Do I have the facts straight about AGW?

The earth is getting warmer because of the sun's activity. It's warmer because of volcanoes. It's just part of the natural cycle. It's actually not getting warmer, it's getting cooler. The climate is not changing at all. It's all a government scam to control us. It's a religion. Science is all fake and the activities of man can't have any affect on something as big as the earth.

Dana19812009-07-11T09:58:46Z

Favorite Answer

Yeah you got most of them, but you missed a few.

Warmer is better. Plants grow better in an environment with more CO2.

Cloud feedbacks are going to prevent the planet from warming too much, even though they haven't in the past.

Solving global warming is too expensive to be worthwhile.

We don't emit enough CO2 to make a difference.

CO2 is insignificant when compared to water vapor.

Good list though, you got most of the major "facts".

LARRY S2009-07-11T17:41:37Z

Nobody has the facts straight about AGW. One side can list their fact sources from scientists, and governments, and then the other side can also list their scientific and government sources. We should "all" simply be the best stewards of our planets resources and hope for the best. There are many hundreds of millions more of us on Earth than there were a few decades ago. More people means more resources used. Of the carbon based resources used, maybe it is changing our climate some. Several billion of us simply farting once each day puts quite a lot of methane into the atmosphere. Try to catalog that, and put it into scientific terms. What about the days we fart twice ? What if I use 3 minutes of hot water today, but tomorrow, I take a 5 minute shower ? How can anybody measure it ? Politicians find AGW a good soap box to stand upon and figure out ways of controlling us more and more tightly, and trying to make us pay higher taxes for it all. Why don't they put a tax on new births ? I will cite no references for my opinions, because as I believe, there are as many pros as there are cons to this issue. Your references, scientific, and governmental, can be listed based on your own personal beliefs about the issue.

eric c2009-07-11T03:32:43Z

"The earth is getting warmer because of the sun's activity". Over the past 50 years sun activity levels were at a 1000 year high. Now that the sun is entering a period of very inactivity we will find out how big of a role the sun plays.

"It's warmer because of volcanoes." I do not know of any skeptic that says that.

"It's just part of the natural cycle." The earth has been warming and cooling for billions of years without the help of man. It has never stayed the same. Any influence of the sun is part of a natural cycle.

"It's actually not getting warmer, it's getting cooler." Yes while the earth was warming during the past couple of years we have entered a cooling trend.

"The climate is not changing at all." The climate changes all of the time. get used to it.

"It's a religion." For a small minority of people, environmentalism has become a religion.

"Science is all fake". The notion that the science is settled is fake.

"It's all a government scam to control us." For some yes.

"“For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance,” Chirac explained. “From the very earliest age, we should make environmental awareness a major theme of education and a major theme of political debate, until respect for the environment comes to be as fundamental as safeguarding our rights and freedoms. By acting together, by building this unprecedented instrument, the first component of an authentic global governance, we are working for dialogue and peace,” Chirac added.

"Former EU Environment Minister Margot Wallstrom said, "Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide."

"A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources,” said Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth."

" Former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth reportedly said, "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."

campbelp20022009-07-11T09:25:35Z

No you don't. Except possibly the natural cycles. That refers to temperature though, not CO2. The temperature changes we have seen (if we have even seen any!) are very small and possibly natural variation. The CO2 change is large, fast, and clearly unnatural. And if it keeps going up at an increasing rate we may see larger temperature changes that are clearly not part of a natural cycle. But as Al Gore and others have pointed out, the temperature change, so far, is so little as to be invisible.

Ben O2009-07-11T00:51:29Z

Skeptics tend to be more logical than that. Nobody is claiming that volcanoes cause warming. The point that some skeptics make is that volcanoes produce CO2. Whether it's getting warmer or colder depends on your time frame. It's warmed over the last 100 years and cooled over the last 10.

There is an element of science in AGW in that some scientists have speculated that human activity may be causing the Earth to significantly warm although they do not have a complete theory and their hypothesis is not a good fit to real world data.

Show more answers (6)