In your opinion, does man-made global warming exist or do the natural processes of the Earth contribute more? And what makes you believe that?

I used to say no when I was a follow-the-leader-conservative. And then I found out all the evidence. And then I find out from more and more reliable appearing sources that it's not really happening (as opposed to just the right-wing nuts screaming about regulation.)

Please don't get into any of the other affects of pollution such as health issues, lead poisoning, acid rain, and the benefits of cleaning our air supply anyway. Those are all well and dandy discussions, but those are better reserved for other threads.

That sentence was rather poorly worded, as asking if "natural processes" contribute more presupposes that man-made global warming exists.

Of course our activities warm the planet to some degree (perhaps to an immeasurably small degree) but I think the natural processes contribute more than that. I believe global warming is occurring due to seeing (on the internet) how the Arctic ice masses are decreasing and the lowest winter temperatures of my home state in winter seem rather mild nowadays.

In addition to what Arthur said, one might hold the view that natural processes contribute much more than man-made global warming and yet man-made global warming is still of great importance. The thing is, man-made global warming happens in addition to the natural processes - and it's the man-made stuff that we have some control over, not the natural stuff. So it doesn't really matter if solar flares (say) have a bigger impact than driving cars - driving cars is something we can change and solar flares are not.

Yes

Yes

Yes

I have looked out amongst the smog-filled mornings and have thought to myself, yup, that's all man-made. I doubt that many dinosaur farts could have put that much pollution in the air.

Then a volcano erupts and lights all of those dinosaur farts. That a lot o' pollution.

Then loggers cut down forests (yeah, rain forests too) and we have fewer natural CO₂ scrubbers. Then responsible loggers plant new trees.

Then an oil tanker leaks (gets blown up, rubs against an iceburg) and kills mermaids and ocean-based oxygen-producing plants.

Then someone turns off their computer instead of allowing it to run all night, so less coal needs to be burned, so less mining has to take place, so people are out of jobs, so there is more stress, so people light up a cigarette to calm themselves, which contributes to the smog. And landfills. Those butts gotta go somewhere.

I think global warming is happening, but I'm more confident that some nut-o is going to go all "Fire the nukes!" at all the other countries and start ourselves in a huge fireball of a world war. Then who cares if the earth is a degree or two warmer overall? It'll be all Wall-E all over again.

It is very hard to prove that the world is getting warmer when the average temperature is not raising.

I blame it on the cows farting and burping...

No one dares to speak about global warming at the present in Finland. We have had a long cold period, -18 degrees for weeks, with lots of snow. We might have more snow than in any winter for 60 years. Some 70 cm in my garden right now. And more coming. My snow shovel broke and I tried to get a new one, but they are all sold out in Southern Finland.

Though this might have to do with global warming. Maybe the warmer climate puts more water in rotation, which can be seen in more snow falling. Winter is still winter, even if the global temperatures rise.

Ah right. Just like how when my code bugs out it proves that it's working. Bugs are still bugs, even if the code is getting better.

.. more sarcastic post ..
Also how I know my wife is committed to me. Her marrying me is part of a rotation which can be seen by hormones rising. Sex is still sex, even if she's married to me.

Don't really care, when and if some shit happens, I'm most likely 6 feet under already.

6 feet under the shit?

6 feet under the weather?

Six feet under

I thought my mixing of metaphors was rather humorous.

Except that neither "six feet under" or "under the weather" is a metaphor.

I do not think that there is a global warming. I do think there is a change in how the weather works, and I also do believe that man is partially responsible for these changes.

One great problem for US/UK is the Gulf Stream. It seems that the tiniest variation in it causes great weather changes.

Climate change is a better phrase than global warming. Yes, natural processes on the Earth (and in the sun or in space) contribute significantly to climate change. And yes, I think humanity is contributing to the current change in climate.
The reason, mainly, is the rate at which the climate is changing. The rate at which icesheets are melting. It is happening much more quickly than can be attributed to natural causes alone.
I guess part of that belief comes from listening to other scientists working in related fields and seeing movies of glaciers melting.

Of course, a second question then becomes what to do about it. The climate has changed considerably in the past. There is a mass extinction, life on Earth recovers and the cycle continues. It will be no different this time, if it gets that far. The question (for our sake) is whether we'll be among the species to go extinct if it should come to that.

Part of the problem in presenting a field like this to the general public is, first of all, the data is often scarce (because we've only been recording directly for so long) or indirect (tree rings, ice cores, each of which requires intermediate steps to interpret what they say about the climate). Year-to-year variations are huge (larger than any systematic trend, which only shows up in 5-year averages). The general public doesn't "get" a difficult concept like "rate of change", they like to hear "the temperature will increase by so-and-so much", and when they hear that the temperature will increase "so many degrees" they think "well, that's not too bad" because you get larger variations during a single day. People think that a few hundred years (not even a geological blink of an eye) is a long time. There's the climate models, which are still somewhat crude and imprecise and therefore not always reliable. And finally there's the fact that weather systems are chaotic systems and it's hard (not to say impossible) to predict what a small change today will do for the climate on a longer timescale (note the need to upscale "weather" to "climate", which is again not trivial).
Usually it's easier to predict the climate than the weather because the climate is less chaotic, but it is chaotic on some level (non-chaotic systems are never stable because they can't damp out small perturbations) and pushing it out of quasi-equilibrium too hard will trigger a phase where the climate changes rapidly and significantly before stabilising again.
People will tend to rely on our technology and innovation to counter any problems that may arise. But there are things our technology will be powerless to prevent. Natural disasters is an obvious example and I suspect climate change is another. Of course, people argue over whether that just reflects our current technology or whether at some point we'll have technology that will help (I think we won't ever have the kind of technology that can protect us from everything). Even if we did though, it's not obvious what the long-term effect of using such technology would be.

That's before you factor in political pressure that tries to confuse the issue one way or the other.

Were that the case then yes, you'd have a point.
You know, sometimes I'd wish we could split the world up. Let the nay-sayers do to their part whatever the hell they like and let those of us who are a bit more responsible do unto their part what they want, then compare in a few hundred, a few thousand years. See who's laughing then. Unfortunately, we have to share the same world and choices made by a small group of people affect us all.

The efficiency of the Gulf-stream is what matters. I don't know what the leading cause for the current winter is (it may be as simple as a year-to-year fluctuation), but if global temperatures rise the efficiency of the Gulf-stream decreases and Northern Europe gets colder (it'll get more similar to the climate on the other side of the Atlantic). Anyway, as I said, "global warming" is a confusing term.

I can recommend this guy's climate change videos (7 so far): http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54#p/u/18/52KLGqDSAjo
They're the best intro to the subject I've seen (yes, despite being made for Youtube!). They're well presented, they don't presuppose any knowledge, they stay factual instead of devolving into polemic, and they give references.

I don't like when people ignorant of my field (Neuroscience) hold "opinions" about it, so being uninformed of the field of Climatology, I don't hold uninformed opinions about it. If I did wish to become more informed about it, I'd read the literature (scientific papers), and not listen Internet wise men that have "solved it all" or interpret the data myself without knowing what to look for.

Wonder how many of you for/against it have ever read a scientific paper from a reputable journal about the subject? I'll wager the number is rather low.

So you are also holding an uninformed opinion?

Oh I agree. I wish all these environmentalists would sit in a corner and leave the rest of us alone. Instead however, the choices made by this small group begin taxes and polices that affect us all.

Hehe, touché. Wager removed .

Hold the press, there's another armageddon theory. This new one uses graphs .

In a hundred years society will look back on this as embarrassing. I can only hope the evangelists find some way to make it sound better and save face. Maybe make it more generic like say, calling it climate change... oh wait.

I don't know. My view is that climatology and atmospheric science is still in its infancy, so we really don't know anything. Looking at our prior track record, it always takes us a few passes to get it right (hell, we used to think the earth was square and that it was at the center of the universe). Maybe it is happening, maybe it isn't. Maybe it is man caused, maybe it is natural. There is too much that we don't know.

I do not believe it is as simple as is claimed now. I don't believe carbon dioxide is causing any warming there may be.

But yeah, we shouldn't be acting on these half-baked, most likely incorrect theories to the extreme amount we are. Whether or not it should be done, imposing taxes on pollution is not something you do during a recession, unless you're a collective group of dumbasses (hey, kind of like our current government). Of course, the same goes for healthcare (though I wouldn't trust the government to take over the manufacture of bandaids, let alone the whole health system), but that's a whole different discussion.

That's right, if you have to make a choice between saving the world and saving the economy, you save the economy.
Ok, it's not that extreme, but that proposition is still preposterous and summarises everything I dislike about the US's general attitude to this situation. So maybe it'll turn the world doesn't need saving and it's wasted effort. But what if it does need saving? Can we afford to be wrong? Could you look future generations in the eye and say "yeah sorry, we weren't sure and we thought our economy was more important than maybe destroying your future"? I couldn't.

Anyway, pollution and the current pressure on natural resources are beside the point of the discussion as laid out in the original post, but there are other reasons beside climate change why reducing a lot, and soon would be a very good thing to do.

Here is a simplified model that I would use to explain to high school students.

1) X amount of Co2 is injected from human activity each year.
2) Y amount of Co2 is injected from natural processes (volcanoes etc)
3) A amount of Co2 is removed from biomass
4) B amount of Co2 is absorbed in the ocean

Overall we have a net effect of increasing the acidity of the ocean by a measurable amount and increasing the concentration of Co2 in the atmosphere.

The earths climate is largely affected by the ocean. The temperature and the currents drive everything. By increasing the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere by 33% since 1960 (and a whole lot more since 1800s) we have also increased the amount of trapped "heat" from the sun. This warms the oceans and changes the currents causing "global climate change". Global warming is a term used to describe the global "average" temperature.

I'm skeptical. It seems even the scientists making the claims of global warming (or climate change, if you will) aren't sure of their own science. The impression I've gotten from shows ("programmes", for those of you on the other side of the Atlantic) on Discovery and National Geographic are that many of the scientists in support of global warming are pulling evidence out of thin air (and I don't mean literally).

I just get sick of hearing them say "X is Y" when I know that they don't really know for sure. They're looking at a piece of evidence and coming up with one possible explanation for it and going with that as factual instead of questioning the other things that the evidence might indicate. I prefer the scientist that says "I hypothesize that X is Y because of A and B and these are all of the ways I'm going to prove it". That's the kind of scientist that I want to stand behind.

Scientists have already shown that the Earth's climates cycle wildly and that humanity doesn't fully understand the vastness of these cycles yet. It seems perfectly logical that this so called warming is merely a periodic recurrence that we just haven't witnessed before (or maybe we have witnessed it before and it's either forgotten about or being swept under the rug).

As if what we've been observing as the full picture was really just a sliver of the graph. The Earth is believed to be hundreds of millions of years old, IIRC. Human civilizations are believed to be tens of thousands of years old, IIRC. It's perfectly reasonable to assume we haven't seen anything yet.

I'm not saying that they shouldn't consider the possibility that global warming might be happening, might be a problem for our survival, and that we might be able to prevent or slow it; but we should also consider the possibility that global warming might not be happening, might not be a problem for our survival, or that we might not be able to prevent or slow it. It's important to stay objective and consider every possibility.

For all we know, the measures we take to "prevent" global warming could have adverse affects themselves. We just don't know. I think it's better to trust what we think we know instead of trusting what we know we don't.

By all means, look for cleaner and more renewable energy resources and work towards conserving energy, but not to the extremes that some people think we should go to. We need to continue to live life as normal. It doesn't really matter if we do go extinct. You won't be able to care because you won't exist anymore. We'll either figure out how to survive or we won't. It happens every day in the wild and even in our very own cities.

Humans are just as natural to this planet as any other animal on it. We shouldn't assume any responsibility for preserving the state of the planet. In the past, most of our efforts to help have had unforeseen consequences that are just as bad or worse than the original problem.

If we want to survive as a race (following our survival instinct, we are just like any other animal, right?) we need to take responsibility and preserve our planet.

I don't know about you, but I actually do want this planet to be a pleasent place at least in my lifetime.

There's two things. There's how scientists talk among themselves, with ifs and buts and caveats, and there's how scientists talk to other people who are not in the fields and who are not scientists. In that case, you do say "X is Y" because the general public generally doesn't care about caveats and loop holes, uncertainties and arguments for or against.
Anyway, philosophically scientist shouldn't go and try to prove their hypothesis (although in practice that's what many of us try to do) they should try to disprove it.

Ehm... that's exactly what it is. There's nothing logical about it one way or the other. The climate is changing, at a rate that hasn't been seen before.

4500 million years old.

There are climate indicators that stretch back more than the timeframe during which humans have been around. That's how we know climates change.
Also consider this. For much of those 4500 million years, the Earth would have been uninhabitable or uncomfortable for us to live on.

Yes, but that can't be an argument to do nothing. If A can prevent B, and B is something that you very much don't want to happen - then you're better off doing A.

Either way, as a scientific topic, this is not something where people get to vote in opinion polls on which is right and which is wrong. It's like asking the general public whether they think evolution is right or wrong. Their opinion counts for nothing in such a discussion.
Because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's false. Because you don't believe it doesn't mean it's wrong (and vice versa). Because it's inconvenient a problem doesn't rectify itself.

That's what I said. 45 hundred million years old.

Yes, but we haven't really reached a point where we can confidently put the pieces together to form a solid understanding. Much of the data is still misunderstood or open to interpretation (indeed, I've seen shows on Discovery or National Geographic where other respected scientists challenged the claims made based on said evidence) and our sample sizes are still considerably tiny. There's a lot more data to collect and much more to learn.

Except that we don't yet know for sure that A can prevent B. It seems plausible, but there's still too much that we don't know. We also don't know just how much of A is plausible. It's been my understanding that we can't even say for sure what B entails.

Just like, ostensibly, evolutionary scientists (or should I say EVILutionary, eh?) aren't in agreement on the mechanics one evolution either?

Build an arc. Gather up your applications, 2.0 by 2.0, and hope that when the polar ice caps melt, you've purchased flood insurance.

Even when I was a very young kid, I could tell the difference between the "let's pretend" Bizarro superman and the real Superman.

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Whoops, missed something.

But that's not really true, is it? Technology already helps us prevent or mitigate the effects of natural disasters all over the place. An example that comes to mind right away is earthquake-resistant buildings; not perfect, but certainly dramatically lessening the impact of that particular natural disaster. Seismological and meteorological sciences provide us with the means to track and predict disasters early enough to ward against the disaster or, at worst, evacuate the area beforehand. Even when disaster does strike, modern advances in communications, medicine, transportation and other fields of science has made us significantly more capable of responding to natural disasters when they occur and saving many, many lives that would've been lost in a more primitive age.

The answer, if anything, is more technology, and technology used responsibly with the best of mankind in mind. The fact that we're stampeding towards a future without a functioning ecosystem doesn't have so much to do with the progress of technology as economy and politics, particularly that of rich first-world megacorporations who, adding to their already magnificient history of exploiting the poor and uneducated for profit, are more than happy to sacrifice coming generations for just another million dollars in their pockets today.

That's true. It's not what I said though.

All true. But it's again not an example of what I said. Earthquake resistant buildings don't prevent earthquakes, they reduce (significantly, but they don't eliminate) the impact of one.

Sometimes. Sometimes not. Was the earthquake in Haiti predicted (I actually don't know)?
If there is an indication that an earthquake/volcanic eruption will hit a densely populated area (I'm thinking Naples and Vesuvius specifically), is there enough time to evacuate everyone?
Of course, in the case of planet-wide climate change... well, going somewhere else can be even more problematic.

Yup. But again, that's not what I said. Those things don't help prevent said natural disasters.

That is a good thing, yes.

All of that's right (and if it isn't that's fine and we'll accept it for the fate of argument). It's again not what I said though.

I guess another way to make my point is that to prevent is better than to heal. Especially if you can't be sure that we have the ability to heal whatever it is we're preventing.
Our technology is great and it helps us a lot. But it doesn't (and I think never will) make us invulnerable. So a blind faith that our technology will always be able to get us out of whatever situation we get ourselves into is, in my opinion, naive.

I didn't mean to say you said any of those things (and in fact much of it wasn't aimed at you directly in the first place); you read that into it yourself. What I did mean to say was this: With all the advances we've made in such a short time -- modern science is a relatively new idea, after all -- it is unreasonable to dismiss the possibility that in another few decades we will be able to completely prevent many natural disasters. I know you mentioned that people argue over that sort of thing; yes they do, and I am one of those people who disagree with your pessimistic assertion that the future will not hold those things, and I wanted to bring that up. I think it's important to mention in this context, lest people get the wrong idea.

That's all good and well, but it was in response to a quote of me. While it's fine to expand on what you're replying to, it isn't always clear whether you're simply expanding on what you're saying, or whether you're reading that into what people are saying.
Some people are very good at that.

Yes, but there is a distinction between saying that it is unreasonable to dismiss the possibility that we may have such technology in the future and saying that it is reasonable to expect that we will have such technology.

I don't think I'm being pessimistic at all. I'm not saying that we won't have technology to do whatever we want^[1], just that we should not count on it that we will.
Our technology today can do remarkable things. Tomorrows technology will do even more remarkable things. But the technology we have now breaks down under certain conditions (extreme weather, for instance) and there are limits to what it can do. That will be true of tomorrow's technology as well. The limits will be different, but they will be there. To believe that that is not so is again, to me, naive.

Nasa recently reported that the last decade was the warmest ever.

James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) said in a statement: "There's substantial year-to-year variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Nino-La Nina cycle. When we average temperature over five or ten years to minimize that variability, we find global warming is continuing unabated."

I recommend everyone to move inland or buy a boathouse. No more sand beaches either, except for maybe in the Sahara.

I think we can. I could look them in the eye and say that, but maybe I'm just a heartless bastard.

What if we're wrong about global warming? What if reducing CO2 will make problems worse somehow?

Anyhow, taxing pollution isn't going to do a damned thing, except drive pollution to other countries. So great, now we have tougher laws, we're "helping the world," the net effect on pollution is pretty low, and our economy is even worse. Great going.

I've always been skeptical of "global warming", but wasn't convinced one way or the other until the biggest (only?) known public supporter was a politician. Now there's just all sorts of stuff disproving the bulk of it and pointing to it being a big money grab.

Of course, now we know that it's not just Earth experiencing the phenomena so it seems a little silly to attribute it solely to human affairs, especially given the tiny fraction of emissions we put out in comparison to the natural world. I'm sure it affects it in a significant way, but I doubt it's the primary cause of general warming. Then there was that whole scandal about the cover up, too.

Of course, the "world's super power" has a lot to gain from the whole thing. Is China also owned by Is Ra El?

"Do nothing" isn't the answer, but doing "something" means you actually have to give a damn, and it's pretty unlikely that people will start doing that without a massive war or something crazy like that. Dead cows just taste way too good, and public transportation is "lame" (or just doesn't have enough bass). Maybe those two things wont be valued when half the world is underwater and 80% of the people everyone knows are gone. Maybe.

Oh well. Into the fire they go. The things you own will own you. Believe in Jesus and all that jazz. It doesn't matter what you believe, you're probably right, so pick something and have the mothmen bring it to you

I'm sick of everyone being so brainwashed. When will we get over this and get back to talking with a semblance of logic?

All the double talk, hypocritical and circular arguments are just old. They used to get me mad but now they just make me bored.

If you're idolizing facts that help your theory and downplaying ones that don't maybe it's time to consider a new theory.

Here is a perfect example:

There's something funny going on when intelligent, well thought out posts get heavily scoffed at while inane, unintelligent and brainless posts get by without the slightest critique. In fact the air almost seems to pretend these are useful posts...

And don't try to claim this thread is the first that has unintelligent pro-global-warming in it. No one is that dumb here -- right?

As I stated in my first post, I believe global warming is occurring. I don't necessarily believe it's our "fault". I believe we must keep tabs on the situation. I think it'd be easier to alter our "economic maps" than to actually affect the worldwide climate due to our future actions (past actions are spilled milk). I believe the major problems with global warming are not just "it's hotter everywhere", but that climate patterns will change, some parts of the globe will actually get colder, others warmer, (and more of the latter, or it's not "global warming") and expected rainfall for specific regions will change. In other words, we have to pay attention. The US for instance might have to move "the breadbasket of the world" USA great plains states elsewhere, or even change the type of cash crops significantly. Just life as normal as regards to new problems to solve.

That's Entertainment.

The newest weapons technology. Very nice design. Major drawback though: It's victim must request it and accept it... and not know about it.

Oh, the irony.

I'm wondering... Is it better to be unintelligent or without a brain? Or is it the same?

And I can't see how bamccaig's post is intelligent or thought out... Let me correct the statement for you.

OK OK so only verthex's post was pro-global-warming. The other two were just brainless and unintelligent. But you get the point.

I wouldn't disagree with your correction. I was attempting to imply that pro-global-warming arguments were the ones not getting critiqued.

If this is to imply you are not brainwashed, let's prove it. Stop with all the high and mighty talk and let's discuss what makes you think there is a measurable carbon effect. Don't say "some smart scientist" because that's just bullshit.

Give us some reasonable concepts we can discuss intelligently.

Nope, it's to say that "idolizing facts that help your theory and downplaying ones that don't" is something that a lot of self-proclaimed climate skeptics do very well. Same for the lack of coherent reasoning.

You gotta fight fire with fire.

You could resolve any logical argument into axiomatic symbols of negation, and, or, etc... but the results would be the same as using big complicated words which symbolize a context of sentences by using a single word. I suppose all of you could try programming bubble sort without iteration and tell me how that works.

What have I done!

As I see it, things are quite simple really.

The global economy has by now reached a state where economic growth is an absolute necessity for everyone involved, and this growth isn't merely theoretical, it needs to be backed by actual physical growth: resources need to be transformed into goods, and the rate at which this happens needs to grow exponentially to keep the overall economic system intact.
However, in a finite world, resources can never be infinite, and an exponentially growing usage of these resources must end up depleting them completely, in finite time. You may stop using a handful of critical resources, but you have to use something, and that usage will grow exponentially.

Remember the 1980's, when (at least in Western Europe) there was a "green" movement that wanted to protect, well, pretty much everything somehow connected to "nature" or "the Earth"? These days, nuclear power is celebrating a renaissance because it's CO₂-neutral and thus "green", while the proponents are conveniently disregarding the facts that the nuclear waste problem hasn't been solved (and is unlikely to be in the near future), and that useable uranium or plutonium are subject to the exponential depletion just like coal, oil, and any other natural resource. These days, intelligent people are proposing to pump CO₂ back into the ground, which might solve the CO₂ problem, but not the overall exponential growth issue.

So the root of the problem is a economic/political system that mandates exponential growth. Everything else, on both sides of the discussion, are details.

Some of these details strike me for showing their true motives so clearly. A nice one is this: "We are not 100% absolutely positively sure that Global Warming exists and that we are to blame, so we better not change our ways, 'cause otherwise it might turn out we've done something unnecessary, and that would be, you know, embarrassing". Right. So you never wear seat belts when driving your car, because you aren't 100% absolutely positively sure that you're going to have an accident? You're not saving up for retirement, because who knows, you might die long before you reach retirement age, and then all that money would be wasted?
It's so incredibly obvious that people love to hear things like "Don't listen to them evil-speakers, you can keep living your life just like you're used to and everything will be OK", and that other people have observed this fact and are using it to their advantage.

             | danger is real | danger is fake
             +----------------+---------------
do something | live           | live
do nothing   | die            | live

Oh dear, we better do something about every possible danger because I'd hate to be wrong about anything and (gasp) die!