Global Warming

[Rashella]

Is it our fault?

Well, i dont know anymore. I watched a documentary (sad eh) which argued that we werent responsible. We all know about the idea that human made carbon dioxide traps heat from the sun and in result is heating the globe.

But in this program it had a very good argument arguing that it had nothing to do with human influence. I cant remember most of it but the main cause they said was sun beams or something and that it was the other way round, increase in heat increased the Carbon dioxide.

The reason was that the heat of the planet has been increasing at a steady rate before industrialisation and cars and everything. Even with all the factories and human made Co2 (carbon dioxide) the main amount (like 95%) of emissions of it comes from rotting trees and animals breathing, and a huge amount from the ocean and volcanoes. They said the whole *You caused the warming of the planet* Ploy was political, to stop the developing industry in places like Africa ( I dont get it either)

I want to believe the whole we arent responsible idea :s

[lucille]

I don't. That is way more terrifying, as it means we ultimately have no hope whatsoever. Then again it does mean I can deodorise without feeling guilty again. Not that I ever really did.

[Deimos]

What fool believes that 8 billion of us has made absolutely no impact on our environment?

Of course we're responsible.

[xXxEmo_DaisyxXx]

i suppose we're partly responsible with big 4x4 and with big jumbo jets some of it is also nature ie lightering seting fire to dry trees there fore creating there own carbon

[tf_arl_90]

The planet will naturally go through temperature shifts, but I think it's silly to say humans aren't significantly speeding up the process.

When ~98% of the world's climatologists (I am making this statistic up) agree with the above statement, it's something to worry about.

I hope I'm wrong though.

[Jimbob]

Did anyone actually watch the documentary that was mentioned in the first post? from the post before me, I assume none of you did, as it pointed out that the world naturally creates far more Carbon Dioxide than human beings ever could and at a much faster rate.

The Trouble is that the government push the claim that we are responsible because its in their interest to do so.

[AWOL]

The world goes through changes. There was a point where the earth was covered with ice I'm sure and now look at it. Back then there weren't humans to affect the climate but it changed and if I remember right there isn't actually proof that it is us. We may play a part in speeding this process up but we can't be completely to blame. For the government of course it is a good excuse to raise taxes again or at least the British government does. Not sure about America though.

[tf_arl_90]

The Trouble is that the government push the claim that we are responsible because its in their interest to do so.

We are partially responsible and it is in our best interest to do something about it.

[Deimos]

Did anyone actually watch the documentary that was mentioned in the first post? from the post before me, I assume none of you did, as it pointed out that the world naturally creates far more Carbon Dioxide than human beings ever could and at a much faster rate.

The Trouble is that the government push the claim that we are responsible because its in their interest to do so.


There's also 'documentarys' also suggesting the Holocaust never occured.

Anyone can point anything out, not hard to find proof.

Search for the 'Flat Earth Society'.

[lucille]

There's also 'documentarys' also suggesting the Holocaust never occured.

Anyone can point anything out, not hard to find proof.

Search for the 'Flat Earth Society'.

Ha those people are fucking nuts.

[Jimbob]

There's also 'documentarys' also suggesting the Holocaust never occured.

Anyone can point anything out, not hard to find proof.

Search for the 'Flat Earth Society'.
The 2 things are completely unrelated...

Science shows that the world itself creates far more Co2 emitions than all humans put together, making the claim that we are to blame unviable.

The people who claim that the hosocaust never happened are often basing their opinion around the fact that the number of people killed was most likely exaggerated a little. Historians and proffessionals in the field are constantly lowering the number of people they believed were killed.

The difference between the 2 matters is that the one can be proved by simple science and the second is based a lot on peoples personal records of the events. which become distorted after time, science doesnt.

I'd suggest reading up a little on the subject before preaching what is not actually true.

[tf_arl_90]

Here's what I don't get.

Out of all the global threats we face today, most governments around the world are taking the issue of global warming very seriously. Why would they do this if it was all bullshit?

[Deimos]

I'd suggest reading up a little on the subject before preaching what is not actually true.

I'd suggest learning something about Global Warming before preaching what one documentary claimed.

[Deimos]

Scientists have found the first unequivocal link between man-made greenhouse gases and a dramatic heating of the Earth's oceans. The researchers - many funded by the US government - have seen what they describe as a "stunning" correlation between a rise in ocean temperature over the past 40 years and pollution of the atmosphere.

The study destroys a central argument of global warming skeptics within the Bush administration - that climate change could be a natural phenomenon. It should convince George Bush to drop his objections to the Kyoto treaty on climate change, the scientists say.

Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego and a leading member of the team, said: "We've got a serious problem. The debate is no longer: 'Is there a global warming signal?' The debate now is what are we going to do about it?"

The findings are crucial because much of the evidence of a warmer world has until now been from air temperatures, but it is the oceans that are the driving force behind the Earth's climate. Dr Barnett said: "Over the past 40 years there has been considerable warming of the planetary system and approximately 90 per cent of that warming has gone directly into the oceans."
He told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington: "We defined a 'fingerprint' of ocean warming. Each of the oceans warmed differently at different depths and constitutes a fingerprint which you can look for. We had several computer simulations, for instance one for natural variability: could the climate system just do this on its own? The answer was no.

"We looked at the possibility that solar changes or volcanic effects could have caused the warming - not a chance. What just absolutely nailed it was greenhouse warming."
America produces a quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, yet under President Bush it is one of the few developed nations not to have signed the Kyoto treaty to limit emissions. The President's advisers have argued that the science of global warming is full of uncertainties and change might be a natural phenomenon.

Dr Barnett said that position was untenable because it was now clear from the latest study, which is yet to be published, that man-made greenhouse gases had caused vast amounts of heat to be soaked up by the oceans. "It's a good time for nations that are not part of Kyoto to re-evaluate their positions and see if it would be to their advantage to join," he said.
The study involved scientists from the US Department of Energy, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as the Met Office's Hadley Center.

They analyzed more than 7 million recordings of ocean temperature from around the world, along with about 2 million readings of sea salinity, and compared the rise in temperatures at different depths to predictions made by two computer simulations of global warming.

"Two models, one from here and one from England, got the observed warming almost exactly. In fact we were stunned by the degree of similarity," Dr Barnett said. "The models are right. So when a politician stands up and says 'the uncertainty in all these simulations start to question whether we can believe in these models', that argument is no longer tenable." Typical ocean temperatures have increased since 1960 by between 0.5C and 1C, depending largely on depth. DR Barnett said: "The real key is the amount of energy that has gone into the oceans. If we could mine the energy that has gone in over the past 40 years we could run the state of California for 200,000 years... It's come from greenhouse warming."

Because the global climate is largely driven by the heat locked up in the oceans, a rise in sea temperatures could have devastating effects for many parts of the world.
Ruth Curry, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said that warming could alter important warm-water currents such as the Gulf Stream, as melting glaciers poured massive volumes of fresh water into the North Atlantic. "These changes are happening and they are expected to amplify. It's a certainty that these changes will put serious strains on the ecosystems of the planet," DR Curry said.









^Disprove it.

[sweet8060]

I think we had to do with it in a way. We keep on making things that we know are contributing to this. Wouldn't it just be easier to stop. On the other hand though.....just our natural life styles have to do with it too. And we can not help that we have to breathe, eat, and have a place to live.

[Fairyliquid]

But in this program it had a very good argument arguing that it had nothing to do with human influence. I cant remember most of it but the main cause they said was sun beams or something and that it was the other way round, increase in heat increased the Carbon dioxide.

Heat does increase the level of CO2 in the Atmosphere, but the causes of the heat increase are not substantial enough to have the effects on climate we have seen them have in the past from Ice Core studys. The reason for this is, while CO2 increases when the climate gets hotter, the CO2 itself increases the temperature further. The last Ice Age toke around 5000 years, from the start of the climate increasing noticable to it being pretty much as it is today. The first 500 years of Temperature Increase were followed behind them with CO2 increases, which shows that the original heat increase was caused by something else. However the other 4500 years of Increase were caused by increased CO2 levels, through the 'Green House Effect'.



The reason was that the heat of the planet has been increasing at a steady rate before industrialisation and cars and everything. Even with all the factories and human made Co2 (carbon dioxide) the main amount (like 95%) of emissions of it comes from rotting trees and animals breathing, and a huge amount from the ocean and volcanoes.

The temperature from around 1250 to 1650 lowered, it's called the little Ice Age.
From about 1850 the temperature *slowly* increased to around the temperatures before 1250.
This effect nowhere NEAR accounts for Global Warming.


Science shows that the world itself creates far more Co2 emitions than all humans put together, making the claim that we are to blame unviable.

Very true, only you missed something out.
The fact that this CO2 is part of a cycle which has not changed much in the past several million years.


They said the whole *You caused the warming of the planet* Ploy was political, to stop the developing industry in places like Africa ( I dont get it either)

Hate to shout bullshit but...
Bullshit! :P
The people who stand the most to gain economically from the increased industrialisation ARE the Western Countries...
How? Read the tags on your clothes, phone... fuck, even your computer :P

[!Jazzy!]

I think humans are the ones who are responsible for global warming.
People are poluting the earth everyday!

You have to look at your life and you will see how much pollution you are creating each day.
you may not think you are doing damage to the enviroment, but when you turn on a light, or cook a meal, you are destroyin the earths atmosphere.
I cant be the one to say im not doing the wrong thing and you guys are all bad, because im using a computer right now.
but if you cut out all the things that use electricity from your life, and if EVERYONE did that, global warming probably wouldnt be such a big threat.

If humans were not a species, the earth probably would be a much nicer place to live.

[!Jazzy!]

Look what we have done to the polar bears, we are melting the ice caps. polar bears rely on the frozen ocean to get food and to migrate, but global warming has caused the ice to melt faster than it should, and polar bears are drowning, getting stranded or starving to death because of this.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051219/images/051219-6.jpghttp://www.wwf.org.uk/picturelibrary/jpeg350/ki/kids_polar7.jpg

http://www.worldproutassembly.org/images/polar-bears.jpg
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/09/13/gallery/polarbear_zoom.jpg
http://i.treehugger.com/files/th_images/polar%20bear.jpg

[xMissIzzyx]

I don't know all the scientific explanations and ain't going to claim that i do cos i honestly don't and probably won't ever understand it all anyway.. but on the "is it all our fault" front I think it's part of human nature to need someone/thing to blame, something that is there and can be believed to be at fault, thus the human race. we're all here, there's millions of us, we're doing all these things that "contribute" to global warming, therefore, blaming us is easy. I'm not denying it's really likely we are at fault but for all of it? I doubt that.

[!Jazzy!]

Yes, I'm not saying its ALL our fault, but most of it is.
about 98% would be our contribution to pollution, leading to global warming.