Do you believe Global Warming is man made?

What I may believe or not is pretty irrelevant, what I know as fact is relevant.

As you rightly say 8,000 years ago northern Europe was still firmly in the grip of an ice age, all of a sudden the mean temperature increased by some 10^ Celsius over a 50 year period.

The truth of the matter is that we are still coming out of that ice age even though humans are not helping matters humans are not the cause of climate change (so called).

Take the recent apparent rise in hurricanes in the Caribbean, climate change? ....... not a bit of it, these things happen in cycles and the current cycle is due to end in a few years.

The biggest single driving force for the worlds weather is the el nino / la nina effect in the pacific ocean ....... anyone like to tell me how human activity has altered that? .......

Closer to home ..... the wet and rainy weather that has been experienced over northern Europe in recent years, this has been caused by the 'jet stream' being further south than we have come to expect, so that the normal low pressure systems that would pass to the north are now passing right over us and the high pressure systems are moving further south.

How can human activity affect the jet stream?

Perhaps this is ........ An Inconvenient Truth?

Edit.

Here is today's map of the jet steam.

http://uk.weather.com/mapRoom/mapRoom?mapId=1973&t...

I am still a little sceptical, despite the fact that I really care about our wild places. I do however think that we should take the threat seriously.

The evidence proves that natural cycles of weather occur on a grand scale. There were once lions, hippos and elephants wandering the UK countryside, about 120,000 years ago. That was an interglacial warm spell.

The thing that is not disputed, is that these things happen naturally, after all the Scottish countryside is full of glacial features. However, the evidence suggests that our added contribution to global warming is making it happen at a FASTER rate than life can cope with. We are talking about climate change happening in decades, rather than spanning centuries or thousands of years.

Wildlife has coped with climate change fairly well in the past. woodlands and grasslands can move at their snails pace, to keep track of the conditions that suit them. These days there are added issues. We now have our wildlife trapped in pockets that are surrounded by farmland. The natural "corridors" are gone. Wildlife charities are doing their best to make our wild places more joined up. If climate change continues as it is and there is no space for things to move, then we will lose a lot.

Anyway, I think my main issue is that I don't want it to be true.

No. Because the Earth has changed climate from one extreme to the other through it's history, here are 2 points, one of the best places on Earth to find large dinosaur fossils, is North Dakota where it's currently about 20 degrees, so

how did a large cold blooded reptile survive in that area obviously it was a lot warmer at the time. Another thing is about a mile off the coast of Florida there has been woolly mammoth teeth and skeletons found on the ocean floor showing it was cold at one time. This whole global warming might be happening but were not going to stop it. Earth heats and cools on it's own timer. Your right it's to political to hold much truth.

Questions like these always fascinate me. We as a global society depend on science to advance humanity in just about every way possible. We live longer, feed more people, travel faster, and postulate more and more about the future. Through empiricism, science comes to a consensus on a number of things. Empirical data is collected and interpreted. The more scientist come up with the same results the more it is believed by the scientific community.

The results of the investigation conducted at the end of 2008 reveal that vast majority of the Earth scientists surveyed agree that in the past 200-plus years, mean global temperatures have been rising and that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.

The study released today was conducted by academics from the University of Illinois, who used an online questionnaire of nine questions. The scientists approached were listed in the 2007 edition of the American Geological Institute's Directory of Geoscience Departments.

Two questions were key: Have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels, and has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?

About 90 percent of the scientists agreed with the first question and 82 percent the second.

The strongest consensus on the causes of global warming came from climatologists who are active in climate research, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role.

Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively, believing in human involvement.

Gee big shocker there. But if you really want to look at an institution dedicated to misinformation about Global Warming, just look at the Cato Institute. By the way, the think tank was founded on money from the Koch family and one of the Koch kids sits on the board right now.

Even George Bush believes that Global Warming is real

Q Mr. President, for the record, is global warming real?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, it is real, sure is. But the solutions -- having said that, the solutions have got to be measured and realistic -- you can't have a solution to global warming unless China and India are part of any international pact. It's one of the reasons I didn't accept what's called the Kyoto Protocol, and therefore was labeled as anti-environment

But lets just say that humans do not contribute to Global Warming in any significant way at all. Would it still be such a terrible idea to agree with the Kyoto protocol and reduce pollution as much as possible?

I believe that its the world natural process of turning on its own Axis's. This global warming has been coming for millions and millions of years and we are the ones living in this time so we are going through the global warming bit, but with our life styles we have contributed a hell of a lot and made it a lot worse, but i do believe that this is a natural process and the world WILL correct its self, just not in our lifetime, or for the next 10million years or so. If you think about it, all the propaganda has made us think about waste, which cant be a bad thing, god bless.

No..The theory is man-made though..

Have sort-of been studying weather history & this has all happened before.

Still have an open mind to learning more.

PS....Since first answering your Q, I heard on the news today that a huge Ice Bridge has just collapsed in Antarctica..a few others have also collapsed recently..

due to warmer temperatures.They could not give a reason though.

Unfortunately- Yes. And it's EASY to prove. Next July, on a REALLY hot day, go out & stand in the sun in the middle of an empty Parking Lot for an Hour. Just STAND there & notice how it "feels". An hour LATER, find a nice shady tree to stand under, & hang out THERE for an Hour & make your observations. While your Standing in these two locations, consider the many THOUSANDS of square miles of Vegetation that Humans have turned in Parking Lot like settings; and THEN Add to it all the Pollution we've dumping into the Sea & Air over the Centuries; and THEN consider the energy wastes (much of it- heat) we're adding to all THAT -into the biosphere. Can You tell ME that all the stuff we're doing- has NO Impact upon Our Climate- whatsoever ??! We live in a BIG Terrarium- Earth. & Our Environment has FINITE resources... You can't HELP but alter the environment in a closed System- when you CHANGE the Elements INSIDE of it. Because when it comes to Our Environment, what WE Do to mess up it's "World Wide Web"- is GOING to come back & Haunt Us ! :o

What you are saying is so blatantly obvious, but the sheeple choose to believe the crap they are force fed. No doubt the polar bears carbon emissions played a big part in their demise then, yet they are still about. Dinosaurs farting all over the place probably had a similar effect on their well being.

Not exclusively. The earth is designed to take care of itself and as David Attenborough once said it is not the world we have to worry about but ourselves. We as a species will be extinct long before the world is.

I think it is fascinating that true history of the earth has been preserved in ice and would imagine there are places that have got colder with others warmer.

No, it's cyclical. Just because it doesn't happen in (man-made) annual cycles doesn't mean it isn't happening exactly the same as it has done for centuries. Record keeping, in the grand scheme of things, is relatively new (and just how accurate were they 200 years ago?) Nope, 'Man-Made Global Warming' is just another new term that politicians have chosen to use in order to fleece the public of even more 'green taxes'.

Their latest scam is to use the threat of terrorism in order to advance their Big Brother surveillance plans. Oh, and apart from the increasing loss of freedom, who ends up paying for all of the new 'security measures'? Yep, muggins Joe Public.