Is Global Warming real?

[Kramodlog]

And even if it was (which it isn't), the question of balance comes into play. If the Earth was in balance, between CO2 emissions and plant life, we've royally screwed that balance. What we don't know is if we've screwed it up past the tipping point yet.

Yup. Most of the coal, oil and gas we burn today are plants that grew in prehistoric area. It was more hot back then because in part there was more CO2 in the atmosphere. Plants grew big in and over millions of years absorbe that CO2 and the planet cool down.

The equilibrium we have now took a lot of time to reach and now we are releasing quickly trapped carbon that hasn't seen the light of day for millions of years.

 

[Kramodlog]

Well I'm not looking at any scientists for any reasons about any subject, so what they agree or disagree about is beyond my concern. I will quietly drop out of this thread now...

Droughts and flood that affect food supplies and prices should concern you. Food scarcity means more diseases too. The availability of drinking water will be a serious problem. Destructive weather that is more frequent will also affect the price of insurance and some goods. Not to mention the armed conflicts over food, water and land that isn't under water.

 

[RangerWickett]

If you have an hour and want to get a good understanding of our current situation regarding fossil fuel use and carbon emissions due to transportation, I recommend this article: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html

It's the second part of a 4-part series about Elon Musk and his various efforts to improve the human condition and stave off really bad consequences.

The metaphor the author uses really resonated with me. He says that sometimes he's exposed to a topic that he doesn't know much about, and it's like coming upon branches of a tree. But he doesn't understand how the whole tree looks, so the branch isn't that interesting. But if he puts the effort into understanding the basis of a topic, that basically creates the trunk of the tree, and then there's context for all the branches. He no longer gets frustrated or dismissive when people talk about details of the topic because he understands the core of the issue.

Basically, the author, and the site as a whole, is very pro-knowledge. I'd like to think gamers in general pride themselves on knowing interesting stuff. The article is a fun way to learn about a topic that's very important for the modern world.

 

[Umbran]

Yup. Most of the coal, oil and gas we burn today are plants that grew in prehistoric area. It was more hot back then because in part there was more CO2 in the atmosphere. Plants grew big in and over millions of years absorbe that CO2 and the planet cool down.

This is largely true in the parts, but put together this way it is highly misleading. Yes, fossil fuels we burn today have carbon that was taken out of the atmosphere in bygone eras. But, the idea that sequestering that carbon led to an overall cool down to current levels is... an oversimplification.

The equilibrium we have now took a lot of time to reach and now we are releasing quickly trapped carbon that hasn't seen the light of day for millions of years.

Note that the "equilibrium" we reached is not a static one. Even without the release of fossil carbon, we have a warming and cooling cycle apparently driven by slow changes in the tilt of the planet's axis and the shape of its orbit around the Sun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_forcing

The shortest such orbital cycle is about 20,000 years, and there's a strong rhythm of glaciation every 100,000 years.

The reason I mention all this is that... it doesn't matter. Someone will mention it as part of the overall, "the climate is always changing" argument. But the current change does not seem to be part of these cycles.

So, yes, the overall picture of climate is complex, and we know about the complexities, and those complexities have generally been ruled out by climatologists. This current warming is our fault.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The reason I mention all this is that... it doesn't matter. Someone will mention it as part of the overall, "the climate is always changing" argument. But the current change does not seem to be part of these cycles.

So, yes, the overall picture of climate is complex, and we know about the complexities, and those complexities have generally been ruled out by climatologists. This current warming is our fault.

That was what I was getting at earlier- supposedly, the natural climate fluctuators are in a cooling cycle, not heating. Since we're still warming, that points the finger at us.

 

[was]

...IMO, global warming is real. Average temps over the last hundred or so years do show a warming trend. Technically, temps have been gradually rising since the end of the last ice age/Pleistocene (12,000 years ago ?).
...Is it caused by humans? Probably not, the planet does go through natural warming and cooling cycles.
...Is the problem greatly exacerbated by our carbon emissions? Yes, there's too much evidence out there to rule out human industrialization as a contributing factor to the problem.

 

[Umbran]

...Is it caused by humans? Probably not, the planet does go through natural warming and cooling cycles.

So, let me get this straight - a bunch of scientists figure out that the planet does have natural warming and cooling cycles. They figure out a lot about the rhythms of these cycles, and why they happen. You trust them on this, take it as true.

But, when they tell you that *this* warming trend isn't one of those natural cycles (97%, remember) you doubt them?

How does that make sense? You accept what they say in one case, but not another? Why?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

According to James L. Powell, director of the National Physical Sciences Consortium, the consensus is currently measured at 99.9%+:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/how-climate-change-deniers-got-it-very-wrong

 

[was]

So, let me get this straight - a bunch of scientists figure out that the planet does have natural warming and cooling cycles. They figure out a lot about the rhythms of these cycles, and why they happen. You trust them on this, take it as true.

But, when they tell you that *this* warming trend isn't one of those natural cycles (97%, remember) you doubt them?

How does that make sense? You accept what they say in one case, but not another? Why?

...It is my understanding that we have taken a slow, natural warming process and artificially ramped it up via pollution to geologically breakneck speeds. Subsequently, changes are occuring at a far greater pace than the environment is capable of adjusting to, making the warming cycle 'unnatural'.

 

[freyar]

Something I see a bit in this thread and a lot in political discussion is people talking about what's going on in nature as if it's their opinion. It's just not. Nature is doing what it's doing. There can be discussions about what data mean, but the data are what they are. The point is that, in proportion to the general public, only a very few people are educated about the data or how to make sense of the data. And essentially all the people who know what the data mean are in agreement that they mean human behavior is changing the climate. Seriously -- in politics, a 60%-40% split in an election is a landslide. Climate scientists are nearly unanimous on this.

Frankly, we tend to say that everyone gets an opinion about everything, so the public lets politicians get away with bluster about the climate. But that's not really how it works in science. The only people who have an opinion worth listening to on a scientific topic are the people who do science in that field. As a theoretical particle physicist and string theorist, I would not be asked to referee a journal article on climate science --- I don't get a scientific opinion on that because I'm not an expert. I've seen a few talks and read a few general-level articles, and I can follow those, but, really, I defer to the experts. And, you know, if a climatologist wants to know about the Higgs boson, they ask me. They wouldn't then say, "in my opinion, the Higgs doesn't exist." Sounds silly, right?

One other event worth pointing out, though I don't remember the links to the news articles on it. A few years ago, a scientist who was a skeptic about anthropogenic climate change (please note: this was not a climate scientist) got a big group of other non-expert scientists together to reanalyze the data that the climate science community had already gone through. So they spent a couple of years, and then, lo and behold, they came to the same conclusion that climate scientists had all along -- the climate is changing, and the main cause is human civilization.