to tell you -- like carbon dioxide being an essential trace gas that underpins the bulk of the global food web. Estimates vary, but somewhere around 15% seems to be the common number cited for the increase in global food crop yields due to aerial fertilization with increased carbon dioxide since 1950. This increase has both helped avoid a Malthusian disaster and preserved or returned enormous tracts of marginal land as wildlife habitat that would otherwise have had to be put under the plow in an attempt to feed the growing global population. Commercial growers deliberately generate CO2 and increase its levels in agricultural greenhouses to between 700ppmv and 1,000ppmv to increase productivity and improve the water efficiency of food crops far beyond those in the somewhat carbon-starved open atmosphere. CO2 feeds the forests, grows more usable lumber in timber lots meaning there is less pressure to cut old growth or push into "natural" wildlife habitat, makes plants more water efficient helping to beat back the encroaching deserts in Africa and Asia and generally increases bio-productivity. If it's "pollution," then it's pollution the natural world exploits extremely well and to great profit. Doesn't sound too bad to us.
But we're responsible for all the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect?
Gracious no! Humans can only claim responsibility, if that's the word, for abut 3.4% of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere annually, the rest of it is all natural (you can see the IPCC representation of the natural carbon cycle and human perturbation here or a simple schematic from Woods Hole here). Half our estimated emissions fail to accumulate in the atmosphere," "disappearing" into sinks as yet undetermined. Humans' total accumulated carbon contribution could account for perhaps 25% of the total non-water greenhouse gases (that is, accounting for all the increase since the Industrial Revolution regardless of source and irrespective of whether warming from any cause might result in an increase in natural emission to atmosphere -- we're simply claiming the lot as anthropogenic or human-caused here).
Clarification June 4: the mention of 25% of total non-water greenhouse effect above and the following mention of 2.5% of total greenhouse effect has confused a few readers, leading to some e-mails suspecting one or the other to be a typographical error. The figures are correct. Recall that water vapor accounts for about 70% and clouds (mostly water droplets) accounts for another 20%, thus water in it's various forms is 90% of the greenhouse effect, leaving 10% for non-water greenhouse effect. Of this remaining 10%, mainly atmospheric carbon, humans might be responsible for 25% of the total accumulated atmospheric carbon, thus 0.25 x 0.1 = 0.025 x 100 = 2.5% of the total greenhouse effect.
Ah, we've added 2.5% to the total greenhouse effect then?
Not exactly, if it were such a simple accumulation, we could easily determine exactly how much Earth would warm from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 (not much) and certainly that would be an improvement on the silly figures bandied about. Theoretically, in a dry atmosphere, carbon dioxide could absorb about three times more energy than it actually does, as could clouds in the absence of all other greenhouse gases -- look at it as there already being "competition" for available suitable longwave radiation (energy these gases can absorb), if you like. Readers should be aware that the temperature effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide is logarithmic (that means there is a diminishing response as you keep adding more, like the additional window shade example, above). If we consider the warming effect of the pre-Industrial Revolution atmospheric carbon dioxide (about 280 parts per million by volume or ppmv) as 1, then the first half of that heating was delivered by about 20ppmv (0.002% of atmosphere) while the second half required an additional 260ppmv (0.026%). To double the pre-Industrial Revolution warming from CO2 alone would require about 90,000ppmv (9%) but we'd never see it - CO2 becomes toxic at around 6,000ppmv (0.6%, although humans have absolutely no prospect of achieving such concentrations).
If that's all the anticipated greenhouse effect, where do the big warming estimates come from?
Ah, this is where it gets rather contentious because the big warming numbers come not from measurements but from computer models. These computer models and their output are passionately defended by the modeling clique and frequently derided by empiricists -- but the bottom line is that models make an enormous range of assumptions. Whether all the assumptions, tweaks and parameter adjustments really collectively add up to a realistic representation of the atmosphere is open to some conjecture (current climate models do not model "natural" climatic variation very well), but there is no evidence yet that they can predict the future with any greater certainty than a pack of Tarot cards. Moreover, humans do a lot besides emitting greenhouse gases, changing vegetation and transpiration rates through agriculture, for example, and many effects expected to both increase and decrease regional temperatures are not included in these models.
Regardless, climate models are made interesting by the inclusion of "positive feedbacks" (multiplier effects) so that a small temperature increment expected from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide invokes large increases in water vapor, which seem to produce exponential rather than logarithmic temperature response in the models. It appears to have become something of a game to see who can add in the most creative feedback mechanisms to produce the scariest warming scenarios from their models but there remains no evidence the planet includes any such effects or behaves in a similar manner.
i thought the idea on this thing, was you ask, we answer,
not you ask, then answer yourself.
seems to me youve said it son!
It's a fact.
Local warming is obvious; that's the phenomenon you get in towns & cities where the temperature is higher (therefore less snow, smog gets trapped by 'temperature inversions' etc)because there are so many sources of heat in a small area.
With so many cities round the globe doing this local warming, the whole planet is bound to heat up. Simple as that.
People said that the smoking issue was 'scaremongering', and they said the same about Lead in the atmosphere, and about Phosphorus and Asbestos and DDT and Thalidomide and CJD.
Wake up, grow up, and take some responsibility for the damage caused by your luxurious western lifestyle!
Global warming, eart cycle? Instead of blaming ourselves shouldn’t we look if earth isn’t heating from inside? We know that global worming did happen several times before. It always appears 10 years before ice age. Also we know that earth poles where moved many times. If we add that fact together, we can be at the door to new ice ages. Earth’s crust is wobbling on the earth core, that's way pole isn’t a pinpoint, but a circle. More wobble, more heat is generating, until the point when it shift in to smooth spin, when crust start spinning same speed as core, also theirs shafts will align. [Mayas lived true something similar; they fall down on heir side] The heat will be no more generated and ice will start grove on bough poles. Our earth has longer periods of ice age, then worm claimed. Is more natural for earth be icy, our whether is only brake between ice ages. Get your coat folks!! Or we all move to Sahara! I wrote this on US yahoo, i know here we are mor openminded. :-)
FICTION . Wasn't it 18 year ago that Ted Danson was spouting off that our oceans would all be dead in 10 years if we didn't clean them ?
This is nothing more than liberal extremists trying to keep people poor and ignorant and ultimately dependent on communism .
The answers post by the user, for information only, UKQnA.com does not guarantee the right.