Do you believe in "Advanced Global Warming"?

No i can’t say i do believe in Global Warming. Well at least that we are the sole cause of it. The effects of global warming would have happened anyway because of periodic global cooling and warming. This was shown by a particularly cold spell in England when the whole Thames river froze over. Global warming was also seen throughout the periods of the Black Death when temperatures recorded were higher than previous years. It is shown that the bacteria thrived and resurfaced in the warmer periods. How does one explain Global Warming in the 16th century due to CO2 and Greenhouse gas’s. I believe that the recent cyclones and natural disasters are down to periodical climate change not human error. and perhaps its because the poles might be reversing but thats another story.
(please note that i dont think that humans have no hand in the matter, just that its not entirely our fault)

I was listening to NPR one day on the way in to work and they were reporting on people getting/analyzing deep core ice samples. They were able to segment them into years to see the amounts of CO2 (and other chemicals) present in the environment, both before modern industrialization and up to the present. They found significant increases..almost exponential increases in the last 75 years.

I believe that global warming and cooling is a natural occurrence, but that there are things we are doing to make Earth a less hospitable place for humans. That does not mean that the Earth will implode or anything…the Earth isn’t going anyplace….we are.

You say for everyone who believes this there is someone who can disprove this. Who? Certainly not climatologists. I’ve not heard one speak out against global warning. The only voices I hear poo-pooing global warning have an agenda, such as “scientists” with ties to energy corporations.
I’ve heard some use author Michael Crighton’s words to support their views. Mr. Crighton is an MD, not a climatologist. It’s a bit like Senator Bill Frist, a cardiologist, declaring Terry Schivo as cognoscente while a “fluther” of neurologists say otherwise.
Still have doubts about global warning? Talk to a polar bear and see what he thinks.

I do. I also believe that Al Gore invented the Internet

Al Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet. What he said was that he was one of the people who funded it and brought it to the public. And guess what, he did.

This has me thinking about Pascal’s Wager.

The premise here that global warming is something you can decide by belief is flawed. Global warming is a reality despite the obfuscations kicked up for years by the tame scientists of the oil companies and other polluters with vested econimic interests in muddying the waters. The mountain of physical evidence supporting global warming now is enormous. Here is just one summary from a very reputable source: The Brookings Institute.

That said, it does not necessarily mean cataclysmic outcomes in the near term. Our track record as predictors is not very good. Remember all the disaster scenarios predicated about Y2K put forth a few short years ago? None of them came to pass.

I also think that kevbo is onto something mentioning Pascal’s Wager. If there is global warming, efforts to ameliorate our output of greenhouse gases can only help. If (and I do not think this is an acceptable position fact-wise) you still postulate there is no global warming, there is significant evidence of the damage done by power plants and gasoline engine emissions to air quality including increased incidence of asthma, etc. so making efforts to limit and eventually end greenhouse gas emissions would have positive effects even absent global warming.

I love people who think you can put research results up for a vote. That’s so cute!

@chaosrob I agree. It seems to be a growing phenomenon. I attribute it to politicians initially for demanding equal time (no matter how absurd the opposing position is), to the media for caving and now writing stories with no point of view for fear of the cry of bias. Add to that the ludicrous acceptance of conspiracy theories as worthy of equal time or coverage at all. It is like going back and living in the Middle Ages. Weird.

Hmm, now that I think about it, perhaps the first step in the cure is First kill all the lawyers.

Al Gore did not invent the Internet, but he did make up global warming.

<offtopic>
Al Gore didn’t say that he “invented the internet.” Read through this email by Bob Kahn and Vinton Cerf. He was key in creating the internet as we know it today. I don’t necessarily agree with him, but I think it is a ridiculous ad hominem attack.
</offtopic></rant>

It’s been so politicized I have a hard time separating any solid science from the political agendas. I still have some skepticism about global warming, but I don’t think that it’s a bad thing to worry about our environment. For example, I don’t know the effect of carbon emissions on a global scale, but I do know that there is a lot of air pollution where I live (the smog is pretty easy to see) so getting people to take the bus or ride a bike would probably be a good thing.

If I’m not mistaken, people wanted to do something about ice caps years ago because things were getting too cold. I believe the latest group to question the Gore scare was made up of more and better qualified people than the movie makers. Of course we should try to keep the earth in good shape but false science isn’t the way to go.

@NVOldGuy The Gore scare? That’s pure propaganda. Also, you ”believe the latest group to question the Gore scare was made up of more and better qualified people than the movie makers”? What the heck has the movie got to do with anything? Where is your data on these people?

The following bodies of scientists, among others, have issued statements supporting the IPCC position, which is: “An increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system… There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.”

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007
InterAcademy Council
Joint science academies’ statement 2007
International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences
European Academy of Sciences and Arts
International Council for Science
European Science Foundation
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Federation of American Scientists
World Meteorological Organization
American Meteorological Society
Royal Meteorological Society (UK)
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
American Astronomical Society
American Physical Society
American Chemical Society

How about getting the facts straight before making ignorant assertions. It is not about politics, it is about science.

Wow! Can you now name the members of the same group that a few years ago declared we needed to do something about gobal cooling?

Non sequitur.

I will grant you that science can shift positions: eggs are bad, eggs are not bad, e.g. :) Also, in the early days of this issue, not everyone was on board.

BTW, the two things, global warming from industrial activities of man and an ice age heralded by decreased sun spot activity, are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I just don’t think all the data are in for the latter or for what will happen as these various factors converge.

I personally believe in global warming (the rise in average temperatures over the surface of Earth), but I do not believe that humans are the sole cause of it. Some of the largest causes can be the sun, the angle of our planet’s orbit, our distance to the sun, and deforestation. Unfortunately, 6+ billion anythings cannot exist without at least effecting one environment, and a species that is as invasive as humans effects every environment we near.

Do you believe in “Advanced Global Warming”?
No I don’t…..

@ people like AstroChuck and Chaosrob, I know there has been research and I know that Global Warming is real, what I’m talking about here is Advanced Global Warming, which is like people saying by 2013 the average temperature will rise by 4 degrees Celsius and we’ll all be fucked if we don’t stop buying clothes from china or something. I’ve put both sides of the story in the question and I just wanted a discussion so you don’t have to patronize and have a go at me thanks.

thankyou playthebanjo for a nice answer.

yes, I do…

@shrubbery- Up 4 degrees C in just five years? No. Not that fast. That would be bad!!

Look, it doesn’t matter if you believe or not. The real question is whether or not you are willing to wager the risks, that many many scientists have predicted, on this “belief”. If you don’t believe in global warming, isn’t there a possibility you’re wrong and global warming is real? If you do believe in global warming, isn’t there a possibility you’re wrong too? But think of this. The guy who doesn’t believe in global warming doesn’t try to clean up the environment. the worst that could happen is devastating, and the best is that business continues as usual and global warming isn’t real. The guy who does believe in global warming, cleans up the environment. The outcomes are either global warming is real and we thwarted the worst effects, or global warming isn’t real and we cleaned up the environment.
I think the only logical (stressed because logic precedes belief, at least in this type of situation) thing to do is go with the safe bet.

It’s a rather ambiguous statement. Everything inert is in a constant state of advancement or decline.

I digress, switch that inert to an active…there ya go! What was I drinking/thinking?

This a trick question right…ok what’s the punchline?

@shrubbery
The most basic of adherence to international consensus has not been implemented. It’s like this.
We know if you park the car in the garage and turn it on, at one point the emissions will kill you. Let’s do a test and see how long it takes….oh wait…getting sleepy..what…was…I….doing….

If either the Greenland or Antarctic (or both!) ice sheets shattered and all of the ice slide into the ocean, sea level rise would be immediate.