Global Warming. Fact or Fiction?

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Global Warming. It’s inevitable we are all going to fry or drown to death and it’s all our fault, right? Not necessarily. You may or may not be aware that there is another side to this issue. Arguments for the other side can be found in Patrick J. Michael’s Book “Meltdown”.

Or if you don't want to run all the way to the bookstore....

http://inhofe.senate.gov/pressreleases/climate.htm

This link contains a floor speech made by Us Senator James M. Inhofe on the issue of global warming. He is much better at making a clear argument than I am. So if you are interested in reading more about this I encourage you to check it out.

Inhofe received nearly $290000 from oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil, for his 2002 reelection campaign. If someone gave me that kind of money I might be tempted to ignore reality too.

Something in between. Because if CO2 levels go up we will have global warming. Its just the secondary prediction of the negative effects I tend to question.

uh.....global warming is happening....that's scientific fact.

with regards to the effects of it....that's still yet to be determined. but i'd say better to be safe than sorry....so let's go nuclear (power) now.

It should be phased more like Earth stable climate fact or fiction. Over Earths geologic history there have been many warming and cooling cycles. Right now we are just aggravating the problem making it worse. I do not believe we can stop it but perhaps slow it as much as we can and yes nuclear seems to be a good option much to many peoples dismay

Globel warming does seem to be true. It's causes I would say are a mix of fact, fiction and nature just being nature. You don't need to watch the world temp. very long to see a trend, no matter what the cause. And yeah there is enough fact, even if some is fiction, to mans affects to know we can at least slow it down some.

If defined as a trend for the average world temperarture to rise in recent decades, it is a fact, plain and simple. The evidence for it being caused by rising CO2 levels is pretty strong - not least the fact that minimum nighttime temperatures have risen in line with what would be expected from a stronger greenhouse effect rather than increased solar radiation. However, predictions for its consequences for local climates are largely guesswork.
Personally I think there are only two things that can make a long-term difference for the environment: birth control and technology (including nuclear).

The Senator is not the only one making that argument I just used him because he he brought up the major points. What irritates me the most about the Global warming stuff is that Nature alone produces more greenhouse gas on its own than we do in a year. A single forest fire creates enormous amounts of pollution and forest fires (whether started naturally or not) are an essential part of many ecosystems. So to blame climate changes on industrialized countries and to propose that we can do anything about it is borderline ridiculous. More irritating than that is how much of taxpayers money is being spent on it. Like it has been said before the Earth naturally goes through warming and cooling cycles and has been doing so long before factories, automobiles, and oil companies.

Think about the massive global warming that caused the end of the last Ice Age... we didn't cause that and what scientists are seeing now is nothing in comparison. Sure Ice caps are melting, but what they don't tell you is that they are mostly just melting along the coasts of places like Greenland while the ice is growing thicker towards the middle, and that glaciers and ice caps have been melting for a long time even during colder periods and we have yet to see any massive flooding from it.

The hype is mostly due to the fact that in the scientific community he who makes the biggest deal out of an issue obtains the most funding...which leads many to stretch and manipulate facts to make their issue look more important than it really is. Even some global warming scientists have admitted that they have made a bigger deal out of this than is truly necessary. Not to mention the fact that doom and gloom topics like global warming just plain make good news. I just get sick of all the doom and gloom reports that stem from global warming when most of those reports are either not proven or blatantly not true.

It also upsets me to think how much engine manufacturers and other companies are suffering due to ridiculous EPA standards that become more and more impossible to meet every year. We could be killing our economy over something we really can't do anything about. Basically, I think the whole thing is out of control. Even if the climate did warm significantly in the future, it is the basic nature of humans and all other creatures on Earth to adapt and if the days comes we will adapt same as we always have. So why worry about something we have little or no power to change?

There is no clear evidence that humans cause a significant amount of global warming, or even that unidirectional global warming exists. Remember, just a few decades back, people were up in arms about "global cooling"!

It never ceases to make me smile when people try and claim there's some huge conspiracy by environmentalists to try and penalise the honest taxpayer. After all, we all know that if you're concerned about the environment, that spares you completely from ever needing to buy petrol or electricity.

Global cooling is a red herring--despite the fevered media coverage, it never had much scientific credibility. http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/ has a fuller debunking of the "They were saying it was going to freeze, now they're saying it's going to overheat!" argument.

A big problem with the global warming issue in general is the tendency of the media to latch onto anything that casts a "new light" on the issue, and has a couple of advocates with no peer-reviewed research (who are more often than not being paid by the fossil fuels industry).

I think there is a problem with histrionic Day After Tomorrow style predictions (which almost always come from the media, not peer-reviewed scientific research), which end up making people jaded. But that is the nature of the media, sadly.

For anyone interested, this is the opinion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who are about as hard-nosed as you can get and held to extremely high standards of proof, often by governments who would very much like to keep things as usual and not spend more money. It's a bit of a weighty read.
http://www.ipcc.ch/

For some quick summaries of their conclusions:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6524325.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergover ... ate_Change

i wasn't around then but i've heard a lot about it.


i don't think we should ever rule out the possibility of us adding to a problem...even if it's a fraction of a percent...with how the smallest things can add to an exponential increase elsewhere, it'd be foolish to simply throw out all together that our contribution didn't do something.


think of it like a balancing act and right now we're pushing on it and offsetting the balance. the earth isn't exactly gonna overcompensate...because that isn't what the earth does...it compensates to get back to the middle. if we keep pushing, it will eventually result in a compensation that will adversely affect us....so...we need to study it more. there is a decent bit of evidence, though, to support the side that humanity has had influence in our current environmental situation. how much is yet to be determined, though.

I also think the poll options are misleading--"imminent and deadly" is a bit of an exaggeration. However, even lesser and undramatic effects (reduced rainfall, desertification, loss of coastal areas, iceberg coverage increasing, loss of fish stocks and aquatic habitats such as coral) could be very bad for huge numbers of people. I don't believe it's the sort of thing that can be addressed with a blithe "They'll sort something out!" or "We'll adapt to it!".

Honestly, a significant difference can be made even without significant lifestyle changes. Turning unused lights and appliances off would go a long way--I'm thinking of companies that leave their entire offices illuminated and the computers on standby all night long. Investing in alternative fuels is simple pragmatism--regardless of the carbon effects, fossil fuels are dirty, polluting, and increasingly expensive.

yeah...the way the choices were worded was quite...divisive.

Yep and back before that there was another global warming scare, and a few decades before that warming scare there was another cooling scare. But scientists who are out to make a name for themselves rarely look back in history to see if anything like this has ever happened before. They also like to completely ignore the evidence for a mini ice age back in 14th century Europe which many believe was part of the cause for the mass starvation going on at that time. We can learn a lot from History if we take the time to look at it.

Is the global climate on Earth getting warmer? Yes.
Are humans responsible? No.

Is the global climate on Mars getting warmer? Yes. (The Martian polar icecaps are shrinking.)
Are humans responsible? No.

If you believe humans are responsible for global warming on Earth, you better have a good explanation as to why humans are responsible for global warming on Mars too.

Fact. The climate is getting warmer naturally, and the high CO2 outputs are to blame for that . Not because of natural breathing, but because of high emissions from fossil fuel power stations, hydrocarbon engines, and factories. It's undeniable.

And the global warming on mars may be because of high carbon dioxide in Mars' atmosphere. It isn't related to global warming on earth, it's just a similar effect.

The fact is, human activity is accelerating the rate of global warming. It isn't the cause, but a catalyst.