What reason could there possibly be why most all scientists agree man made global warming is real?

I hear ya, this forum is blowing my mind. I have never seen such organized misinformation in my life anywhere except for intelligent design proponents. What profound arrogance does it take for a lay person to think they can come up with a 5 second answer that trumps mounds of peer reviewed science journal articles. "Its cold outside", "have you ever heard of the sun" etc.... I am hoping these are teenagers or children who have borrowed daddy's computer.

Follow the money (as the denialists say). The one's who have the most to lose are the one's with the loudest voices- the right wing pundits and talk show hosts who champion corporate interests. They feel incredibly threatened by all this and can't speak a sentence without mention "Al Gore" with disgust, as if Al Gore single handedly invented the idea of global warming and hypnotized thousands of free thinking scientists to believe him will nilly.

No, all you see on the flip side is ignorance, distractions, character assassinations and purposeful misinformation. Even right wingers like Thomas Friedman and Newt Gingrich have publicly declared that the right wing's pointless denial of AGW is going to end up hurting them.

Let us just pause to remember that the U.S. has some of the lowest, if not THE lowest science and math scores in the developed world. This is perfect fodder for propaganda. Their minds are easily susceptible.

Hi Bob, i noticed you don't say 99%. Good job. Later bro.

oh, here is a repost on the "Conspiracy Theory" thingie.

Oh my you finally brought up the “conspiracy theory” in a question. So where do I start? You are talking to the same crowd that usually does not believe in conspiracy theories. Let’s face it the good theories like “The Luna landing was faked” and “Kennedy was shot by multiple people” are already taken by the left side of the fence. Usually they are the ones that are a little radical on the left side. The ones on the side of the fence, that don’t believe global warming is man made, are quite a different crowd. They are usually a little conservative and closer to the middle of the road. Do we believe scientists? Yes. However this whole thing is being blown out of proportion by the press, politicians, and bureaucrats. Do any of them lie to us? Only when their lips are moving! The press loves this because bad news sells, the politicians have a great political forum and the bureaucrats need their jobs. Do they lie, not necessarily; they just propagate off each other. It is pretty common. Now too many people have jumped on this bandwagon. People get all emotional about the issue which propagates it further. We have proof in society that this happens, Just look at the McCarthy and his which hunts, Americans became crazy with the anti-communist propaganda. Or how about how George Bush worked up the American public after 9/11, every one was so ready to accept the Patriot Act that they never considered the consequences. He was able to ride that wave of Patriotism from Afghanistan right into Iraq. That, my friend, is what is going on here.

In 2003 two German environmental scientists, Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch conducted a survey of climatologists from all over the world. Bray is a research scientist at the GKSS Institute of Coastal Research in Geesthacht, Germany. Von Storch is a climatology professor at the University of Hamburg and director of the Institute of Coastal Research. More than 530 climate scientists from 27 different countries provided numerical answers each time the survey was conducted. All responses were anonymous.

The question “do you agree or disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic (man made) causes?” Slightly more than half (55.8 percent) of climate scientists surveyed agreed, 14.2 percent were unsure, and 30 percent disagreed. So it is not 99% as you have claimed in the past.

Of those that strongly agree only 9.4% strongly agree. In other words on 9.4% are of the opinion that AGW is a no brainer as you have also stated in the past.

It is important to note that the heatland institute did not commission this study. They are just interpreting the facts. If you think they are misleading in their interpretation please state so, and do not attack the heatland institute.

http://downloads.heartland.org/2086111.pdf

(Bob) I read the first link in part and got a little bored.I don't really want to split hairs...not my thing.I noticed they didn't included individual or self selected scientist.The assessment factors had a wide variability, so much as to make it pointless.That was just a scan and I didn't go into depth.

For the gist of your question I've always agreed with the awareness factor.This also means checks and balances need to be placed...no argument there.But I also know

explaining interactions will take more then man has to offer.

Edit:(1) Yes I will agree with one mad self proclaim scientist. "It is laughable". One simple request from the rest of us...Being that you have these God like powers and arrogance above reproach....why don't you just make another planet? I'll even make it simpler then that... create a blade of grass.

Edit:(2) This was directed at a poster and not you. I've read some really lame stuff from this individual.

Edit:(3) There's a lot of poster's that are confused about CO2 verses CO....big difference.

I wouldn't call it a no brainer it just happens to be the best explanation.. but does that actually make it so. There are good skeptic papers (very few and far between) and there are some AGW papers to hit home as well. This is the best theory at the moment, but I'm sure something else will come up in the near future that will propose a different cause that everyone else will jump to. I'm still not sold on the theory. Also you have to know that once a certain theory gets as much credit as the AGW theory then everyone has no choice but to jump on and agree. Especially politicians and world leaders, they definitely have to jump on board or face harsh criticism and possibly be forced to change there point of views. As far as the scientific organizations, well that must be there belief, but does it actually make it fact. There's plenty of unsolved mysteries in the scientific world, science changes everyday, one theory that you have believed to be right for centuries can be found to be incorrect in a blink of an eye. Also the problem with most scientist including myself, they can't fathom not knowing how something works, and there is still so much that we do not understand about the atmosphere and other physical aspects of the environment, that for once it may be in the best interest to say that GW at this time and age that some things just can't be explained. But for the sake of pollution and being environmentally friendly, we should adopt these green ways to save money and energy, but I'm not sold on it curving the temperature.

There are very few people that believe man has had no impact at all on global warming in the last few hundred years but this does not mean that without man's influence the planet would not have warmed anyway (probably to a lesser degree), it does not mean that CO2 is the only contributor and it does not mean that hybrid cars are the only answer.

Although most scientists agree that man has influenced GW, very few agree on their future temperature predictions, the amount of human influence and the steps to address the issue.

Ultimately the only reason to care about the cause of GW, is to identify the best solution. If we proved it was NOT caused by human influence we still wouldn't want to just sit here and cook!

I challenge your contention that "most scientists agree...." I have never seen a list of all scientists in the world showing how many believe in AGW and how many do not.

Of course, if you mean most scientists who are paid to study global warming and its effects, and/or to develop solutions to the "crisis", then I think it is pretty obvious why most of these would agree that it exists because if it didn't, they would be out of a job.

I think there's a great summary of the consensus here:

http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensus....

And I agree that the 3 possible explanation for this consensus among experts are

1) It is correct.

2) The scientific experts are dumb and wrong.

3) There is a vast worldwide conspiracy.

Let's examine these possibilities.

1) The scientific evidence supports this. Even if you don't trust the scientists, you can go into their papers and look directly at the evidence. The Achilles Heel of the skeptics is that they cannot explain the scientific data:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AiYUr...

They can't even put forth scientific data to support their own plausible alternative theories:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ApEBL...

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Av7Ys...

2) I've worked with scientists for about 10 years now, and have yet to meet a dumb one. Clearly the most intelligent answerers in this section (i.e. Trevor, gcnp, Keith, d/dx, myself, Bob) are scientists. It takes years of dedicated study and a sharp mind to get a PhD, and solid research to obtain grants. Scientists are clearly not dumb, and for laymen who have spent essentially zero time studying the science behind global warming to think they know better than the experts who have spent their lives studying the issue is beyond absurd and laughable.

3) Also beyond absurd and laughable.

Scientific studies are constantly checked and duplicated, so unless tens of thousands of scientists are all colluding to falsify data in the same manner (and even the skeptics don't make this claim, with the possible exception of the Mann graph, for which the criticism is poor analysis, not falsified data), this is simply impossible.

Even ignoring the fact that people go into the sciences not for the money, but for the desire to learn and discover new things. Even ignoring the fact that it's a scientist's job to gather and analyze data in an unbiased manner. Even ignoring that millions of people would have to be in on this conspiracy for it to work, and it would just take one dissenter to unravel it.

Even ignoring all that, all you have to do is examine the data which is readily available, and this conspiracy theory unravels like a cheap sweater.

Frankly, I don't care how many scientists think global warming is real or not. I can see for myself something is having an effect on the environment. Whether GW is the whole truth or not, it is raising awareness on how our actions have impact on the world around us.

And the smog alerts don't get any more real.

not only man is the reason for global warming even animals like cows they produce a lot of methane and if we look back it is true we started it and we should also end it we are the only ones who could solve the problem.

because they could be afraid of being exiled in the scientific community. There are probably more scientists that dont agree with it than we know. I wouldnt use the IPCC's claims of " 2500 scientists agree" because a majority of the arent actually scientists.

Its hard to say. I dont think they have all the info. They look at past measurements, and try to determine a correlation. But sometimes it doesnt stay that way.

Its like buying a stock in the stock market. You cant buy one that has been going up and up and up because it cant be too far off from going down. They really dont know what will happen in the future.

There isnt much evidence that it is actually getting warmer, other than melting ice ( but that doesnt prove WE are the cause). My guess is that the global averages are thrown off by the urban heat island effect. Urban areas radiate, and trap more heat because of the darker surfaces, and of course, the emissions in that area.

Its all because we have cities covering a large portion of the northern hemisphere.