Global Warming Skepticism

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I'm a skeptic on global warming, mainly because of the evidence. I will admit CO2 emissions as recorded by ice cores have increased quite a lot since the industrial revolution, even before then human activity like farming and deforestation contributed to a slow, but steady rise in CO2 emissions.

You look at the climatic record, in the last 400,000 years there have been brief periods when the earth's temperature was higher than today's, however greenhouse gas levels were lower. Likewise there have been periods during the present interglacial where temperatures were slightly warmer than today. That was back then when humans weren't pouring anywhere near as much greenhouse gases as they are today.

There are also other factors like sunspot cycle and the Milankovitch cycle where the earth's orbit change it's tilt. Overall the rise in temperatures in the past century or so is more likely attributed to natural changes rather than human activity. Also the economic cost of adjustments to a slightly different climate are far less than say reducing greenhouse emissions to the levels global warming proponents want us to reach.

I tend to agree with you on this.

Humans have not been keeping statistical data on weather patterns and temperature for very long; we are only seeing a tiny fraction of the whole picture, and the earth is still emerging from the last Ice Age, which naturally means our recorded data will show an increase in temperature. If the scientists were honest they would admit they have no idea what the pattern is supposed to be like or what the turning point is when we will begin to slide down again towards the next Ice Age. We don't know, because it's such a long cycle that we've never experienced it before.

I don't dispute the alarmists that human activity is contributing to the progression of this warming part of the cycle, perhaps even causing it to progress more rapidly than it would otherwise; but I don't believe that is catastrophic. Humans and our activity have developed within this closed system, as part of it, and therefore everything we do must be a "normal" and natural part of this closed system. Earth has its own network of checks and balances built in to take care of itself; we are ultimately insignificant.

Much if not all of the carbon we are releasing into the atmosphere originated from the atmosphere to begin with... we might stimulate a shedload of algae to grow and a bunch of bogs might start popping up.

lol, this is ignorant. The earth may always be able to recuperate from natural forces but not necessarily back towards the way it was where we could inhabit it.



Yes, but that was when the earth was too hot to be habitable and no a lot of it is from solid carbon on the earth.



Irrelevant. scientists know enough to know that the pattern happens over long-intervals(hundreds of years). Even if the next ice-age was in 300 years, we would already be living underwater from the already and increasingly melting icebergs. The decline in temperature necessary to halt the melting would not come fast enough.

Think of the earth as a closed system of energy. Scientists know one thing for sure: that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that prevents energy(heat) from leaving the earth and thus a factor of increase in temperature. Since the heat can't go anywhere else and there are no other ways of dissipating it into space, the earth will always be getting hotter. therefore, the easiest way to decrease temperature(that we know of) is to stop releasing CO2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Co2-temperature-plot.svg

Look at this picture link and tell me theres no correlation to temperature and CO2. Yes, maybe it's not the only factor, the source isn't 100% reliable and it could be entirely coincidence that they match, but i'll take my chances with believing in and preventing global warming.

Do you even know what oil and coal start out as??? Organic life forms, algae and leafy plants, so obviously the Earth was habitable enough at that time. Do you know where those plants got their carbon??? From the atmosphere during a process called photosynthesis... maybe you've heard of it. It's very popular among plants I hear.

There is a correlation between temperature and CO2, but much of a correlation is the question, there have been times in the last 600,000 years which the mean temperature globally was up to 2C warmer than today. Yet CO2 were at a same level they were before the industrial revolution and probably even before humans invented agriculture (which increased CO2 levels by a small amount).

If things go on as they are now and greenhouse levels increase markedly and then peak. Temperatures globally might only rise by a small fraction Then the economic costs of adjusting to such climate change would be less than getting greenhouse emission levels back to pre-industrial levels.

What I want to know is what is causing the polar ice caps on Mars to shrink... can't blame that one on human activity.

Sublimation

I'm sceptical, but not to the degree that I think that it's safe to just pretend that everything is going to be okay.

That is to say, it is my natural tendency to doubt everything. There is stronger evidence than not that we are going to do tremendous damage. Not enough to kill all life on the planet, but enough to cause a mass extinction. Maybe enough to kill humanity (unlikely).

What is fairly safe to say is that if things continue the way they are, large scale human death is probable. If not from freak weather, then by economic conditions (lack of resources, notably oil and food)


Just because it might take a little longer, or if it's not being entirely caused by human activity doesn't mean we shouldn't take everything seriously. Most of what is being called 'scepticism' is big business and people that are morally opposed to adjusting in any way shape or form. If things continue, we can see if they'll hold these views while being buried under a freak snow storm. (It's cute when people try and use those sort of events as a way of pointing out imagined flaws with 'global warming') Some people are like that. I'd like to think that most people would understand their errors when being confronted with them, but experience has taught me to doubt this.


In any event, their are many good reasons to use alternative energy and manage resources better, beyond survival. The funny thing about economics is that sometimes it makes good sense to do the things that involve less earth rape.

And that was rude. Who cares if we can inhabit it or not? If we are indeed causing problems so severe that they will result in our eventual extinction from a no-longer-habitable planet, then isn't it GOOD for us to die out? And what if we're not causing it but it's a natural cycle that kills us off anyway? Who says the earth must be eternally hospitable to humanity? Other species have come and gone before us, it would be nothing new. Like I said, we're ultimately insignificant.




How is it irrelevant? I wasn't offering this information as a "solution", I was pointing out that there's no way scientists can know if this is normal or not because they weren't around last time it happened. You're reading my post completely out of context and then telling me I'm ignorant and irrelevant because I'm not saying what you'd say.
You do realize, also, that the polar ice caps have already melted and shifted in the past as part of a natural cycle, don't you? It's nothing new. Even several thousand years ago, massive human migrations took place due to disruption of settlements by rising water levels. Much of human history has been shaped by such things. It is to be expected on the upward slope from an Ice Age.

Well, good for you. I personally believe in reducing any kind of harmful emission just on principle, not because of an increase in temperature which is part of a natural cycle anyway and may or may not be significantly affected by said emissions.
It just makes more sense not to foul one's nest.

I believe the earth is truly warming by human influence. The change of rotation from the earth (don't really know how to say it in english ), what's often proposed as the cause of global warming, can never explain the melting North Pole in my opinion.
Temperature chances over time, but just before human started the Industrial Revolution, temperatures should have reached their highest point, and then go down. However, temperatures increased faster than ever before (note, not actually went higher than ever before).

Right now, I'd say a good deal of our warming trend is due to human activity.

The CO2 in fossil fuels has been sequestered by plants and algae from the atmosphere. Meaning that there had to be vastly more CO2 in our atmosophere, yet the temperature of the planet was hospitable to primative plants, thus meaning that there can be no temperature changed caused by humans that will make the planet uninhabitable to us.

Though global warming will not make our planet inhospitable, it could inconvenience us. This would be especially in the large urban areas near sea level. Whether or not it is cost beneficial to adapt rather than try to prevent is another issue.

I don't think I would miss them.

There is only one really strange event in climate history, the last 500 years. It stopped, conditions stayed the same, crops were good year after year, and the population grew and grew. Little Europe tried to populate the world. The looting of America spread the unchecked growth to more and fertile lands.

In the year 900 the Vikings came south in mass, it had suddenly become too cold for their crops, and it was loot or die. in 1300 ice was all year in northern Scotland, and that produced the Crusades. A warming came in the late 1400s, population rose, and invaded Andulusia, Spain, driving out the Amazight, then invading America.

Since then the population has survived by looting the earth, grassland became scrub brush, or desert, soils exhausted, kept going with chemicals, and historical droughts last hundreds of years.

Global warming might be the best hope, the most common event before human industry was cold periods that came suddenly, and lasted hundreds of years. Then people ate the rye that grew ergot, and danced from village to village till they dropped dead. The Black Death took 3 out of four, and returned a generation later, and again. (1350 to 1666)

The last two times it was this warm, and sea level was this high, it started to snow, six inches a day fell for a thousand years, twenty-five miles, that compacted to two miles of ice, reaching London and near St. Louis. It was not long ago, the last was 21,000 years ago, the one before 35,000, so we are about 5,000 years overdue for the third wave.

When the ice melts, the earth warms, the heat goes to the ocean, then rises with water vapor, cools making highs and lows which drive winds, and a thousand year storm starts. There are records of several. Winds will reach 300 miles and hour.

Humans had nothing to do with it. There are records of floods, when it came as rain, and dust when it came during dry times, mostly it comes as snow.

Plano and Clovis cultures lived on grey sand, 13,000 years ago, after the ice was melting. above their sites is 10 to 50 foot of red windblown sand, it covers most Western States, it all seems to have been deposited at once. It seems to have been sand blasted off the Rockies.

In the year 700 the Black Sea and the Nile froze, the Crab Nebula formed from a star going super nova in 1535? By the time you see a super nova, the ozone layer is gone, you have been hit with high energy X and Gamma radiation, and nothing filters the UV from sunlight. I do not think any computer would survive a super nova.

Then there is the problem of the sun rising where it now sets, and setting where it rises, which is recorded twice in history. I think we need a NASA commitee on Global rollover. The magnetic fields of the rock on the Atlantic floor show it has happened many times.

I keep a bag of trail mix, some Gatorade, and a stone tipped club.