Atheists, what are your opinions on Global Warming/Climate Change?

I try to follow the science, which can be difficult in such a politicized issue.

From what I can see, it's not looking good.

Some common misinformation keeps making its way out. The "10 year cooling trend" is a common one. 1998 was an anomally. El Nino caused unusual warming. The overall trend is still up. Using an anomolous data point to start will yield less than representative results.

Another is the "CO2 follows warming". This is true. Increased CO2 is a feedback of a warming atmosphere. This does not preclude CO2 from being a contributor. On the contrary, CO2 is a cause and a feedback, thus the difficulty in predictions for future climates. CO2 will be greatly increased as tundra thaws, the oceans will reach their maximum absorption rate, etc. Climate models are useful, but not totally accurate.

Past warming cycles is brought up a lot, as well. Warming can be caused by many things. There is some good, though incomplete, information showing WHY there was warming in the past. This bit of information is not ignored by climatologists, nor does it mean what we are experiencing now is normal or shares a source from past cycles.

I think it's far, far, far, far past time we stopped arguing about whether or not it's occurring at this moment (especially since all the evidence shows it is), and whether or not it's anthropogenic (because, ultimately, does it matter a jot whether or not it's man-made?), and started actually figuring what we're going to DO when it does occur.

It's happened before - with or without man's help. It WILL happen again. The notion of there ever having been a stable climate is pure fantasy - the geological record shows massive fluctuations in climate in the past - both much warmer and much colder than it is now.

Eventually, the climate will shift again. Either up or down, doesn't matter. It's going to affect us.

In the past, most people lived in small villages, or roving nomadic tribes, and major climatic shifts simply meant they moved.

Today, we have BILLIONS of people living along coastlines all around the world. Just a simple localized event like Katrina shows what kind of chaos just a little blip in sea levels can wreak.

Imagine what happens if every coastal city all over the world, from New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, and Cairo to Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney and Vladivostok all go Katrina at the exact same time.

No one - no government, no civilian agency, no one has any kind of plan of what to do when that occurs. And it will. Mainly because they know we don't have the resources to do anything about it, and basically we're all f***ed when it happens.

But at least the governments could admit that the problem exists.

I'm not concerned about it.

I think humans are partly to blame for some of it, but I honestly think that it's mostly natural changes in the environment. Are so many humans so stupid that they really believe only 150 years (and not even that) of modern industry has changed the environment? Apparently so. The climate has changed many times in the course of history, and humans have not been on this earth long enough to determine whether or not we created this current climate change. For all we know it could simply be a natural change. If today's modern media was around before the ice age I wonder what excuses they would have come up for that. The environment will not stay the same forever, and anyone who thinks it should is delusional.

I think the global warming paranoia is an example of what happens when people believe everything the media tells them. As soon as Al Gore started flying around on his private jet to hold conventions on global warming, the media went all over it, and that's when people started to become paranoid about it, and then came the movies like "Day After Tomorrow" showing the destruction of major coastal cities, then came the "environmentally friendly" products at the store which cost twice as much as regular ... so I think it's mostly paranoia fueled by the media and by major corporations that are trying to capitalize on that paranoia by selling "environmentally friendly" products at high costs to make a profit.

Strange that some of the responses are against it when Americas own government have records showing clearly an increase in global temperature.

U.S. Government National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming....

The only debate is why.

Regardless of whether human activity is to blame for the increase in global temperatures, the removal of pollutants from the atmosphere that are caused by humans can only be a good thing.

I'm agnostic, but not about climate change. The evidence is in; the vast majority of climate scientists are mostly in agreement over it; and it's time to take action on the problem. According to the people who research this stuff, we have very little time left to make big changes necessary to head off future disasters. All that being said, climate change obviously is very complicated subject, because the climate and weather system of the planet Earth are extremely complex in themselves. There are many different natural factors that have influenced the warming and cooling of Earth over the past 3.5 billion years, and obviously humans have had nothing to do with some of them. But ONE of the many factors that influences global climate is the concentration of "greenhouse" gases such as CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. And thanks to the past 300 years of industrial growth powered by coal and oil, human beings have greatly increased the concentration of CO2 -- the leading greenhouse gas -- thus potentially warming the climate. We've also apparently caused a big jump in the average concentration of methane, a less- common greenhouse gas even more powerful than CO2. Thanks in large part to our expansion of agricultural production, and especially livestock grazing and paddy rice cultivation, global methane concentrations have risen greatly in the last century. If we now melt the permafrost of Alaska, Canada & Siberia, thus turning the Arctic region into a big swamp and releasing more methane, "Greenhouse" warming may accelerate more. The human actions that have resulted in growing concentrations of CO2 and methane -- and our production of some artificial "greenhouse" gases as well - - is one main factor driving global climate change, and most scientists agree that we're driving it in a dangerous way. Another factor influencing global climate is the reflectiveness or "albedo" of the atmosphere, oceans and earth's surface. Basically, the brighter things are, the more sunlight they reflect into space, regardless of how many greenhouse gases are present in the air. The darker that earth, sea and sky become, OTOH, the more they absorb incoming sunlight and turn it into heat, instead of reflecting it. Well, natural volcanic activity and low-lying air pollution has the ability to make the atmosphere more reflective by putting dust and sulfur dioxide droplets into the air -- which cools things down. But when surfaces covered by ice and snow melt, revealing darker colored land or water underneath, the planetary system reflects less light. Then earth, sea and sky absorb more solar energy, and that gets converted into heat that can warm the climate. This is one of the big risks with the melting of Arctic sea ice and mountain glaciers underway today. As bright ice & snow give way to darker colored waters and mountainsides, the warming of the planet that's already being driven by "greenhouse" gases is likely to accelerate because of the albedo effect -- because of the melting of the snow and ice. Some scientists fear the extra feedback from snow and ice melting could trigger push the planet passed a so-called tipping point, triggering "runaway" global warming that is so accelerated that humans won't be able to rein it in. The bottom line is that climate change is complicated, and we still probably don't have all the details right, yet we need to curb "greenhouse" gas emissions ASAP and think about the albedo problem, too. Some of our climate problems may not be man-made, as you suggest. But enough of them ARE man-man that we know we need to change directions now, or leave a global meltdown for our children.

There is no question that the Global Temperature has raised from a Scientific Worldview and that it may continue to raise.

The questions come when you consider the causes, the effects, and the tenure of this warming.

I've had a hard time making heads or tails out of all the research, but I can at least believe lower emissions can do nothing but good.

What brought home the potential extent of fuel emissions for me is this article about ethylated lead poisoning from fuel emissions: http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=932

The guy who created the lead additive seemed to be on a personal mission to destroy our atmosphere. It's the same guy who invented CFC propellants.

There's also a hero scientist who discovered the lead poisoning in the atmosphere while he was trying to determine the age of the Earth.

agnostic-

like with all things , our human knowledge of a bigger picture is Limited at best . I'd say even if global warming is Hype(d) ,that it is misguided in the Right direction .

the ideas that "all this belongs to Us" and the shunning of our part in biodiversity is why shi+'s messed up today.

western Industrial revolutionary Mishap lies squarely on the back the christian Mindset imho, we can start dismantling /repairs there.

'quote' God b less "And the industrialization of ALL species has caused it."

It is quite real, and has been thoroughly documented. While the extent of human activity's affect is not yet known, it is known that it is significant. And for those who say we've been cooling the past 10 years, that is simply because ten years ago we had the highest recorded temperatures ever. The past ten years has still been one of the hottest decades ever, even though the temps are lower than the highest year. Considering the scientific consensus and the evidence, I could no more deny AGW than I could deny evolution.

Global warming is very real and very serious. We need to enact sweeping changes to attempt to halt and then reverse the damages we (humans) have caused. It is important to note that while human activity is responsible for the majority of the change we are also at the end of an ice age and the Earth would have continued to warm regardless of our presence, just at more subtle and less damaging pace.

A good source to read would be Thomas Freidman's Hot Flat and Crowded, where he gives us until 2012 to turn our act around.