IS GLOBAL WARMING CAUSED BY HUMANS?

When the first manmade object touched the moon, the balance in nature tipped. We didn't throw enough salt over our shoulder.

The stratigraphic record is loaded with evidence of multiple major warming events (much greater than were eperiencing now) and hundreds of minor warming events that are equivalent to what were experiencing. All of these occured when mankind was pre-industrial and/or even pre hominid.

Heres where I depart with many of my other liberal colleagues. Im still in the "show me" stage.
Somebody prove (I mean with hard data), that the production of "greenhouse gases" is in excess of the planets ability to buffer same.

Remember the "ozone hole" This was a temporary deviation in the rate of production of ozone, and not any real number. It was a statistical game and not one of real stoichiometry.

I want to "believe" in man-induced climate change but I feel were in the smack dang middle of an interglacial "wurm" stage

The production, release and storage of carbon is an ongoing natural cycle. I would suggest to you (without any hard evidence) that the fluctuations in the past have been caused by a natural event trigger. something set the cycle off, a Meteor, volcanic eruptions, sunflares etc.
yep all natural and recoverable.

What man is doing is accellerating that natural cycle by the overuse of carbon based fossile fuels which are essentially billions of compressed trees.

Sea levels rise causing flooding, weather patterns change making arable areas unusable, pretty soon man cant get enough to eat. he fights his neighbours for food
Animals and plants die off or only exist in a few pockets.

Human society as we know it reverts to a nomadic existance or dies away completly. The earth now under less pressure will find ways to compensate and begin to store carbon from the atmosphere again.
and so it goes with man being an unsuspecting participant in the cycle.

do you know what the cycle is? It (the cycle itself or the law/rules that action the cycle) is the closest description i can give for god my interpretation of an all seeing, all knowing, all encompasing law.

In my judgement the only real danger from global warming is to Man himself.

The rapid melting of the last continental glaciers have not been preceeded by some cataclysmic heat source or extraterrestrial event. It was a gradual warming , in which we presently are in the core.
I remember, as a kid, that everyone was talking about the NEXT ICE AGE.

I dont deny that the climate is getting up-caloried but Im unconvinced that we have a good handle on the duration, the cause, and the trend

I haven't done enough homework to have a hardcore opinion.

Me neither. It would be nice to think this were a manmade occurance; then, maybe man could reverse it.

The answer to your "are you sure" question then is no I am not sure, but I am not waiting around doing nothing until I am sure.
Even if the only result af any action I take is a minor increase in carbon sequestration and a minor decrease in carbon production, it makes me feel good to be doing something, then it is worthwhile.

A home guide to reducing energy costs and greenhouse gases

Australian greenhouse office publications


sustainability network newsletter #2

CSIRO sustainability network

I look at it this way: It would be a good thing for humans to get off the fossil fuel tit. Fossil fuels pollute the world- killing humans, animals and plant life. Oil, coal and gas are not infinite, so we need to find sustainable alternatives before the lights go out and the our combustion engines grind to halt. Alternatives to oil would cut down on our wars in the Middle East, and thus save us lots of money that could be used for health care, education and fixing our infrastructure. If we happen to save the polar bears in the process - all the better. Are you willing to bet it's not us and do nothing?

The news was reporting this morning that the core ice shows several previous warming periods, but none as accelerated as this one.

I'll have to find a source for that info. Not sure that proves mankind is at fault, but...

I do believe we ought to do our part to stop polluting the Earth, regardless of the final word, when and if it comes down.

Interglacial warm stages have , within the last 800000 years, resulted in periods that have seen migration of tropical plants into the high latitudes. Of course this may all be due to strengthening of mid ocean streams reaching higher latitudes. Today we have palms and semi tropical plants living in Ireland and England. In the interglacial stages, we had palms and semi tropical plants living as far north as Boston.

Ive gone over to using biodeisel as a personal act of conservation. However this act does nothing for carbon emissions. Russian geophysicists have published data that correlates significant warming trends to clusters of solar flares , the Chandler wobble, orbit precession, and Malenkovitch cycles. They, almost in contrarian fashion to present climatological thinking, have predicted that we will be entering a glacial cycle within the next few hundred years, and according to them, these cooling cycles can be initiated during a very short time period.

National Academy of sciences U.S.A

Forced and unforced ocean temperature changes in Atlantic and Pacific tropical cyclogenesis regions
Abstract.
Previous research has identified links between changes in sea surface temperature (SST) and hurricane intensity. We use climate models to study the possible causes of SST changes in Atlantic and Pacific tropical cyclogenesis regions. The observed SST increases in these regions range from 0.32°C to 0.67°C over the 20th century. The 22 climate models examined here suggest that century-timescale SST changes of this magnitude cannot be explained solely by unforced variability of the climate system. We employ model simulations of natural internal variability to make probabilistic estimates of the contribution of external forcing to observed SST changes. For the period 1906-2005, we find an 84% chance that external forcing explains at least 67% of observed SST increases in the two tropical cyclogenesis regions. Model "20th-century" simulations, with external forcing by combined anthropogenic and natural factors, are generally capable of replicating observed SST increases. In experiments in which forcing factors are varied individually rather than jointly, human-caused changes in greenhouse gases are the main driver of the 20th-century SST increases in both tropical cyclogenesis regions.

There are myriad articals predicting climate change or impact of climate change. That, as I see it, is not the issue for this thread. The issue is mans contribution to global warming or accellerated global warmaing.

I am attempting to confine myself to scientific papers relating to MANs possible contibution or papers that refute a natural reason for climate change. I encorage you to link to articals refuting mans contribution so we get some balance. I will not accept articals from the mainsteem press unless a recognised scientific source of publication is referenced.

[/B]Variations in solar luminosity and their effect on the Earth's climate[/B]

Variations in the Sun's total energy output (luminosity) are caused by changing dark (sunspot) and bright structures on the solar disk during the 11-year sunspot cycle. The variations measured from spacecraft since 1978 are too small to have contributed appreciably to accelerated global warming over the past 30 years. In this Review, we show that detailed analysis of these small output variations has greatly advanced our understanding of solar luminosity change, and this new understanding indicates that brightening of the Sun is unlikely to have had a significant influence on global warming since the seventeenth century. Additional climate forcing by changes in the Sun's output of ultraviolet light, and of magnetized plasmas, cannot be ruled out. The suggested mechanisms are, however, too complex to evaluate meaningfully at present.
Nature Science Journal

Dependence of global temperatures on atmospheric CO2 and solar irradiance

David J. Thomson

Mathematics of Communications Research Department, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ 07974

Changes in global average temperatures and of the seasonal cycle are strongly coupled to the concentration of atmospheric CO2. I estimate transfer functions from changes in atmospheric CO2 and from changes in solar irradiance to hemispheric temperatures that have been corrected for the effects of precession. They show that changes from CO2 over the last century are about three times larger than those from changes in solar irradiance. The increase in global average temperature during the last century is at least 20 times the SD of the residual temperature series left when the effects of CO2 and changes in solar irradiance are subtracted.
Nature Scientific Journal

Edgar and dapad. Im not an expert on climatology and have, on numerous occasions , seen stratigraphic data that is counter intuitive to a "bandwagon in support of anthropogenic causes". I dislike newsprint classifying atmospheric studies as "smoking guns" These are words of reporters, not scientists. I have a colleague at Penn State who is a glacial expert and is similarly conflicted (and hes much better known in this area than a lot of "scientists") The issue is one of about a 50 year timeline and were comparing this to WURM stages of thousands of years of stratigraphic record.

We are somewhat guilty of creating trends from a snapshot. IMHO

Farmerman - "anthropogenic CO2 as determinant of earth climate" is the most breathtakingly audacious scam since the South Sea Bubble.

I've posted links to several datasets and stochastic differential equations models in pages preceding this one >

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=44061&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=4210

> but, suddenly remembering that Newton himself invested L 20,000 (a colossal sum at the time) in that bubble, decided to stop arguing <G>

Despite my scepticism of medis articals on many subjects I reprint and link this artical. It seems well sourced.

We're ruining Earth, scientists warn
Jo Chandler Aust
January 27, 2007
The age.com.au

DROUGHTS will be longer, flooding rains will be rarer but heavier. Cyclones will hit harder. Violent storms and extreme heatwaves will strike more frequently. Evaporation will suck up scarce inland water. Sea levels will creep up half a metre. Oceans will be so acidic that in some places shells and reefs will dissolve.

And humanity, not nature, will be to blame.

This is the assessment of the state of the planet according to what is possibly the most reviewed document in history.

Containing contributions from 2500 scientists, citing 6000 reports and reviewed by 750 experts operating under a United Nations banner, the first part of the report will be released on Friday after line-by-line consensus is reached on its conclusions.
More

WHAT THE DRAFT UN REPORT SAYS

■It is more than 90 per cent certain that human activities have caused global warming.

■Global temperatures will rise by 2 to 4.5 degrees.

■Earth will be increasingly unable to absorb rising carbon dioxide.

■Sea levels could rise by between 20cm and 60cm in the next 100 years, and will continue to rise for 1000 years.

■Snow will vanish from all but the highest peaks.

■More extreme, violent weather.

I'm with farmerman on this issue; show me! There are too many so-called scientists with divergent views of man-made global warming. Our technology is still too young to determine whether warming and cooling of the planet is man-made or normal cycles.

That's not to say man shouldn't react i n positive ways to reduce the use of fossil fuels now. President Bush's energy solutions aren't solutions at all without reducing demand. Reducing gas-guzzlers and mandating mileage levels for all cars will be a good start. Speed limits will also improve our use of fuels. Synchronizing traffic lights is another area that needs improvement. Public transportation is yet another.