Do you believe that Global Warming is being caused by us?

Pangea

Just wondering do you think Global warming is being caused by us humans or that the earth is just on some sort of a cycle?

A part of me doesnt believe that global warming is being caused by humans and another part of me does, in other words Im not sure.
I know that we are not helping the situation , but the weather we have become accustomed to on this earth as being "normal" is indeed abnormal in the overall Climatic history of the earth.
When you watch films like the Age of stupid and An incovienant truth you start to think we are having a bad effect on the weather lol.

Extremes have happened in the past , but what would have to happen for another Mini ice age to start?

Read this here its an interesting read into the history of White Christmases over the past few centuries,
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/in-depth/white-christmas.html

Imagine how cold the weather was only just a few centuries , its a pity our time on this earth is a relatively mild one!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames_frost_fairs


This is a link showing the history of the earths climate http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7x.html

Danno

Global Warming - Nowadays better known as Climate Change - is a device used by Politicians to increase even more revenue for themselves under the guise of Carbon Tax. Between 1901 and 2000 the warmest years in Irelands were 1945 and 1949. Anyone following this forum on a regular basis throughout winter will hear references to 1947 - the most famous of all winters. It snowed so hard that it was May before all had thawed away. You see friends, the weather is changing, always, and always did. What we burn has very very little to do with it.

Pangea

Interesting yes, I have often heard about that winter ,
In a comdey sketch I recall a comedian making fun of the global warming subject,
he said something along the lines of " millions of years the earth has gone through different climates yet all of a sudden a couple of plastic bags will have an adverse effect on us all leading us to doom "
From what u said about carbon tax and the government ,it sounds like global warming might be just another meme from the goverment and society.

Tipsy Mac

When they listen to other scientists and discover within the next 10 years that the earth is actually in a cooling cycle will we be all told to burn as much fossil fuels as we can?

TheGreenGiant

I was at a lecture recently in Trinity organized buy the Irish Met Society and recently went to the AGMet meeting in Dublin Castle and on both occasions, the information that was presented certainly leads me to believe without a shadow of a doubt that us humans are most responsible for this change our climate is currently undertaking. I was a bit skeptical before hand on the issue, but listening to many PhD students, researchers and lecturers who have done remarkable work under the media scope as it were, really opened my eyes as to what underlying issues we are going to face in the not to distant future. The problem is, the public are not aware of research done by colleges around the globe that are in no way part of the IPCC. Thats one of the main contributers that give the gereral public their views and facts on global warming. The media and polititians have their eyes all set on what the IPCC says. You really have to delve deeper than the IPCC to see exactly whats going on in our climate.

Danno

Ireland is the one of the best places to observe *natural* climate change. All of the increased solar radiation over recent years gets absorbed by the oceans, as we all know the oceans take a long time to release heat, hence our recent years mild weather. The seas are warmer than average, still are. The air has been cooling bit by bit for the last 10 years or so now. Cool air, warm seas make alot of clouds, clouds bring rain, Ireland gets lashed. That is the pattern for the last few years. Expect more of it to come too. Though as the air continues to cool further expect some more snow at colder times of the year.

TheGreenGiant

If anyone is interested, you should check out research done by the ACE satellite on Mesopause temperature and also research done on PMC'S (Polar Mesopheric Clouds) otherwise known as noctilucent clouds. Both are very interesting and although research papers are not coming out till next year on these two subjects, both are showing stong indications that climate change is taking place.

LFCFan

it is very arrogant of man to think he could have any affect on the climate of an entire planet. Earth has been around for a lot longer than we have and it will be here long after the human race is gone. All the 'save the planet' bull is laughable. The planet is just fine. It's amazing how previous warm periods or currently expanding ice fields etc etc are not talked about. If anything even slightly out of the ordinary happens (flooding, hurricanes etc) it's blamed on 'Man made' global warming and we have to listen to crap from the media for weeks afterwards, further strengthening the fallacy that we are to blame and the only way to 'fix' the problem is to tax us even more.

By all means, find greener more efficient ways of producing energy so we don't rely on oil so much but it should be done as an enterprise like any other product or service that comes to the market. Taxing us even more is pointless and only serves to hit the ordinary worker in the pocket even more and the whole scaremongering of global warming is just another form of control. It is the new religion.

Atheists and Global warming deniers are a minority but it's only because everyone else is easily led

octo

Expect this topic to get polarised very quickly.

From reading the posts on boards.ie/weather it appears obvious that most of the main contributors are 'skeptical' of the AGW hypothesis. Time and again I read arguments like 'it's been cooling since 1998', 'the weather is always changing', and 'its just an excuse for a carbon tax/world government/etc'.

Most of the arguments are one of these:

• The earth isn't warming and is in fact cooling
• The earth is warming but it's due to natural causes
• The earth is warming due to human activities, but not as much as climate scientists say
• The climate scientists are correct, but the consequences of climate change are trivial and maybe even beneficial.

The fact that these are mutually contradictary appears to be irrelevant, they mostly never debate each other, most 'skeptics' appear united against the 'establishment' view.

Personally, I've looked into several of the 'skeptic' arguments, read a couple of the books and found most of them disengenuous, at best.

Reading the IPCC reports and talking to people who run the models gives you a fairly clear picture of the known level of uncertainty in future climate projections, and it is significant. The models take all the known physical factors and natural variabilities that are known to exist in our climate into account. They may be inconsistent, and different models may give different results, but they're all pointing in one direction: Increased Global temperatures on a timescale that completely outpaces historical natural variation and the ability of ecosystems to adapt.

For what a man would rather were true, he more readily believes. Francis Bacon 1618

Deep Easterly

octo wrote: »

Increased Global temperatures on a timescale that completely outpaces historical natural variation and the ability of ecosystems to adapt.

A stupid question , is there a set speed on natural climate variation? A limit dictated by totally natural atmospheric forces?

Deep Easterly

Danno wrote: »

Global Warming - Nowadays better known as Climate Change - is a device used by Politicians to increase even more revenue for themselves under the guise of Carbon Tax. Between 1901 and 2000 the warmest years in Irelands were 1945 and 1949. Anyone following this forum on a regular basis throughout winter will hear references to 1947 - the most famous of all winters. It snowed so hard that it was May before all had thawed away. You see friends, the weather is changing, always, and always did. What we burn has very very little to do with it.

A good post Danno. I am open minded to the idea that Climate Change is having some impact on the earth, but I can't help but be cynical when politicians and well funded scientists use the concept merely to bring in more revenue and increase the quality of their personal lifestyles.

I for one think there are far more pressing, immediate and real issues that should be of higher concern of those who hold authority. People are dying everyday from starvation, cold, social injustices and countless other preventable causes. Yet we have Climate Change activists doing their thing in Copenhagen, protesting against a concept that has yet to be proven an absolute. There is a certain unrealness about these protests, they serve no purpose except to give a few of the idle rich something to fight for without actually knowing what they are fighting for.

It is the antithesis of the very idea of revolution.

Su Campu

Climate Change - formerly known as Global Warming, until the warming stopped in 1998 - is a completely natural thing and is not influenced by us, as we are lead to believe.

For millions of years the earth has gone through massive and abrupt changes in climate for a variety of reasons. This is nothing new, we've known about it for yonks. Now some might say that the warming since the mid 19th century is much steeper than previous warmings. Well I put it to them that it's a hell of a coincidence that this hockey stick upward curve started exactly around the time that instrumental weather measurements started to be taken. For climate before that we rely on totally different measurement methods - dodgy proxy data, ice-core samples, etc, which have a very low time resolution. They may show longer term trends (over hundreds to thoudands of years) but cannot show with accuracy scales of tens of years. Therefore it's scientifaclly fundamentally flawed to draw a graph of temperature using both these temperature records, and then claim that the resolution is the same on both parts of it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for using natural renewable energy resources - I don't see any justification for NOT using them - but it really gets to me when I see ads on TV saying that Climate Change is affecting the poor right now, such as the Oxfam one recently. What a load of *%$&x

mike65

The poll is a bit crude, I believe we are playing a part in climate change, how much of a part is the question (I tend to the lesser than greater at this point)

Ice_Box

I voted yes because there is some evidence that suggests that mans green hous gass emessions are causing climate change. Im not 100% sure.

Two things I am sure of though is that polution is bad and one day we will run out of oil. So bring on the electric car.

octo

Deep Easterly wrote: »

A stupid question , is there a set speed on natural climate variation? A limit dictated by totally natural atmospheric forces?

Not that I'm aware of. Afaik, historical changes of the magnitude and speed that are being predicted have happened before, but with very destructive consequences for ecosystem diversity. It doesn't, for example, give forests and other ecosystems time to migrate to more suitable climates further north or to higher elevations.

The Irish Meteorological Society (which is open to everyone interested in weather for any reason) recently presented a talk by Tom Arnold of Concern about the consequences of climate change on food security. The problem is, farming practices have evolved to maximise success within a certain climate and we may see much higher rates of crop failure in an unexpected climate.

There are about 850 million people (his figures) living with the constant threat of hunger, many of them in areas predicted to by hit hardest changes in temperature and rainfall.

paddybar

octo wrote: »

Expect this topic to get polarised very quickly.

Reading the IPCC reports and talking to people who run the models gives you a fairly clear picture of the known level of uncertainty in future climate projections, and it is significant. The models take all the known physical factors and natural variabilities that are known to exist in our climate into account. They may be inconsistent, and different models may give different results, but they're all pointing in one direction: Increased Global temperatures on a timescale that completely outpaces historical natural variation and the ability of ecosystems to adapt.

For what a man would rather were true, he more readily believes. Francis Bacon 1618

I,m a noobie here (but I love it)but I,m curious to know how we can trust the models that look into climate change when the 48 or even 24 hour models for weather are unreliable given that they are liable to change quite quickly.It seems to me that if they cannot accuratley predict weather 7 days out how on earth can we believe their predictions for climate change years in the future.

Pangea

mike65 wrote: »

The poll is a bit crude, I believe we are playing a part in climate change, how much of a part is the question (I tend to the lesser than greater at this point)

Well if you like Call the poll "Do you believe global warming is primarly caused by mankind" , although i think everyone here realises that is the intention of this poll anyways.

octo

paddybar wrote: »

I,m a noobie here (but I love it)but I,m curious to know how we can trust the models that look into climate change when the 48 or even 24 hour models for weather are unreliable given that they are liable to change quite quickly.It seems to me that if they cannot accuratley predict weather 7 days out how on earth can we believe their predictions for climate change years in the future.

Do you think the NWP models, like NOAA HIRLAM and ECMWF are inaccurate? I'd say they're fairly good out to 48 hours, they usually get the general gist of the weather fairly accurate, although I don't follow them as closely as others here on the forum. Certainly they've improved hugely in recent years, or so I'm told.

The models are an attempt to synthesise all known theoretical and empirical evidence and knowledge about our climate, including solar activity, carbon cycle, etc. Yes, there are uncertainties, but they're the best estimate we have. And although the estimates all differ, they all point in the same direction.

Whatsyourface

LFCFan wrote: »

it is very arrogant of man to think he could have any affect on the climate of an entire planet. Earth has been around for a lot longer than we have and it will be here long after the human race is gone. All the 'save the planet' bull is laughable. The planet is just fine. It's amazing how previous warm periods or currently expanding ice fields etc etc are not talked about. If anything even slightly out of the ordinary happens (flooding, hurricanes etc) it's blamed on 'Man made' global warming and we have to listen to crap from the media for weeks afterwards, further strengthening the fallacy that we are to blame and the only way to 'fix' the problem is to tax us even more.

By all means, find greener more efficient ways of producing energy so we don't rely on oil so much but it should be done as an enterprise like any other product or service that comes to the market. Taxing us even more is pointless and only serves to hit the ordinary worker in the pocket even more and the whole scaremongering of global warming is just another form of control. It is the new religion.

Atheists and Global warming deniers are a minority but it's only because everyone else is easily led

Well said! Couldnt agree with ya more.

Deep Easterly

Su Campu wrote: »

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for using natural renewable energy resources - I don't see any justification for NOT using them - but it really gets to me when I see ads on TV saying that Climate Change is affecting the poor right now, such as the Oxfam one recently. What a load of *%$&x

Lets hope that the climate remains at a presupposed "normal" (who decides that it is normal?); that way at least, the poor won't be subject to starvation, political violence, poverty, drought and so forth.

MrCreosote

Danno wrote: »

Global Warming - Nowadays better known as Climate Change - is a device used by Politicians to increase even more revenue for themselves under the guise of Carbon Tax. You see friends, the weather is changing, always, and always did. What we burn has very very little to do with it.

I agreed with the poll. Sure there are plenty other things that can influence climate and have in the past, but the climate is warming, sea levels have already risen, and I've yet to see a better explanation than rising CO2 etc emissions. And saying "the weather changes" is not an argument against climate change, just like the "some glacier in South America is getting longer", or "it's cold today" or whatever isn't.

And Golly gosh! Politicians using a tax to raise revenue?? That's what a tax is. Whether you agree with it or not (I don't) or whether you think it will lower carbon emissions or not(I don't), at least the polluter pays a certain amount.

Many other reasons to reduce CO2 emissions of course- fuel security and acidification of oceans to name two.

Deep Easterly

MrCreosote wrote: »

saying "the weather changes" is not an argument against climate change,

Except that climate is made up of nothing more than various weather changes over a set period of time. Weather changes are important, since they actually happen and is the only way climate is actually measured.

MrCreosote

Deep Easterly wrote: »

Except that climate is made up of nothing more than various weather changes over a set period of time. Weather changes are important, since they actually happen and is the only way climate is actually measured.

Fair enough, but it's the average of the weather over a long period that gives you the climate. So my point is that basing an argument about climate on a single very cold year, or very warm year, is a fallacy.

Bodan

LFCFan wrote: »

it is very arrogant of man to think he could have any affect on the climate of an entire planet. Earth has been around for a lot longer than we have and it will be here long after the human race is gone. All the 'save the planet' bull is laughable. The planet is just fine. It's amazing how previous warm periods or currently expanding ice fields etc etc are not talked about. If anything even slightly out of the ordinary happens (flooding, hurricanes etc) it's blamed on 'Man made' global warming and we have to listen to crap from the media for weeks afterwards, further strengthening the fallacy that we are to blame and the only way to 'fix' the problem is to tax us even more.

By all means, find greener more efficient ways of producing energy so we don't rely on oil so much but it should be done as an enterprise like any other product or service that comes to the market. Taxing us even more is pointless and only serves to hit the ordinary worker in the pocket even more and the whole scaremongering of global warming is just another form of control. It is the new religion.

Atheists and Global warming deniers are a minority but it's only because everyone else is easily led

Really, how about the big ozone hole made just recently ... I mean, how could little ole mankind do so such damage? The fact is that since we managed to reduce CFCs going into the atmosphere, the ozone hole has began to slowly recover ... after scientists worked out the cause of the problem.



The Hockey Stick is a rough chart of the temperature changes for the last 1000 years.



Is not an exact science because most instruments only go back to the 1800's, but various methods were used as " ‘climate proxy’ indicators', such as tree rings, corals, ice cores and lake sediments, and historical documents to reconstruct patterns of past surface temperature change."

Link

It is pretty clear that in the last 200 years, with the industrial age and the increase in world population,



we have been shovelling co2 into the earth's atmosphere at a rate like no other. One of the consequences of this build up is that it stops some infrared radiation escaping though our atmosphere and instead bounces it back down to the ground. Which heats up the Earth.



That is why roughly 90% of the world scientists thinks that the large amounts of co2 is causing global warming. If you have a better explanation, i would like to hear it.

It is easy to be a conspiracy theorist because you don't have to do anything, just try and poke holes here or there but not explain away the increase in temperature, or prove it for that matter.

The best overwhelming scientific evidence says it is due to the large amounts of co2 by us. And until "Proven" otherwise, i am happy to go along with that.

Deep Easterly

MrCreosote wrote: »

Fair enough, but it's the average of the weather over a long period that gives you the climate. So my point is that basing an argument about climate on a single very cold year, or very warm year, is a fallacy.

In the same way, individual weather events, such as the wet spell in the west in November, cannot be put down to global warming, yet the event was hijacked by Climate Change propagandists.

Seems to me that they are pretty choosy in what they pick as evidence.

MrCreosote

Deep Easterly wrote: »

In the same way, individual weather events, such as the wet spell in the west in November, cannot be put down to global warming, yet the event was hijacked by Climate Change propagandists.

Again I'd agree with that to a certain degree. But I never heard say Met Eireann saying that- quite the opposite in fact, any climate scientist worth their salt will never say that a particular event is 100% due to anything. But saying "November's floods are caused solely by climate change" and saying "Events like November's floods will probably become more frequent in the future due to climate change" are two different things. The first statement is false, the second is true.

Deep Easterly

MrCreosote wrote: »

Deep Easterly wrote: »

In the same way, individual weather events, such as the wet spell in the west in November, cannot be put down to global warming, yet the event was hijacked by Climate Change propagandists.

Again I'd agree with that to a certain degree. But I never heard say Met Eireann saying that- quite the opposite in fact, any climate scientist worth their salt will never say that a particular event is 100% due to anything. But saying "November's floods are caused solely by climate change" and saying "Events like November's floods will probably become more frequent in the future due to climate change" are two different things. The first statement is false, the second is true.

Yes, Met Eireann did not jump on the bandwagon thankfully.

To say however, that the floods experienced in November will become more frequent due to climate change, to me, smacks of saying the same thing as the November floods were caused by climate change. Floods on the scale tend to happen during specific weather events, therefore each future event, going by your statement, will be down to global warming.

I think there is a danger that we are looking at weather in a very subjective way. Why is rain, storms etc, seen as more of an event, or proof, that climate change is happening? these are events we see subjectively, yet objectively, they are no more more significant that an ordinary fair weather day in Ireland.

Min

Carbon dioxide levels rise in the atmosphere by 0.01% since 1850 and it is a disaster.

It is handy that the UN is funded by governments, the UN has the IPCC, the governments use the argument about climate change and carbon, we had Brian Lenihan say in the budget that governments across the world will be introducing carbon taxes.

Who are these stupid people who believe we humans can control the climate?
Sick of the green party......

Su Campu

MrCreosote wrote: »

Deep Easterly wrote: »

In the same way, individual weather events, such as the wet spell in the west in November, cannot be put down to global warming, yet the event was hijacked by Climate Change propagandists.

But saying "November's floods are caused solely by climate change" and saying "Events like November's floods will probably become more frequent in the future due to climate change" are two different things. The first statement is false, the second is true.

Bull.

Where did you hear that? Explain to me the scientific reasoning in that. Explain how the climate is going to change so that Ireland will get more rainy spells in succession, which is what caused those floods. Give us the meteorological principles that will lead to that. The truth is there are none. But every flood, drought, heatwave, icestorm is being blamed on the same thing. It's ridiculous. There are many more REAL problems in the world without manufacturing a whopper of one.

The real reason those houses got flooded is because basically people are gob$hites. They rezone land for housing in known flood plains, cover more and more natural drainage with concrete and then wonder why the drains aren't sufficient. Then when the polar jet sticks around Ireland for a few weeks and dumps a load of rain on us, the people on the ground are the ones who pay for it.

Don't get me started....

Deep Easterly

Su Campu wrote: »

Bull.

Where did you hear that? Explain to me the scientific reasoning in that. Explain how the climate is going to change so that Ireland will get more rainy spells in succession, which is what caused those floods. Give us the meteorological principles that will lead to that. The truth is there are none. But every flood, drought, heatwave, icestorm is being blamed on the same thing. It's ridiculous. There are many more REAL problems in the world without manufacturing a whopper of one.

The real reason those houses got flooded is because basically people are gob$hites. They rezone land for housing in known flood plains, cover more and more natural drainage with concrete and then wonder why the drains aren't sufficient. Then when the polar jet sticks around Ireland for a few weeks and dumps a load of rain on us, the people on the ground are the ones who pay for it.

Don't get me started....

Claregalway, which was hit severely in November, recently threw up hugh housing estates on well known flood plains. It was inevitable really and well predicted by the locals here. The Galway Co Council, who allowed these houses to built, should have the arsed sued off them.

This was brought up recently on the Pat Kenny show. People who wanted to sue Councils over the widespread floodings
The answer they got by Gormley?

"It's not that simple" :rolleyes:

nacho libre

Pangea wrote: »

Interesting yes, I have often heard about that winter ,
In a comdey sketch I recall a comedian making fun of the global warming subject,
he said something along the lines of " millions of years the earth has gone through different climates yet all of a sudden a couple of plastic bags will have an adverse effect on us all leading us to doom "
From what u said about carbon tax and the government ,it sounds like global warming might be just another meme from the goverment and society.

but what about Reagans friend, the jasonic, who was comissioned to compile a report that chimed with ronald's free market views? with this in mind it maybe in the interest of big business to muddy the water- especially when you factor in peak oil. if the evidence for man's influence on the planet's warming does not stack up then fair enough, but if we are going to engage in conspiracies then i can see the above being equally as plausible

i personally believe the sun and moon have more of an influence on our climate than our species ever could.