2. During the medieval warm period (820 – 1040 AD), Greenland supported farming. Those areas previously farmed are now covered in glaciers. Obviously the melting and reformation of glaciers is a cyclical occurrence.
3. The earth experienced a little ice age which ended around the late 1860%26#039;s or so. This is about the time man started recording temperatures. This would be like measuring a lake depth after a severe drought, then worrying about it flooding as it rose to normal levels.
4. The earth has been warming for the last 10,000 years, since the last major glacier time period. Also, for most of the last 1 billion years, the earth had NO glaciers or ice coverage.
http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/i...
5. The AGW theory states that CO2 is the primary driver of temperature. They arrived at this idea because they did not know of anything else which could cause it. But during the 70%26#039;s and during the current decade, temperatures dropped while CO2 continued to rise. This means that natural occurrences are driving temp, not CO2.
6. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation and sun spots provides a much better correlation to earths%26#039; temperature than CO2 levels ever have.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/200...
7. Polar Bears are experiencing a population boom. Coke sales in the arctics are through the roof. Polar Bears have been around for thousands of years, and remember, we are only at the average for the last 2,000 years. They lived through all the previously warmer climates.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/...
8. The glaciers have been melting now for over 10,000 years. the current rate of melting is similar to previous melting.
9. There is no consensus on AGW. This was a lie that has been propagated by the media.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckt...
10. Yes we emit CO2 into the atmosphere and it is a greenhouse gas, but, we only contribute about .28% of all the greenhouse effect. Water vapor makes up about 95% of the greenhouse effect. CO2 and other trace gases round out the greenhouse gases at about 5% for all of them. Of that 5%, only 3% is CO2, and most of that is natural. Again, our contribution to the greenhouse effect is a paltry .28%
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenh...
11. The spread of disease is not attributed mainly to temperature. If this were the case, Florida would be a giant festering disease ridden cesspool. Economic standing is the primary determining factor in the spread of disease. Poor cultures can not fight the disease or eradicate the pests like more successful nations.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12077886...
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.h...
12. Natural climate disasters (hurricanes, cyclones, etc) have never been scientifically linked to global warming (whether natural or man made).
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppa...
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?i... 50% 2 Votes 0% 0 Votes 25% 1 Vote
Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth%26#039;s near-surface air and oceans since the mid-twentieth century, and its projected continuation.
The average global air temperature near the Earth%26#039;s surface increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the hundred years ending in 2005.[1] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes %26quot;most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas concentrations%26quot;[1] via an enhanced greenhouse effect. Natural phenomena such as solar variation combined with volcanoes probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 and a small cooling effect from 1950 onward.[2][3]
These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least thirty scientific societies and academies of science,[4] including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.[5][6][7] While individual scientists have voiced disagreement with some findings of the IPCC,[8] the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change agree with the IPCC%26#039;s main conclusions.[9][10]
Climate model projections summarized by the IPCC indicate that average global surface temperature will likely rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century.[1] This range of values results from the use of differing scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions as well as models with differing climate sensitivity. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming and sea level rise are expected to continue for more than a thousand years even if greenhouse gas levels are stabilized. The delay in reaching equilibrium is a result of the large heat capacity of the oceans.[1]
Increasing global temperature will cause sea level to rise, and is expected to increase the intensity of extreme weather events and to change the amount and pattern of precipitation. Other effects of global warming include changes in agricultural yields, trade routes, glacier retreat, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors.
Remaining scientific uncertainties include the amount of warming expected in the future, and how warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe. Most national governments have signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there is ongoing political and public debate worldwide regarding what, if any, action should be taken to reduce or reverse future warming or to adapt to its expected consequences.Terminology
The term %26quot;global warming%26quot; refers to the warming in recent decades and its projected continuation, and implies a human influence.[11][12] The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) uses the term %26quot;climate change%26quot; for human-caused change, and %26quot;climate variability%26quot; for other changes.[13] The term %26quot;anthropogenic global warming%26quot; (AGW) is sometimes used when focusing on human-induced changes.Global temperatures on both land and sea have increased by 0.75 °C (1.35 °F) relative to the period 1860–1900, according to the instrumental temperature record. This measured temperature increase is not significantly affected by the urban heat island effect.[55] Since 1979, land temperatures have increased about twice as fast as ocean temperatures (0.25 °C per decade against 0.13 °C per decade).[56] Temperatures in the lower troposphere have increased between 0.12 and 0.22 °C (0.22 and 0.4 °F) per decade since 1979, according to satellite temperature measurements. Temperature is believed to have been relatively stable over the one or two thousand years before 1850, with possibly regional fluctuations such as the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age.
Sea temperatures increase more slowly than those on land both because of the larger effective heat capacity of the oceans and because the ocean can lose heat by evaporation more readily than the land.[57] The Northern Hemisphere has more land than the Southern Hemisphere, so it warms faster. The Northern Hemisphere also has extensive areas of seasonal snow and sea-ice cover subject to the ice-albedo feedback. More greenhouse gases are emitted in the Northern than Southern Hemisphere, but this does not contribute to the difference in warming because the major greenhouse gases persist long enough to mix between hemispheres.
Based on estimates by NASA%26#039;s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2005 was the warmest year since reliable, widespread instrumental measurements became available in the late 1800s, exceeding the previous record set in 1998 by a few hundredths of a degree.[58] Estimates prepared by the World Meteorological Organization and the Climatic Research Unit concluded that 2005 was the second warmest year, behind 1998.[59][60] Temperatures in 1998 were unusually warm because the strongest El Niño in the past century occurred during that year.[61]
Anthropogenic emissions of other pollutants—notably sulfate aerosols—can exert a cooling effect by increasing the reflection of incoming sunlight. This partially accounts for the cooling seen in the temperature record in the middle of the twentieth century,[62] though the cooling may also be due in part to natural variability. James Hansen and colleagues have proposed that the effects of the products of fossil fuel combustion—CO2 and aerosols—have largely offset one another, so that warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO2 greenhouse gases.[35]
Paleoclimatologist William Ruddiman has argued that human influence on the global climate began around 8,000 years ago with the start of forest clearing to provide land for agriculture and 5,000 years ago with the start of Asian rice irrigation.[63] Ruddiman%26#039;s interpretation of the historical record, with respect to the methane data, has been disputed.