Do You Have Any Doubts Regarding Global Warming?

I have a Masters Degree in research methodology and analysis. Only one thing tends to hold true in research, and that is that most if not almost all research is absolute garbage.

In order to write term-papers for my second masters degree, I had to be careful not to look too closely at the methods or analysis sections of articles on the topic of my paper, otherwise I would not have had any "valid" sources to refer to in my papers. The second masters degree included three "research" courses, and my fellow students were appalled and sometimes angry when the instructors called upon me to explain things to the instructors so that they would not be bothered to look it up, and the fellow students were embarrassed when I corrected the instructors when they said stuff that was inaccurate or wrong.

There is no way that the students from programs like that one can produce competent researchers.

PhD = Pure Hype in the Degree

Yeah. Heck yeah, I used to believe in that too.

Here...check out this website that's run by some really good scientists from Harvard-Smithsonian and professors from other prestigious institutes all over North America, www.friendsofscience.org. They really put up convincing and (reluctantly) UN Climate backed data that shows that Global Warming is natural and normal. They totally convince me that the cause of this natural temperature flucuation is the most simple source, the sun. For instance, for centuries, the sun has always intensified and weakened its radiation upon the earth, thus causing temperatures to change from century to century. During the 1400's, the Medieval Warming period took place, when temperatures were 3-4 degrees warmer than they are today! And after that during the 1700-1800's, we went through a little known Little Ice Age, when the temperatures dropped 1-2 degrees. Right now, we're only coming out of an ice age, so no wonder our temperatures are higher than they were 100-200 years ago. Which explains why they're still completely normal. And besides, in the sixties, when industry was reaching a peak, and carbon emissions were at an all time high, the temperature actually dropped! Scientists actually thought that we were going to go through another ice age. Yet, during the same time, the sun's rays weakened, thus proving that it was in direct correlation to the temperatures here on earth. So, to conclude, global warming isn't man-made, it's completely natural, caused by the sun.

First I'll address the problems with your doubts.

1) Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Its global warming potential has been measured, in fact it's been set to 1 so that the global warming potentials of all other molecules can be compared to that of CO2.

The fact that CO2 didn't initiate global warming in the past was because humans weren't burning massive amounts of fossil fuels and emitting huge amounts of CO2. When the planet warmed due to natural causes, the oceans eventually warmed to the level where they began to emit CO2 (carbon dioxide is less soluble in warmer water), which is why there was an 800 year delay before CO2 amplified the global warming.

Now there's no delay between CO2 and global temperature increase:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mauna_Loa_Carbo...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Te...

so the fact that in the past there was an 800 year delay is actually evidence that CO2 now probably IS causing global warming.

2) Yes if I recall correctly, humans emit about 8 billion tons of CO2 every year. However, there is A LOT of CO2 already in the atmosphere.

As for me, I have very little doubt that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming. The reason is summed up by this climate model plot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_...

I don't really have doubts, but my opinion could certainly be changed if new research came out with new evidence and concluded otherwise. Really the only possible alternative explanation is that cosmic rays hitting the Earth have increased over the past few decades and are responsible for more of the warming than we think. This is just speculation and has yet to be proven. Other than that, there's simply no explanation for the recent acceleration of global warming other than human greenhouse gas emissions.

Keith P's "trigger system" demonstrates the fallacy of the man made global warming fanatics. He believes that warming releases more CO2 and that more CO2 will create more warming, which will in turn release more CO2 and create more warming.

If this were true, temperature rise would grow exponentially, and would be impossible to stop. Yet we know that this is not happening now and has not happened in the past.

Temperature CO2 plots of past temperature rises show that indeed rising temperatures have caused more CO2 to be released into the atmosphere, but that increased CO2 has NOT caused further increases in temperature. In fact, historically all of those temperature rises have been followed by cooling periods. This is completely contrary to the alarmist view that more CO2 will cause more warming.

I've been studying it for quite a while too and the more I learn, the more it looks like humans have a negligible effect on climate changes. Also, it's very likely that our current temperatures are completely normal since we are actually cooler than we were in the 1930's. So warming might be just what we need. And who makes the decision of what a perfect climate is? Why should it not be getting warmer? The earth is actually more prosperous during slight warming spells.

That answers your other question. Since global warming increases the prosperity of the planet, there's added activity by the creatures that live on it, so the production of CO2 increases. So CO2 levels rise after the warming periods.

The GW nuts are trying to classify CO2 as a pollutant, when it is what the plantlife on this planet live on. Most of the layer of greenhouse gases that protect the planet from freezing at night is made up of water vapor, so I guess water will be considered a pollutant next.

It's sad that the education is so bad that people are willing to believe charlatans like Gore and Kennedy based completely on emotion instead of scientific facts.

Search for global warming on youtube and you'll find a lot of movies with the facts that expose Gore's movie for the lie it is. There's a test on this website that explains a lot...

The earth is a dynamic system, its always changing. We have no clue really how to forecast global weather more than just a few days or hour out. Why do you think anyone has the ability to give valid facts concerning global warming. There are so many smart people out there coming up with new theories every day. Theories about global warming, new stars, age of the earth, first child, ect. I think they are just a bunch of smart idiots. I cant wait to see the theory of the month. Kind of like favor of the month at the local ice cream store.

I will answer this the same way i answered a previous question. There is no such thing as global warming. CO2 cant hurt the atmosphere. Plants strive on CO2 and that is the reason crops have been doing so well over the years. If aything, the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is helping our planet. it can't possibly hurt it. think about what old Al says and then think about the obvious facts.

I don't doubt that global "climate change" is occurring. What I doubt is the extent to which Man has contributed to it. The world's climate has NEVER been static, and there is certainly ample evidence that we have faced even worse heating than we are experiencing now in the past...long before the Industrial Age.

So you are quite right to question the GW zealots claims. They are ready to go off half-****** in order to JUST DO SOMETHING and that attitude could easily lead to worse problems than what they are trying to "fix."

Rising temps in the ocean cause the ocean to emit more CO2, which causes the temperature to rise more, which releases more CO2 from the ocean, which causes the temperature to rise more. On the other hand, if the oceans cool, this allows them to absorb more CO2, which lessens the greenhouse effect, causing the oceans to cool more and absorb more CO2, and so on. This is called a "feedback" effect, and the climate system is full of them. All it takes is a small trigger to get a large feedback going. But that doesn't mean that CO2 doesn't cause warming -- quite the opposite.

In the case of ice ages and inter-glacial periods (as seen in ice cores), the triggers that start the ball rolling are small changes in the Earth's orbit called "orbital forcing." Since the Earth's orbit can be computed for thousands of years into the past and the future, we know that orbital forcing in the current inter-glacial period peaked 6000 years ago, and should be slowly cooling the planet right now.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/207...

Meanwhile, the evidence that the current warmth is human-caused is large and growing:

1. CO2 is increasing in the air at an exponential rate, with no sign of slowing down.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

2. The amount of CO2 in the air has increased 37% since the industrial revolution.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/...

3. This rise is caused entirely by human beings. Isotopic analysis of the CO2 in the air shows that it increasingly contains "old" carbon combined with "young" oxygen.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87

4. Natural climatic forcings can be ruled out as causes of the current warmth. Solar activity peaked in 1957-58, and has been unsteadily declining since that time.

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/solarda3.html

5. If the warmth is due to the greenhouse effect, we should see the stratosphere getting cooler as more heat is trapped at the surface. This is in fact exactly what we have seen. This also refutes non-GHG causes for the current warmth.

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/temp/sterin/sterin.ht...

In addition to the peer-reviewed science cited above, a good overview of the attribution evidence (including much more subtle statistical tests) can be found here:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_Ch0...

I invite you to compare the quality of sources cited in this answer with anything cited by GW skeptics. Then draw your own conclusions.

The current rise in CO2 levels (from 280 ppmv in 1800 to 383 ppmv today) results in a forcing effect of about 1.6 or 1.7 Watts per square meter of earth's surface.

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/222.htm#6...

Using a climate sensitivity factor of 0.5±.25 °C per Watt per square meter, that would imply that we should see a temperature increase of about 0.8±0.4°C from the CO2 we have emitted.

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/216.htm

The actual number is about 0.7°C, so this is right in line with predictions.

These people saying global warming ansl predicted a new ice age in the 60's and 70's