Do you think global warming exists today?

Question

In my opinion, this extreme weather Earth is experiencing might be global warming, but how do we know that?

Could extreme weather had happened in 1900s or 1800s; there weren't instruments which could record weather in those days?

Could this "extreme weather" we are having now, be "normal weather"?

Answer 1

Read this -



Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide

Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?

By Timothy Ball



Monday, February 5, 2007



Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was one of the first Canadian Ph.Ds. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.





What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?



Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.



No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don't pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?



Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. "It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species," wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.



I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.



Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.



No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.



I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.



In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment?



Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn't occur in a debate in a civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply. They usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this case, they also indicate how political the entire Global Warming debate has become. Both underline the lack of or even contradictory nature of the evidence.



I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, "State of Fear" he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises.



Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen's. He is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen.



I think it may be because most people don't understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.



As Lindzen said many years ago: "the consensus was reached before the research had even begun." Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.



Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of them have no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the science of climate and climate change. Hence, they are in no position to question a policy on climate change when it threatens the entire planet. Moreover, using fear and creating hysteria makes it very difficult to make calm rational decisions about issues needing attention.



Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how nasty people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an attempt to find out all the information, you cannot know how much misinformation exists in the supposed age of information.



I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky's book "Yes, but is it true?" The author taught political science at a New York University and realized how science was being influenced by and apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an assignment to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a highly publicised environmental concern. To his and their surprise they found there was little scientific evidence, consensus and justification for the policy. You only realize the extent to which Wildavsky's findings occur when you ask the question he posed. Wildavsky's students did it in the safety of academia and with the excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it is a difficult question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe it is the most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right direction.





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Dr. Tim Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, is a Victoria-based environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. He can be reached at [e-mail]

Answer 2

Ro!'s answer is a 9-year old cut and paste job from a think tank funded by exxon-mobile, DaimlerChrysler, El Paso Energy, and similar sources. Neither he nor the original cites their sources.



It is also shockingly wrong.



1st - we have good records of weather from the 20th century, and fairly good going back farther than that. Certainly "extreme" events are well recorded, including droughts, floods, and storms. The paleoclimatic dataset is pretty good and improving, we have a good record of mean temperatures for a number of locations around the globe going back many tens of thousands of years.



2nd - weather is not climate, and it is impossible to attribute any one event to "global warming." There is good evidence that climate change will lead to more extreme events, and it is very clear that the last decade or so is exceptional within the historical climate record.



3rd - while it is true that the earth's climate does vary over time, modern climate science has gotten pretty sophisticated, and it is clear that anthropogenic CO2 emissions should have effects that are consistent with what we are observing. This is why the IPCC says they are 90% certain that the observed changes are driven by human activity.

Answer 3

We are still in the process of exiting from the last Ice Age which "officially" ended almost 10,000 years ago. We have not yet reached the peak temperatures that existed before the last Ice Age started and the sea levels are not as high as they once were. Man might be contributing a little bit to it, but global warming is part of Earth's natural cycle.

Answer 4

Regardless of where a person stands on global warming, there are things that should be done. Get rid of gas guzzlers, check into passive solar options, recycle and re-purpose items, plant trees, etc. We need to break our oil habit that has us enriching regimes that hate us and lining the pockets of big oil executives who are fleecing us. Check out the sites below. If you really believe it global warming, what are you doing about it? Just talking, or taking action?

Answer 5

Scientists are 90% certain that human activities are the cause of global warming. That is down from 95% in the 2001 IPCC report. Also, woking at less than 95% confidence means is outside of standard scientific practices. you should also note that the IPCC report just issued is a summary for policy makers, it is not the actual report, and as such, contains very little of the science.



I think it is bunk to say that humans are causeing global warming. Every day, more and more journal articles, as opposed to that crap in the newspapers, are published that point out the obvious flaws in the hypothesis that manmade CO2 is the cause of global warming.



From: Environ Geol (2006) 50: 899–910



"After the Kyoto Protocol had been announced in

1997 (Kyoto Protocol 1997), many researchers around

the world criticized its provisions (that imposed drastic

restrictions on anthropogenic carbon dioxide emission in

developed countries) as meaningless and catastrophic.

Logical and quantitative comparison analyses presented

in the publications of Robinson et al. (1998), Soon et al.

(2001), Bluemle et al. (2001), Baliunas (2002), Sorokhtin

(2001), Sorokhtin and Ushakov (2002), Gerhard (2004),

and Khilyuk and Chilingar (2003, 2004) showed that the

theory of currently observed global atmospheric warming

as a result of increasing anthropogenic carbon

dioxide (and the other greenhouse gasses) emission is a

myth. This myth proved to be an enduring one."



"The writers identified and described the global forces of

nature driving the Earth’s climate: solar irradiation as a

dominant energy supplier to the atmosphere (and

hydrosphere); outgassing as a dominant gaseous matter

supplier to the atmosphere (and hydrosphere); and

microbial activities at the interface of the lithosphere

and atmosphere. The scope and extent of these processes

are 4–5 orders of magnitude greater than the corresponding

anthropogenic impacts on the Earth’s climate

(such as heating and emission of the greenhouse gases)."



"Inspection of the global atmospheric temperature

changes during the last 1,000 years (Fig. 11) shows that

the global average temperature dropped about 2C over

the last millennium. This means that we live in the

cooling geologic epoch (which comprises most of the

Holocene), and the global warming observed during the

latest 150 years is just a short episode in the geologic

history. The current global warming is most likely a

combined effect of increased solar and tectonic activities

and cannot be attributed to the increased anthropogenic

impact on the atmosphere. Humans may be responsible

for less than 0.01C (of approximately 0.56C (1F) total

average atmospheric heating during the last century)

(Khilyuk and Chilingar 2003, 2004)."



From: Pure appl. geophys. 162 (2005) 1557–1586



"11. Summary and Conclusions

During the long geological history of the earth, there was no correlation between global temperature and atmospheric CO2 levels. Earth has been warming and cooling at highly irregular intervals and the amplitudes of temperature change were also

irregular. The warming of about 0.3 C in recent years has prompted suggestions about anthropogenic influence on the earth’s climate due to increasing human activity worldwide. However, a close examination of the earth’s temperature change

suggests that the recent warming may be primarily due to urbanization and land-use change impact and not due to increased levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Besides land-use change, solar variability and the sun’s brightness appear to provide a more significant forcing on earth’s climate than previously believed. Recent studies suggest solar influence as a primary driver of the earth’s climate in geological

times. Even on a shorter time scale, solar irradiance and its variability may have contributed to more than sixty percent of the total warming of the 20th century. The impact of solar activity like cosmic ray flux on the earth’s cloud cover has not been fully explored and may provide an additional forcing to the earth’s mean temperature change. There appears to be no intimate link between global warming and worldwide extreme weather events to date. Increasing economic impact due to extreme weather

events in the conterminous USA appears to be a result of societal change in wealth and population and not due to global warming. Outside of USA, very few studies have been reported thus far which make a meaningful analysis of economic impact of

extreme weather events. There has been no accelerated sea-level rise anywhere during the 20th century.

Our review suggests that the present state of global warming science is at an important cross road. There is a definite need to reassess the science and examine various issues that have been discussed and analyzed here."



From: Meteorol Atmos Phys 95, 115–121 (2007)



"Despite the increasing trend in atmospheric CO2 concentration,

the patterns of 20-year and 60-year oscillation of

global temperature are all in falling. Therefore, if CO2

concentration remains constant at present, the CO2 greenhouse

effect will be deficient in counterchecking the natural

cooling of global climate in the following 20 years. Even

though the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change

is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated.

It is high time to re-consider the trend of global climate

changes."



Just three of the many peer reviewed articles that cast doubt on manmade global warming.

Answer 6

Global Warming is a real threat! Al Gores "An Inconvenient Truth" on DVD will answer all your questions, it has a wealth of information! You can also visit the following web sites:



http://www.stopglobalwarming.org

http://www.environmentaldefense.org/page.cfm?tagID=1011

http://www.climatecrisis.net

http://www.fightglobalwarming.com

http://www.undoit.org

Answer 7

The modern temperature statistics was started during the 18th century.



There have been extreme weather before, but it has never occurred this fast. Global warming is a fact, and it is for sure dangerous, its not a political issue, its not an economical issue it is real and it may kill us all.

Answer 8

Probably not, but they'll sure be thankful for air conditioning. And Laura Ingraham is only hot because she's going through the change. Those hot flashes can be killers. I know when my wife started having them there were times I wished I were dead.

Answer 9

Man has little effect on the weather. All things change. Politicians are capitalizing on our fears for their own political gain, They need to spend their efforts protecting freedom, not sacrificing if for ghosts. Shame shame shame on us for paying attention to these criminals.

Answer 10

Myth #1: Scientists Agree the Earth Is Warming. While ground-level temperature measurements suggest the earth has warmed between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees Celsius since 1850, global satellite data, the most reliable of climate measure-

ments, show no evidence of warming during the past 18 years. [See Figure I.] Even if the earth's temperature has increased slightly, the increase is well within the natural range of known temperature variation over the last 15,000 years. Indeed, the earth experienced greater warming between the 10th and 15th centuries - a time when vineyards thrived in England and Vikings colonized Greenland and built settlements in Canada.



Myth #2: Humans Are Causing Global Warming. Scientists do not agree that humans discernibly influence global climate because the evidence supporting that theory is weak. The scientific experts most directly concerned with climate conditions reject the theory by a wide margin.





A Gallup poll found that only 17 percent of the members of the Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society think that the warming of the 20th century has been a result of greenhouse gas emissions - principally CO2 from burning fossil fuels. [See Figure II.]



Only 13 percent of the scientists responding to a survey conducted by the environmental organization Greenpeace believe catastrophic climate change will result from continuing current patterns of energy use.



More than 100 noted scientists, including the former president of the National Academy of Sciences, signed a letter declaring that costly actions to reduce greenhouse gases are not justified by the best available evidence.

While atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by 28 percent over the past 150 years, human-generated carbon dioxide could have played only a small part in any warming, since most of the warming occurred prior to 1940 - before most human-caused carbon dioxide emissions.



Myth #3: The Government Must Act Now to Halt Global Warming. The belief underlying this myth is that the consequences of near-term inaction could be catastrophic and, thus, prudence supports immediate government action.



However, a 1995 analysis by proponents of global warming theory concluded that the world's governments can wait up to 25 years to take action with no appreciable negative effect on the environment. T.M.L. Wigley, R. Richels and J.A. Edmonds followed the common scientific assumption that a realistic goal of global warming policy would be to stabilize the concentration of atmospheric CO2 at approximately twice preindustrial levels, or 550 parts per million by volume. Given that economic growth will continue with a concomitant rise in greenhouse gas emissions, the scientists agreed that stabilization at this level is environmentally sound as well as politically and economically feasible. They also concluded that:





Governments can cut emissions now to approximately 9 billion tons per year or wait until 2020 and cut emissions by 12 billion tons per year.



Either scenario would result in the desired CO2 concentration of 550 parts per million.



Delaying action until 2020 would yield an insignificant temperature rise of 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100.

In short, our policymakers need not act in haste and ignorance. The government has time to gather more data, and industry has time to devise new ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.



Myth # 4: Human-Caused Global Warming Will Cause Cataclysmic Environmental Problems. Proponents of the theory of human-caused global warming argue that it is causing and will continue to cause all manner of environmental catastrophes, including higher ocean levels and increased hurricane activity. Reputable scientists, including those working on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations organization created to study the causes and effects of global climate warming, reject these beliefs.



Sea levels are rising around the globe, though not uniformly. In fact, sea levels have risen more than 300 feet over the last 18,000 years - far predating any possible human impact. Rising sea levels are natural in between ice ages. Contrary to the predictions of global warming theorists, the current rate of increase is slower than the average rate over the 18,000-year period.



Periodic media reports link human-caused climate changes to more frequent tropical cyclones or more intense hurricanes. Tropical storms depend on warm ocean surface temperatures (at least 26 degrees Celsius) and an unlimited supply of moisture. Therefore, the reasoning goes, global warming leads to increased ocean surface temperatures, a greater uptake of moisture and destructive hurricanes. But recent data show no increase in the number or severity of tropical storms, and the latest climate models suggest that earlier models making such connections were simplistic and thus inaccurate.





Since the 1940s the National Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory has documented a decrease in both the intensity and number of hurricanes.



From 1991 through 1995, relatively few hurricanes occurred, and even the unusually intense 1995 hurricane season did not reverse the downward trend.



The 1996 IPCC report on climate change found a worldwide significant increase in tropical storms unlikely; some regions may experience increased activity while others will see fewer, less severe storms.

Since factors other than ocean temperature such as wind speeds at various altitudes seem to play a larger role than scientists previously understood, most agree that any regional changes in hurricane activity will continue to occur against a backdrop of large yearly natural variations.



What about other effects of warming? If a slight atmospheric warming occurred, it would primarily affect nighttime temperatures, lessening the number of frosty nights and extending the growing season. Thus some scientists think a global warming trend would be an agricultural boon. Moreover, historically warm periods have been the most conducive to life. Most of the earth's plant life evolved in a much warmer, carbon dioxide-filled atmosphere.



Conclusion. As scientists expose the myths concerning global warming, the fears of an apocalypse should subside. So rather than legislating in haste and ignorance and repenting at leisure, our government should maintain rational policies, based on science and adaptable to future discoveries.

Answer 11

i THINK it is true.