Is global warming a real thing or is it just fear of the unknown?

Answer 1

Global warming itself is a reality (or at least, it was, until about 10 years ago).

However, anthropogenic (man-made) global warming is a myth.

Global warming has been identified as a major issue for the global community. More properly this is called "Global Climate Change" as some areas may be warmer, some cooler, some wetter, some drier...

Background: The contention of the larger number of climatologists is that human activities since the industrial revolution have increased the content of CO2, methane, and other gases in the atmosphere that trap solar heat. At the same time human activities have reduced the forest cover that had traditionally absorbed these same materials. They state that an increasing level of these atmospheric constituents has lead to a chain of chemical and physical changes that have increased the world's average temperature.

Observations of atmospheric gas composition, average sea water temperatures, atmospheric temperatures etc. confirm the trends and support the proposition.

Potential Impacts:

1. The sea levels may rise. Technically this may be caused by melting ice from the polar ice caps or an increase in sea height as the less dense water is less compressed. Low lying land like many Pacific Islands and Miami will be under water.

2. Serious climate changes may result from diverted ocean currents. As an example, the Gulf Stream keeps Europe warm. If the Stream is not running Europe may be much cooler and drier. Crops may not grow.

3. Ecology changes on the land could include species of animals and plants extending their range to the polar regions. Local flora and fauna may become extinct. A good example is the spread of Africanized bees and Fire Ants. Sea life may also be impacted both through the introduction of competitive species presently kept in other areas by water temperature changes, and by failure to adapt to less saline water.

4. Human society may be disrupted if changes in rainfall and temperature cause crop failure. Famine refugees may require significant humanitarian attention by the "lucky" nations.

Conflicting opinions?

Yes indeed, some people don't agree!

However, the problem breaks down into two potential scenarios. Either there is a basis for fear about climate change, or, there isn't.

If Climate Change isn't real and we do nothing - good! Except of course many of the problems that science has identified and blamed as causing Climate Change are just plain wastes of resources, and inefficient and uneconomical practices that should be addressed anyway. A polluted, climatically steady world with no fish and no oil will be no fun at all.

If Climate Change is not real and we do all the things that we should - reduce emissions, cut fuel use, re-establish forests - we're out money (maybe) but in general the world is a better and more sustainable place.

If Climate Change is real and we do nothing - we are dead or at least very miserable.

If Climate Change is real and we work to correct all our bad habits we might still be in trouble ... if it's too little and too late, but we'll go down fighting. If we succeed we live.

An afterthought:

Comments to this original post stated:

* it isn't real/ it is made up/ a figment of our imagination.

* There are no facts. The fact is we know nothing about it. Whether we are causing it or it is a phase the world goes through. It is just a theory. It will never be a fact.

If these writers are right ... Wahoo!

However, no case in the summary of potential future scenarios which is based on us sitting around doing nothing at all has a cheery outcome.

I Disagree

"If Climate Change isn't real and we do nothing - good! Except of course many of the problems that science has identified and blamed as causing Climate Change are just plain wastes of resources, and inefficient and uneconomical practices that should be addressed anyway. A polluted, climatically steady world with no fish and no oil will be no fun at all."

Addressed, maybe, but not "done away with". Fossil fuel burning, as "inefficient" and "uneconomical" as it is, is still a far cry more efficient and more economical than anything else. You want to make it even more efficient? Fine by me. But stop using this HOAX to further your agenda.

"If Climate Change is not real and we do all the things that we should - reduce emissions, cut fuel use, re-establish forests - we're out money (maybe) but in general the world is a better and more sustainable place."

This is just plain wrong. If we "do all the things that we should", it will not only utterly destroy the world's economy, but will result in billions of human deaths due to hunger, exposure, and disease. Then there's the massive global war that will be fought when China and India refuse to cut their emissions, as they have every right to do as sovereign nations. And at some point, that war will go nuclear, and that will take care of the rest of the world's human population. But the good news, global warming will stop. First of all, there won't be any human industry or transportation left to pump CO2 into the atmosphere. But it won't matter because the planet will be encircled by a cloud of radioactive dust that will block 90% of the sunlight from reaching the surface. There's your "better and more sustainable place".

"If Climate Change is real and we do nothing - we are dead or at least very miserable."

Wrong again. If climate change is real, and if it continues, we will enjoy great prosperity, as we have during the last three periods of global warming. Food production will double. Human deaths due to cold weather will decrease by far more than any increase in human deaths due to hot weather. Due to warmer temperatures in currently cold areas, more land will become suitable for human habitation (even after deducting the area that will be flooded due to rising oceans). Animal and plant life will be more abundant and more healthy. Makes me WISH that climate change was real. But sadly, it isn't. Or at least not any climate change beyond the normal, natural, cyclical climate change that's been going on for billions of years. But that's going to reverse shortly, and we will, sadly, have to forego all the benefits of a warmer planet.

"If Climate Change is real and we work to correct all our bad habits we might still be in trouble ... if it's too little and too late, but we'll go down fighting. If we succeed we live."

Work to correct what bad habits? Transportation? Freedom? Food production? Comfort? Peace? Oh yeah, if we "correct" all those "bad habits", we'll be in trouble, all right. But not because of global warming. We will be in trouble because we will have given up all those "bad habits" that keep the human race alive, healthy, prosperous, and comfortable. We will also have given up the technology necessary to avert the next big catastrophe looming on the horizon. And when an asteroid the size of Texas plows into Earth at 100,000 MPH, and splits it in half, destroying all life on the planet - an asteroid that could have been detected by the use of high-power telescopes that we can't power anymore because we banned fossil fuels, one that could have been knocked off course by a space shuttle that never took off because we banned fossil fuels - then I want you to tell me how "success" in breaking all our bad habits allowed us to survive.

It is an undeniable fact that the globe is warming. Scientists have mountains of evidence to prove that it is occurring. Satellites, ground measurements show conclusively that average temperatures are in fact rising. But perhaps the most conclusive evidence comes in the form of glaciers. Look at the history of any glacier and you will see that they have receded over the century. These images are commonly available; just type "glacial retreat global warming" into google images.

Some people, however, claim that global warming is false and that scientists have been conspiring with liberal hippies for more government. This theory, like many conspiracy theories is total garbage. Science, of all institutions is the last institution capable of conspiracy or cover up. Any scientist who revises a theory, any scientist who institutes a paradigm shift successfully is automatically rewarded with power, money, and even fame. People like Watson and Crick, Einstein, Maxwell, Newton, Galileo and Coppernicus who institute a paradigm shift within science are the driving force of great scientific discoveries. It is every scientists dream to institute a paradigm shift. So to claim that scientists would somehow engage in a cover-up is crazy. It goes against the founding principle science.

But really, you don't need to be a scientist to see that global warming is occurring My parents, for example, are avid mountain climbers, and in their trips with me they have noticed how the glaciers have retreated visually even to the untrained eye.

"Undeniable"? You need to look up the definition of that word. I deny that the globe is warming. It is, therefore, possible to deny. And therefore it is not undeniable.

Temperature measurements are biased in a positive direction over the last 30-35 years, due to artificial heat sources near temperature recording stations (see www.surfacestations.org for details). Though it is probably true that actual temperatures have risen some during that time, they have not risen as much, nor as fast, as the "data" indicates. The actual rate of temperature rise is well within the boundaries of natural warming, and is no cause for alarm.

Glaciers? Ok, I'll look at any glacier. You do know that over 90% of the glaciers on this planet are in Antarctica, right? And do you know that most of those in Antarctica are actually growing? Ok, then, I pick the Bearmore Glacier, one of the largest glaciers in the world. Find some eveidence that Beardmore is retreating.

But here's the thing. Even if glaciers are retreating, that doesn't mean mankind is causing warming. Our climate is currently recovering from the Little Ice Age, and has been for the last 150 years. This is part of a completely natural cycle of warming and cooling. A thousand years ago, we had global warming. Two thousand years ago, we had global warming. Three thousand years ago, we had global warming. All three times, temperatures rose higher, and faster than the temperatures today. Yet there were no SUVs and coal-burning electricity plants to blame it on. So we had to blame those on nature. Good thing we have evil mankind to blame this one on, right?

"Any scientist who revises a theory, any scientist who institutes a paradigm shift successfully is automatically rewarded with power, money, and even fame."

Usually, that is true. But the keyword is "successfully". Right now, the deck is stacked against any scientist who believes either 1) that global warming isn't happening, 2) that global warming is not caused by mankind, or 3) that global warming is not catastrophic. You see, this issue turns the normal money/fame/power relationship on its head. Climatologists, in the past, were not very popular. They dealth with long-term weather issues, with "events" that happened thousands of years in the past, or will happen thousands of years in the future. This global warming issue, however, gave them a way to connect with the present, and they took full advantage of it. Suddenly, climatologist are being given huge grants to "study" this problem. And all of this money is coming from one main source: Government, which has a history of promoting fear, so they can grab more power. Any climatologist who discovered evidence that global warming wasn't occuring, wasn't caused by mankind, or wasn't catastrophic found his funds drying up in a hurry. For the discipline as a whole, if it were established that global warming is not occurring, or that we're not causing it, or that it's not catastrophic, then climatologists would not be important anymore. So the leaders of this field do everything they can to keep a tight rein on any rebels in the field. They stack the review panels of the journals, to keep out skeptic papers. They deny tenure to assistant professors. They publicly ridicule their coleagues. Heidi Cullen, of the Weather Channel has actually advocated withdrawing the AMA "Seal of Approval" from any TV meteorologist who expresses skepticism of AGW. Another global warming activist has adovcated "Nuremberg-style War Crimes trials" for global warming "deniers". Presumably, the punishment at the end of these climate trials will be the same as at Nuremberg - death. So there are people out there, in the MAINSTREAM, threatening climate skeptics with the loss of their prestige, even the loss of their jobs, their livelihoods, even the loss of their lives. So yeah, I can easily see why so many climatologists are toeing the line on this. What boggles my mind is the few skeptics who have the courage to stand up to this. They are the true heroes, and I applaud them for putting the science ahead of their own best interests.

"But really, you don't need to be a scientist to see that global warming is occurring"

No, you don't. In fact, it helps if you're not a scientist at all. That makes it easier for you to ignore statistical data and focus on anecdotal evidence. It makes it easier for you to disregard the scientfic method. It makes it easier for you to be duped by rigged models, cherry-picked data, and other lies. Nevertheless, many "scientists" have been able to overcome these restrictions and "see" that global warming is occurring.

If you are intrested in what causes the climate changes we see, check out Milutin Milankovich and his theories Compare them to the current findings from Greenland. Read the IPCC report and determine how little man can really affect our planet. It is sad how few people read science and listen to the politics of global warming. True science doesn't deny GHG being a partially man made event, but sure doesn't support it either. A true science expert leaves the possibility out there, but doesn't (can't) say it is certain or that man is the major player. To do so is not only unscientific, it is untruthful. We do not have proof, nor a consensus. To say that shows a political bend, not a true science viewpoint.

It is crazy to believe that our industrial activities contribute the warming of the earth directly. Rather, they produce greenhouse gasses which are expected to heat the earth by very minute amounts (half a degree centigrade over the 20th century). However, as ice ages and rapid stages of warming can attest to, climate can be unstable. Even a small amount of warming caused by man can cause warming to accelerate, something that we have not witnessed yet but is hypothesized to occur based on ice cores and climate modeling. A small amount of melting of glaciers in Canada, for example exposes dirty ice, allowing for more absorption of sunlight, furthermore, there are massive quantities of methane trapped underneath the ocean. Even small amounts of warming could cause all this methane to be released and this combined with dirty glaciers and ever increasing amounts of CO2 could cause truly dramatic global warming and its resulting climate change.

It is foolish to believe that scientists would have a political bent. Their only objective is for their own gain which is achieved through discovery.

There is also little political/economic motive for supporting global warming, or at least far less than there is for saying it doesn't exist. The coal and oil industries make orders of magnitude more money than the clean energy companies which are still in their infancy. Although it is quite believable that coal and oil companies have launched a Propaganda war against science and reason much similar to the way tobacco companies continue to influence public opinion over the side effects of smoking.

Milutin Milankovich's theories do not explain the current variation in temperature. They occur over a much longer time. Check out the wikipedia article for Milutin Milankovich. Below I have a small quotation
"The Milankovitch theory of climate change is not perfectly worked out; in particular, the largest observed response is at the 100,000-year timescale, but the forcing is apparently small at this scale, in regard to the ice ages.[1] Various feedbacks (from carbon dioxide, or from ice sheet dynamics) are invoked to explain this discrepancy."

In other words, carbon dioxide and ice sheet dynamics (both which are currently changing dramatically in some places (remember the sheet of ice the size of Rhode Island that broke of from the Antarctice ice sheet?) are far more important on the modern scale.

It is also foolish to think that putting into effect more environmentally friendly laws would hurt the economy. On the contrary, they might help it. WWII, for example, ended the great depression due to a large amount of people learning how to do manufactured labor (e.g. build planes tanks etc.). For our current economic woes, investing money in green technology and industry might be quite a wise thing.

Regardless to create the infrastructure and technology necessary for a reduction in fossil fuel use is a step that must be taken eventually to allow the continuation of industrialized civilization. Fossil fuels are not limited; oil deposits are already running out (Ever wondered why you sometimes see oil pumps by the highway not pumping? That's because there's nothing left to pump!) and may be gone by the end of the century.

So in summary, although there is a debate over whether global warming is real and whether it is truly caused by man, one thing is for certain: investing in clean technologies cannot be damaging and may save the globe from disastrous climate change.

"Even a small amount of warming caused by man can cause warming to accelerate ... A small amount of melting of glaciers in Canada, for example exposes dirty ice ... Even small amounts of warming could cause all this methane to be released"

Okay, if this is true, then why hasn't every "small amount of warming" that has occurred in the last 5 billion years on this planet led to runaway global warming? These positive feedbacks simply don't exist, or at least are not as strong as you think they are. "A small amount" of warming has occurred millions of times. But never, not once, have we had runaway global warming. And we're not going to have it this time either. In fact, you must have missed it, but the global warming scare is over. Temperatures have not increased for the last 10 years.

See, the outcome of climate models is highly dependent on the parameters you program into them. If you use parameters that ignore natural forcings and focus on anthropogenic forcings, you will get results that "prove" mankind is causing global warming. And if you "tweak" the model enough, you will get results that match the historical record. But even with tweaking, the climate models suck at predicting gobal average temperatures in the future. None of them predicted the ten-year cooling period that we are in right now. But I predicted it. I said, over ten years ago, that global warming would end, on its own, without us doing anything. Because global warming is part of a natural cycle. And sure enough, I was right. And I didn't need a fancy climate model.

"Their [scientists'] only objective is for their own gain which is achieved through discovery."

Except, discoveries that question the conclusion of anthropogenic global warming are not rewarded. I've explained already how this works. If you can refute any of what I said, be my guest. If not, concede the point.

"The coal and oil industries make orders of magnitude more money than the clean energy companies"

But the government makes orders of magnitude more than the coal and oil industries. And unlike the coal and oil industries, they don't have profit constraints to limit the amount of money they can spend on propaganda. There is no doubt that there is a heck of a lot more money going into alarmist research than skeptic research. Nobody but you denies this fact.

"remember the sheet of ice the size of Rhode Island that broke of from the Antarctice ice sheet?"

You know Rhode Island is the smallest state, right? There are hundreds of counties that are larger than Rhode Island. Do you have a clue how much ice is sitting on top of Antarctica? You could pack about a million Rhode Islands in there. And the ice sheet that broke off was very thin, a few meters, while most of Antarctica has ice thousands of meters thick. So, even if you think Rhode Island is big, the total volume of ice lost in this event is negligible. Ice sheets the size of Rhode Island, and even larger, have been breaking off of Antarctica ever since there was ice there to break off. Even during the deepest, coldest ice ages, ice sheets the size of Rhode Island were breaking off. That's what happens when ice sheets get too large and too heavy. What is foolish is blaming this on global warming.

"It is also foolish to think that putting into effect more environmentally friendly laws would hurt the economy. On the contrary, they might help it. WWII, for example, ended the great depression due to a large amount of people learning how to do manufactured labor (e.g. build planes tanks etc.). For our current economic woes, investing money in green technology and industry might be quite a wise thing."

Pipe dream. You are ignoring all the people that will be put out of work when the government shuts down the oil and gas companies. "Green" companies cannot possibly replace all these jobs, not even with trillions of dollars of tax money. And the taxes themselves will stifle economic growth. Interesting that you should bring up WWII. It did, in fact, end the Great Depression. But what you missed is that ten years of government work programs (WPA, CCC, TVA, etc.) before WWII completely failed to end the Great Depression. That's what these "green companies" are - government work programs. And they will completely fail, just like the WPA, CCC, and TVA, at stimulating the economy. They will, however, succeed at putting trillions of dollars of taxpayer money into the pockets of scam artists.

"Regardless to create the infrastructure and technology necessary for a reduction in fossil fuel use is a step that must be taken eventually to allow the continuation of industrialized civilization."

The key word there is eventually. Yes, we will, one day, have to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels. But that day is not today! It's a hundred years or more in the future. I'll be the first to demand that we switch, the moment we come up with a cheaper, viable alternative to fossil fuels. But what is foolish is to force us to switch before the alternative is there. Such a switch will, inevitably, lead to economic ruin.

Look, I don't know where you've been for the last ten years, but everyone knows this is true. Even the most radical policy proposals do not call for a ban on fossil fuels. Even the most fantastic pipe dreams don't propose 100% renewable energy. No one is proposing anything more than slight reductions in emissions, and some not even that, but just a slower rate of growth. They're not proposing that we do away with fossil fuels, because they know that will destroy the world's economy.

Sure, if a hundred years comes and goes, and we still haven't found a replacement for fossil fuels, and the oil and coal run out, then yes, the world's economy will be destroyed anyway. But what moron wants to go ahead and destroy it now, when there's a chance that the destruction could be averted entirely. And I, for one, think there's a pretty good chance. We have a hundred years, or more, of fossil fuels reserves left. What do you think mankind can accomplish in a hundred years? Just look where we were a hundred years ago, and how far we've come since then.

Moreover. why would we want to destroy our economy now, when we don't have a clue what's going to happen in the next hundred years? Fifty years from now, an asteroid the size of Texas could hit Earth and split it in half, killing everyone here. And we will have spent the last 50 years wallowing in misery needlessly. Perhaps a super-volcano will erupt (vulcanologists are already worried about the massive super-volcano under Yellowstone National Park erupting), blanketing the earth with trillions of tons of sunlight-blocking soot. Temperatures will plummet. Crops will fail. At a time like that, we'll appreciate a few degrees of warming. Wouldn't it be ironic if we bankrupted the entire panet to stop global warming, then stopping global warming was what ended up killing everyone?

"one thing is for certain: investing in clean technologies cannot be damaging"

See, by "investing", you mean spending taxpayer dollars. How in the world is that not "damaging" to the taxpayers? If you want to invest your money in green technologies, be my guest. But you have no right to invest my money in it. If you make a windfall profit, good for you. But it's not something I want to gamble my money on. And, apparently, a lot of people feel the way I do. Because if there was enough voluntary investment in green technologies, then the government wouldn't have to force us to invest in it, through taxes.

And that's what it all comes down to for me. If you want to spend your money, sacrifice your comfort, forego your convenience, and give up your freedoms to "stop global warming", I will support your right to do so 100%. And that is all I ask from you. I'm not giving up my money, my comfort, my convenience, and my freedom for what I believe to be pseudo-scientific alarmism. Will you support my right to choose?

Answer 2

Yes, global warming is real because the earth us heating up. Some believe it is a natural cycle that is occurring naturally, like previous ice ages, and that man does not have a major effect on it.