I’m interested to hear anyone’s opionion that does think that climate change is a hoax or not caused by man. I’d also like to hear informed responses to any particular arguments for this that are raised by answerers.
campbelp – I know what you mean, but my research is actually into people’s opinions, so it’s all relevant to me!
News and comments on global climate change, global warming and greenhouse effect
Personally I think its a bunch of hooey……. We have hot summers and cold winters….they arent any hotter than in the past or colder either…… In fact some of the weather has been alot better…… We have droughts, and torrential rains, this isnt anything new…We have had these for many years…….. When I was little I remember it snowing and being very cold on Halloween….. Well the past few years have been nice, but some of the years have been as I remembered…… cold and nasty……… I think its a scam to get money out of the government for doing "studies" on global warming….. just my opinion…
I’m sure that there is climate change, I don’t believe man has much to do with it. Climate changes have been occurring for billions of years. Sometimes for the good sometimes the changes are not so good.
I think it is really happening, but i dought it has anything to do with us. For 100′s of years the earth has been changing, check out the ice age etc, its the way the earth moves and works, so i do beleive our planet is changing, and we haven’t help much, but at the end of the day it is all down to mother nature, we can only do so much to slow it down, but she always wins in the end!
Most assuredly, Higher taxes and more restrictions are what is behind the alleged global warming. I remember in the mid to late ’70′s the big environmental concern then was the coming ice age.. Some of the same elitist so called scientist of then are spewing the venomous propaganda of the alleged global warming now. Why don’t you ask a meteorologist if they can predict how many tornado’s will occur lets say ten years from now. And these same "Experts" can say with all assuring what will happen 100, 200 years from now with the alleged global warming.We live in a world with a dynamic weather system, always changing, the alleged global warming is a hoax to interfere with your life. Do the research , look out side of the main stream news media , listen to real science. Your intelligent enough to do your own investigation.
I know that climate change is controlled by God. So i don’t even give it a second thought. Hell is widening. So there will be space for this ungodly generation of people.
If it is caused by man, please explain what caused the several Ice Ages and warming periods in between, all of which occurred prior to Man’s arrival.
The one overriding fact is that if you use the models that the GW crowd use to prove we’ll all be fried in fifty years, and run them backward for fifty years, they do not accurately predict the past. Anyone relying on a model that can’t do that is no scientist.
The compound they point to as "evil" is CO2, which is less than 5% of the "greenhouse gases", and moreover is what plants depend on to survive, and convert into oxygen which humans (among other species) depend on to survive.
Very significant is that one of the claims is that no one disagrees anymore, all scientists subscribe to the theory. Fact is, they don’t. They ignore and encourage the media to ignore and ostracize real scientists that don’t buy the snake oil, and pretend everyone agrees. It isn’t hard to find people with Ph.D.’s in Climatology that question it, just do a web search. You won’t find them in the NY Times, though, that lofty bastion of Science.
And if all these scientist think that its real, why not trot out a few of them with their degrees? Why are Al Gore and Angelina Jolie the spokespeople?
So the planet is warming and the icecaps are melting, which should mean that water levels should be rising…. but are they? No, they are not.
It’s pure hoax, designed to get YOU to consume less of all types of energy, reducing the demand, keeping the price low for certain developing nations.
For those who still want to believe in the studies relating CO2 to global warming… the studies I’ve seen suggest that CO2 levels are not the cause of warming, but the result. The CO2 levels TRAIL the temperature increases.
our records do not go back far enough to get a definite answer. for instance the ice age,no absolute answers for the cause. with the worlds vast and increasing population there is certain to have an effect but nobody can say with absolute certainty. remember scientist can assure their future earnings by Keeping things stirred up even though thier statements are based mainly on theory. theory is not fact.
I want to respond to those who don’t believe in global warming or believe man is not causing it.
Global temperature is directly related to the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Scientists have studied ice core samples dating back tens of thousands of years and have concluded that the level of CO2 has NEVER been as high as it is today; and it is still rising.
It is true that there have always been fluctuations in the earth’s temperature. But today’s CO2 level indicates that man’s influence (burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, etc.) is obviously responsible for the current level and the spike we are seeing in global temperatures (which is indisputable).
It is disappointing to see so many try to argue against what scientists have known for over 30 years. I strongly recommend the documentary film "An Inconvenient Truth" regardless of your opinion of Al Gore as a politician.
It’s true that climate change has been happening for millions of billions of years. However, in my opinion, the way mankind uses it’s resources in our day and age can’t be making the climate any better. I’m not a scientist, but I do think that the combination of natural climate change and man’s intervention is making a more larger problem that we may have had in the past.
Climate change I will agree with..I disagree with the global warming crowd..my father told me about the dust bowl in Oklahoma in the 1930s..he lived there and had to pack up and move..I’m still not certain what caused it
I’m 51 and i can say this it was much colder in the winter time in Michigan back in the days but the summer really hasn’t changed all that much i remember allot of hot days back in the days to . What that means i have no idea . I think we are coming out of an ice age a little fast because we did cut down allot of trees and we did pave Paradise .
I believe we do need to stop dumping so much crap into the air for the simple fact that we need oxygen to breath and that’s about the only thing we are not dumping into the atmosphere and we cut down most of the trees that produce oxygen for us.
Man made reality. I’ll focus on some of the arguments raised here.
"in the mid to late ’70′s the big environmental concern then was the coming ice age.."
Not true. This was an idea by a few scientists with no good data and no backing from the scientific community. They were much like the "skeptics" of today. More details here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94
"Why don’t you ask a meteorologist if they can predict how many tornado’s will occur lets say ten years from now."
Weather isn’t very predictable. Climate is. See the graph in the next link below.
"explain what caused the several Ice Ages and warming periods in between, all of which occurred prior to Man’s arrival."
There are natural climate changes, of course. But the scientific data clearly proves the present change is not due to natural factors, but rather mostly to man made greenhouse gases. A nice picture, from the Source below:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
"one of the claims is that no one disagrees anymore, all scientists subscribe to the theory. Fact is, they don’t. "
99+% of them do. There are a (very) few skeptics. Proof here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686
The reason is because of the data, not some mysterious conspiracy.
"I wasn’t convinced by a person or any interest group—it was the data that got me. I was utterly convinced of this connection between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. And I was convinced that if we didn’t do something about this, we would be in deep trouble.”
Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)
Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut and the first Commander of the Naval Space Command
"The fact that the community overwhelmingly supports the consensus is evidenced by picking up any copy of Journal of Climate or similar, any scientific program at the meetings, or simply going to talk to scientists. I challenge you, if you think there is some un-reported division, show me the hundreds of abstracts that support your view – you won’t be able to. You can argue whether the consensus is correct, or what it really implies, but you can’t credibly argue it doesn’t exist."
Dr. James Baker – NOAA
Good websites for more info:
http://profend.com/global-warming/
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/
http://www.realclimate.org
"climate science from climate scientists"
Pretty much all skeptics arguments are dealt with here:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462
EDIT- campbelp2002 says
"Just asking a bunch of random yahoos what they think in general about the whole complex subject is a really, REALLY bad idea."
Agreed. Thumbs up. But all that is required for false ideas to triumph here is that the debate is not joined. And your statement is the reason why my posts are loaded with links to extensive scientific data. That’s where the truth is, not here.
It’s not possible for anthropogenic (man-made) global warming to be a hoax. That’s not how science works. Scientists don’t all gather in a dark basement somewhere and ask ‘okay, what crazy hoax can we trick people into believing this week?’.
Scientists simply gather data, analyze the data, and draw an unbiased conclusion from that analysis. Climate scientists have studied the climate data, and virtually all of them have concluded that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming. There’s simply no other possible explanation. Natural causes can’t account for the recent acceleration in warming – that’s the first thing they checked. Only when they factored in human greenhouse gas emissions could they account for the warming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
The climate is changed by the republicans and they do it with a master thermostat they have at there secret lair. They do it just to piss off over emotional liberals then sit back and watch all the death and destruction. Everybody who isn’t an idiot believes this until they get older and are brainwashed by Rush Limbaugh and climate scientists.
Global warming is no hoax…it’s a cyclical event that is ongoing. Man has not ’caused’ global warming; but man HAS caused the cycle to be disrupted.
Our ‘industrial revolution’ with vehicle emissions, smoke-belching factories, and unsound environmental habits have all contributed to man, plants and animals not having sufficient time to adjust, adapt or evolve to the changes. That’s what will cause horrendous floods, terrible weather patterns, and the extinction of polar bears or remote Eskimo tribes by the year 2050 if we don’t do something now!
So what do polar bears and remote Eskimo tribes have to do with us? It’s all inter-connected. In "Ode" magazine, the Dali Lama said, "Our survival and out future are very much linked to one another."
In "National Geographic" magazine, it warns, "If vulnerable parts of the ice that blankets Greenland and Antarctica succumb, rising seas could flood hundreds of thousands of square miles – much of Florida, Bangladesh, the Netherlands – and displace tens of millions of people.
The temperature threshold for drastic sea-level rise is near, but many scientists think we still have time to stop short of it, by sharply cutting back consumption of climate-warming coal, oil and gas. Few doubt, however, that another 50 years of business as usual will take us beyond a point of no return." -RKO- 08/11/07
You should study SCIENCE and not just get people’s opinion. This isn’t about opinions, it is about reality. The science is both simple and complex. Once you understand the simple parts of the science, then you can intelligently ask opinions from people who specialize in climate science. Just asking a bunch of random yahoos what they think in general about the whole complex subject is a really, REALLY bad idea.
Response to open4one:
1. Ice ages (and inter-glacial periods) are triggered by small changes in earth’s orbit called "Milankovitch cycles" by astronomers or "orbital forcing" by climatologists. Because earth’s orbit can be computed for thousands of years into the past and future, we know that orbital forcing peaked 6000 years ago (the Holocene maximum) and should be cooling the planet right now.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/207/4434/943
2. Climate models can and do accurately model past climate. In fact modelling of past events is one of the standard ways climate models are evaluated for fitness.
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0493%281997%29125%3C2247%3AMOSSDV%3E2.0.CO%3B2
3. CO2 contributes between 9% and 26% of the earth’s total greenhouse effect. But the total greenhouse effect amounts to about 33°C, so that’s a significant amount. Considering that CO2 levels have risen 38% since the industrial revolution, that alone should raise a red flag.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/
4. Nobody ever claimed that "all scientists" agree that humans are causing global warming. What we have said, and continue to say, is that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists subscribe to the consensus view that global warming is caused by us. For example, Madhav Khandekar has compiled a bibliography of 68 peer-reviewed papers that question some aspect of anthropogenic global warming. By way of contrast, the latest IPCC report contains over 4600 references to peer-reviewed papers, the vast majority of which support the consensus. So no, it’s not all — but it is well over 90%. In science, as in politics, you seldom get a consensus bigger than that.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html
5. Many PhD. scientists have been giving interviews to the media, but frankly most scientists have better things to do with their time. If you want to read what real scientists are saying, you can start with http://www.realclimate.org which is written and run by real climate scientists.
6. Sea levels are rising, and have been for at least a century.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Pub_Ch05.pdf
7. In the natural, pre-industrial climate state, CO2 should lag temperature because of a long-term feedback loop in ocean dissolution. (Warm water holds less CO2 than cold water, so if some triggering event — like orbital forcing — causes warmer temps, eventually the oceans will release more CO2, causing more warmth, causing more CO2 released from the ocean, and so on in a feedback loop.) Right now, because of the last 6000 years of orbitally-forced cooling, the oceans are doing the reverse trick, acting as a sink for CO2 instead of as a source. At the current rate of human-caused warming, however, the oceans will switch over from being a CO2 sink to being a CO2 source in about 2100 (that’s about 3 times faster than the natural switchover occurs). If we don’t have a handle on our CO2 emissions by that time, we’re screwed.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11089968&dopt=Citation
Although some fluctuations are normal, I do believe that we have had a hand in speeding up these normal cycles. Many people years ago thought chlorofluorocarbons did not harm the ozone. Once all companies got together and got rid of them did we see a correction in the ozone.
Personally conserving and finding more earth friendly methods of doing business and living, couldn’t hurt.
Prior to 1999 and GWB, the average Earth’s temperature was a constant 58 degrees F and it remained that way for that last 750,000 years. Temperature, glacier mass, solar output, albedo, water vapor, dinosaur faerts, orbit perturbation, and sea level for the entire planet remained static. Continents did not move and volcanoes were never geologically challenged like Mount Saint Hellens. It turns out that the folks from NE Siberia had to fly on Alaska Airlines from Magadan, RF to Anchorage, AK on a MD-80 to populate North America and make Clovis points because a land bridge did not exist. At that time, they enjoyed complementary mammoth cheese burgers, pommes frites, Humboldt fog cheese & crackers, goose blubber, steamed mussels, pemmican, ginger ale, and Watney’s Red Barrel as part of their in flight meal. The caveman from Geico actually flew the plane. It was not until the year 2000 that Donald Rumsfeld infiltrated the secret warehouse, owned by George Lucas and located in San Rafael, CA, and stole the technical readouts to an Imperial Star Destroyer! At that time the Bush administration finally seized plans to a vehicle that could mount the 250 megawatt GWB weather machine. The fully armed Star Destroyer was built by Textron, Lockheed, and General Dynamics, with a few bits obtained by Orchard Supply and Hardware and McMaster-Carr Supply, Co. and launched from LLNL’s site 300 in September of 2001. The rest is history…………..ts
If it were not for Ceasar Chavez, the white man would have no climate to change.
The Earth has warmed and cooled countless times. Why the heck would I think I caused it this time?
“virtually all of them have concluded that humans are the primary cause of the current global warming. There’s simply no other possible explanation.”
Last year in BC the sockeye salmon run was almost a complete loss, there were a few stragglers which were spotted going up the Frazer river. Some claimed the fish were extinct. The scientists who study fish biology claimed it was due to climate change, which of course is caused by humans. They claimed there simply was no other explanation. This year the sockeye salmon run is the biggest in 100 years, and the people who study them are not claiming that it is caused by humans. They are trying to fabricate a new conclusion to explain it.
How was human caused climate change the only explanation last year but not this year? The truth is they haven’t a clue what goes on with salmon once they head out to sea, but they won’t admit it. And these people are the experts. Because they can’t find an explanation does not mean that humans are to blame. Blaming humans is the cheap way out.
It’s the same for the extinction of large mammals at the end of the last glaciation. They do not know what casued it, so the only explanation is that humans are to blame. I have a science undergrad degree, and if I had written papers with those unfounded claims they would have tossed me out on my ear. I don’t know what has happened to science in the intervening years but I conclude that science is for sale today like never before. These guys say whatever it takes to get the next funding. Sad.