At the moment you can't turn on the tv, open a paper or listen to the radio without hearing something about global warming and the disaster that's upon us. It really is a hype, a good one though because because of it governments and people in general are thing more about there environment, but a hype non the less.

If you look into the history of our planet (which I did by reading books and stuff) you'll see that the stable weather we had for the last 10.000 years is rather unusual and we are lucky that we are living in this stable period. But it is quite normal that there are warmer and colder periods, in the 60s and 70s everybody was in panic because they thought a new ice age would start at any moment. I wonder how we all look back on this hype in 10 years...

Don't get me wrong, I think it is important to be very careful with the environment and I am happy that something is done to the pollution. But I don't think it's a reason to be afraid, it is just a change and we have to cope with it.

jeroen

there's been too many assumptions made about global warming. more humid vs. more dry, warmer nights vs. warmer days could lead to longer growing seasons. is an increase of one degree really going to make a big difference in a place like the arctic, which is already way colder than it needs to be?

Mars and Jupiter are confirmed to be warming, too. So, the whole man-made global warming theory is a farce, IMO. It's a power grab, an excuse for taxation and regulation. That's why it's being pushed. Follow the money.

I think that it probably is the case that climate change could be related to natural fluctuations in the Earth's climate, but we cannot be certain.

Without conclusive evidence either way, we have to assume that our pollutants are having an effect and take steps to reduce such pollutants as soon as possible.

If we are wrong and it is a naturally occuring change, then reducing pollutants will probably have little effect in preventing it, but at least our air will be cleaner hopefully leading to a reduction in related diseases and a better quality of life for all.

Well, yes it is in the summer. One degree can be the difference between frozen and melted for a large part of the icecap. If nothing else, it leaves the polar bears with nowhere to stand.

It's kinda funny. I was reading a article written 50 years ago that was talking about how we were doomed due to global cooling. Now it's warming that is gonna kill us. I will have to see if I can find the article again.

As bengamblin put it, it's better to be safe then sorry. Why not decrease pollutants? As long as the solutions don't create more problems, the hype may actually produce something good.

Look, I'm not a climate expert, but I trust them when almost without exception every expert in the field of knowing stuff to do with anything tells me that the Earth is heating up, it's due to the greenhouse effect, and we're causing it through air pollution.

edit: Plus it's simply a matter of common sense, if you sit in your garage with the door closed and the engine running you'll kill yourself. The Earth is NOT infinite in size.

Global warning is not something that you actually need an opinion on - the scientific data and consensus is quite well-established. The scientific consensus around climate change is actually stronger than the consensus around CFC's when the Montreal Protocol restricted them in 1989. If anyone is under the impression that there is a significant body of climatologists that hold a contrary view to the consensus, then I can direct you to the work of Naomi Oreskes (Professor of History and Science Studies, UC San Diego), who examined 928 abstracts featuring the words "global climate change" between 1993 and 2003. 75% explicitly or implicitly supported the consensus view, NONE dissented.

A small number of climatologists have published dissenting views - many have been rejected by peer-reviewed journals as being of insufficient quality. When you "follow the money" funding these studies, rather depressingly you all-too-often find people like the American Enterprise Institute (prominent scholars and fellows include such folk as Dick Cheney's wife, former Bush speechwriters, Newt Gingrich, funders include Exxon) and other (mainly) US (mainly) Republican-leaning organisations.

The simple truth is that global warming is unfortunately real. Some governments have responded to the challenges by attempting to take the pain of tackling climate change as soon as possible, arguing that THEIR companies and economies will reap the benefit of developing expertise (which they can sell to the US later) and the phasing-in the costs of climate change abatement and mitigation (rather than the pain of suddenly having to play catch-up). Other governments (notably the US and Australia) have adopted the view that by DELAYING the costs of abatement and mitigation, their economies will reap an advantage over the early-adopters. To follow this particular strategy requires a degree of political denial and foot-dragging (playing dumb with allies is possible, openly being mercenary is diplomatic suicide). The Republican position in the US is just politics, nothing more - there is no reason to think the actually BELIEVE their public position on climate change!

As humans we find the notion of changing our behaviour to be uncomfortable and challenging - and the changes we will make over the next hundred years to deal with climate change will be disruptive and frightening for many - and there will continue to be a small number of "scientific reports" dissenting from the consensus, there will be politicians, lazy journalists and others with their own agenda attempting to muddy the waters. History, I suspect, will not treat them kindly.

I will have to have some evidence, and not just theory before I jump on the global warming bus. In the seventies it was global cooling on the same scale as the global warming hype now. We were all going to freeze to death. I am pretty sure everyone here is old enough to remember the ozone hole scare of the 80's-90's. They said we were all going to burn up because we were destroying the ozone. Now they know that the hole is natural, and supposed to be there to regulate the temperature/pollution levels. It has been the same group of people that has instigated all of these scary scenarios. If these people had their way by now we would be dead. They had suggested firing a nuclear warhead at the moon so the explosion would slightly alter the earth's orbit and move it a little farther from the sun to fight global warming. During the ozone hysteria, they were talking about flying jet fighters back and forth across the hole to "sew" it up. So far they are 0 for 2. I need some facts and not theory. The only facts so far are only to support their theories just as before.

global warming is caused by the decreasing number of pirates
seanbonner: Less Pirates = Global Warming

Seriously, it could be cause by anything. There's evidence for many many many things causing it. There's significant evidence that we are causing it to some degree, so why not work on that? It will improve our lives in other ways to become more energy conscious anyway, so it's win win.

@Moniker42
All those experts you are talking about are the ones that get airtime because global warming is a hot issue in the media. There are also lot's of experts who think it is not humans influence which causes the fluctuations in the climate.

This doesn't mean that I, or the real experts, are against measurements to be more careful with the environment. I also am trying to find ways to make my household more efficient and making sure that I do what I can do to keep this world a great place to live.

The way we live, or have lived, with disregard for our surroundings is not something that will do the environment any good. But I doubt that it causes or caused global warming.

@dayylin
If you found this article and are able to mail or post it I would really like to read it.

Jeroen

Why? Economics. It costs too much.

While I have no doubt that global warming is real and caused by humans (re argos-bling), I don't know if it's bad. Right now our global infastructure depends on burning hydrocarbons for energy--there are no viable alternatives.

Humans are very greedy, and won't willingly give up a cheap source of energy that easily. If one country/company does, (say, by making hydrogen cars or solar-powered factories,) another will pop up with cheaper products/services run by oil and the green one will become bankrupt quicker than you can say "renewable energy." It doesn't help that there really are no alternative energy sources available that can supplant our thirst for oil. Nothing else is quite as energy-dense or accessable. However, if and when global warming reaches a point where it threatans the existance of mankind, I have complete faith that we will be able to adapt and survive.

Technology and societies take a long time to change, due to politics, traditions, and a bunch of other silly human things. Biology, on the other hand, has survived ice ages, meteors, and even religion (so far). Evolution may seem to work really slowly, but it works really, really, well. If we can't find a technological solution in our future to live with global warming (which I am certain we will), biology will march on. We may not be "human" in the terms we know them today, but our decendants will survive, on this planet or another.

Even in the very small chance humans get wiped out, some form of Earth-originating, carbon-based lifeform will continue (cockroaches, some weird deep-sea creature, or some weird bacterium that lives in pH 2 environments). It may sound weird, but I find enough camraderie with them that I'm not too worried about our future.

Hype or not, it's still a problem as long as you eat food, drink water, enjoy electricity, and drive a car, and like being disease free.

Every scientist out there has said that the earth does and has and will go through heating and cooling cycles, BUT, that our impact has made a difference to those regular cycles.

I can't believe anyone these days doesn't think Global Warming is a problem.

I think too many people focus strictly on the word warming, and few people seem to understand that minor differences, of a few degrees, in either the cooling or warming direction can have a massive impact ion the earth.
Those who think global warming is a myth, fine, then at least acknowledge that during the cooling and warming periods in the past (that you say that is what we are going through now) often had catastrophic effects on life on earth and led to the extinction of many species.

I don't care what title they stick on it, a cleaner world for myself and my children makes sense. I don't want to breathe toxic levels of air pollution, or drink toxic levels of water pollution, etc.

I don't think just saying it's hype is even really valid, if it's a problem then how is it hype? The media overexposes everything that is a hot button issue, does that mean nothing in America is a problem, it's just hype?

Me I beleive in the Gaia Theory (James Ephraim Lovelock) and this is...

"The Revenge of Gaia", which argues that the lack of respect humans have had for Gaia, through the damage done to rainforests and the reduction in planetary biodiversity, is testing Gaia's capacity to minimise the effects of the addition of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This eliminates the planet's homeostatic negative feedback potential and increases the likelihood of positive feedbacks associated with runaway global warming. Similarly the warming of the oceans is extending the oceanic thermocline layer of tropical oceans into the Arctic and Antarctic waters, preventing the rise of oceanic nutrients into the surface waters and eliminating the algal blooms of phytoplankton on which oceanic foodchains depend. As phytoplankton and forests are the main ways in which Gaia draws down greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, taking it out of the atmosphere, the elimination of this environmental buffering will see, according to Lovelock, most of the earth becoming uninhabitable for humans and other life-forms by the middle of next century, with a massive extension of tropical deserts. Given these conditions, Lovelock expects civilization will be hard pressed to survive.

No offense meant, but seriously, Gaia?

I thought that 60's - 70's idea had died out, well, except for maybe in the Final Fantasy movie.

Don't get me wrong, even things I find I can't agree with can still have good and valid points.

I was just surprised to see you post that.

the reasons that exscuse us have been many and more and more redicolous ranging from cows farting (haha haha) to it being cause by volcanoes,

there a couple of facts to consider:
We are and many don't realize to what extent producing huge quantities of pollution, most of us know that carbon fossils contain carbon this was quite present in our earths atmosphere thousands of years ago (or rather millions) the earth was once under a state of global warming but the trees gradually used it up and stored it then died and because coal and other fossil fuels, so now what are we doing ? letting it all out again it's that simple isn't it just go back to junior school and elementry natural history lessons.

Also another factor being overlooked this is called global warming - WARMING heat not only do we make CO2 emmisions that traps heat but we make heat lots of it we are warming our own planet up we do nothing but burn for energy conversions and various industrial procedures we do nothing but make nude crude heat what ever we do we make heat, the combustion engine is 30 % efficient that means that our lovely powerful 50 KW engines are turfing out over 100 KW or heat and hour, the same goes for the production of electricity most methods are 25-30 % efficient for every KW of power we use up to 3 KW of heat has already gone into the atmosphere and how many of us use that measly 1 KW that is left to cook with or warm our homes making yet more heat. for a full list and please give me your suggestions on the article read here on my site: The future between renewable energy and pollution

as for volcanoes what about all those underground nuclear testings we do don't all these underground explosions disrupt things how come the americans already knew about the tsunami 6 hours before yet after it was said so how do we detect it in the future ?: difficult because the water only rises by 1 cm at the epicentre and becomes a 30 m wave near the shore at the last minute yet america knew 6 hours before that it was going to happen how ? what where they up to ?

I have to say, I'm not taken in by the hype regarding the cause of global warming.

As far as I can tell, the only thing every one actually agrees on is that global warming is occuring. The real disagreements are over the cause.

There are a few things I'm not convinced about. The first regards the relative amount of CO2 produced by man compared to the oceans and volcanoes. Now, when I look at a picture of the earth taken from space, I can see these massive things called oceans. They really are enormous and cover about 70% of the planet. Even if I look really hard, with a magnifying glass, I can't see even one person.

Then I wonder about CO2's effectiveness as a greenhouse gas. As far as I know, water vapour is much more effective as a greenhouse gas compared to CO2. Also, there's more water vapour in the atmosphere than CO2. I believe I read somewhere that water vapour makes up the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect.

So, shouldn't we be drinking lots of water and going to the toilet less instead of worrying about CO2.

I thought this CO2 business was really just a political tool to put pressure on the developing nations, so that we could keep our number one spot. But those clever Chinese aren't falling for it and have told the west to get stuffed and I don't blame them. Unfortunately, the poor Africans aren't in such a strong position so we'll carry on shafting them.

And the government can carry on shafting us public with green taxes to help pay for environmentally friendly wars, whilst at the same time allowing for example, expansion of Heathrow.

If the government can turn a blind eye to unacceptable environmental issues when it suits them (i.e. when business will suffer) then why should I give a rats ass about recycling and CO2 emissions. Especially, when the issue of CO2 causing global warming is far from proven.

Hard to debate the big picture. There's certainly two sides to the story. Personally, we try to recycle, drive less, use curly light bulbs, etc., to reduce our footprint, simply because we think it's the right thing to do.

I do know one thing for sure. If we're truly screwing up the earth, Mother Nature will let us know. She'll kill off half the residents, and start over. She's done it before.

For those of us who "believe" in global warming (I say that with hesitation because global warming is real it's not black magic), the experts we are talking about don't have air-time. Media experts are jokes, don't even act like you know anything about the "issues" if you get your information from a television. Real experts are busy writing journals and conducting research.

Thank you Argos-Bling for posting something you've actually given thought to. It sounds like you've actually read some journals.

Global warming was a theory in the 1800's. Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, in the 1700's studied the idea of green house gases and later in the 1800's Savante Arrhenius made the first predictions of climate change. Global warming is no longer theory. There has been a plethora of evidence for a while now but you need to go and find it yourself. You can't wait for the global warming channel to appear on TV. I would like to direct you to the book, The End of Nature, by Bill McKibben; it's a good place to start.

That's why anthropologists say that the natural step after capitalism is socialism, seriously. I'm sure we could find solutions if we actually cared, that's all it takes. Cynicism and a "I can't" have been the enemies of progress since humanities inception.

Several frog and plant species have died out already and don't give me the, "more species are being created than are dieing out", the point being that the ratio of new to dieing species is a lot smaller than it use to be, indicating causality.

Whether you want to believe it or not there are environments that life cannot evolve fast enough to survive in. It is indeed better to be safe than sorry, as most research shows that when the real party starts there is no going back, think nuclear meltdown.

Edit:
Acctually, there is a concensus that warming is being caused mostly due to human activity.

The warming of our solar-system pales in comparison.