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Poll: Global Warming - are humans the main cause?

Global Warming - are humans the main cause?

  • Total voters
    68

rcronk

Muse
R
Joined
Nov 3, 2006
Messages
728
Once you've answered the poll question, please post the strongest one or two brief arguments that support your position and the strongest one or two brief arguments against your position. I will gather these and ask for counter arguments when the poll responses slow down significantly.

Please try to keep your arguments very brief and concise (i.e. one sentence) - don't try to convince anyone, I'm just trying to gather a list of arguments for and against human-caused global warming that can then be used as a starting point for counter arguments and so forth. I want this to be as orderly as possible.

Thanks in advance for your input and help with this.
 
Thank you a lot for posting this, rcronk.

My rationale: Global warming is a natural process, but human emissions of Co2 have been proven by comprehensive research to be speeding up the process.
 
Fact: Climate warming and cooling happens independently of human influence.
Human activity may speed up the process, but that does not mean it is the main cause.
 
Thanks to everyone who has taken the poll and posted comments so far. To make this efficient and objective, please remember to follow the instructions in the OP regarding posting the strongest argument (or two) for and against your position. Posting an argument against your position is really just an exercise in objectivity rather than being a hard requirement.

For example, someone against human-caused global warming may post that solar output and global temperature tracked each other nicely during the cooling period between 1940 and 1975 or that historically CO2 has lagged temperature. Someone for human-caused global warming may post that solar output in the past X years has not increased while temperature has, etc. You get the idea. Simple concise arguments that I can gather into a list at the end.

Thanks again and keep the votes and comments coming.
 
I don't know enough to vote, so I'm just going to sit back and watch.

(I've never considered it that important whether or not humans are the *main* cause...I think it makes sense to take better care of the environment regardless.)
 
For me it's the coherence of the greenhouse effect theory, as well as what I understand of the data (and ice sheet reports etc) showing a rapid change over a short time, and one that apparently correlates with the advent and ramping up of human industrialisation.

But I have to say the threads on here about it have actually confused me more on this, even though they initially helped clarify it. I have the sense that it's anti-AGW fluff, but the doubters do get through to my poor humanities-graduate brain and confuse it. I suspect the same is true of many non-scientists to tell you the truth, and as a result people decide based on their political viewpoint instead. Which is not a good thing.
 
I learned of the greenhouse effect (not global warming, the part of it that says that's what keeps the Earth from being at -15C or so) when I was nine, watching Nova. That program also discussed the sunspot cycles, which were just then starting to be understood, though they'd been known of for centuries, and climate analysis using tree rings. They briefly had a talking-head scientist dismiss the then somewhat-current global cooling hype from the newspapers, and talked a bit about what information they were going to gather; no one had any real theories then about what climate might do, but everyone agreed more information was needed. Over time, as my understanding of physics became deeper, and I satisfied my curiosity about climate and solar astrophysics and a variety of related subjects, my picture of how this worked became clearer. When I first heard about global warming, I was agnostic; however, a few weeks' research showed me just how this fit in with what I already knew about how the climate worked. For me, this is not a standalone theory unrelated to anything else that I have to evaluate from scratch; it's relatively obvious given the other things I already knew before I ever heard of global warming. This is the most persuasive fact about it to me.

Sorry, I know you said to keep it brief; I did my best.
 
Dunno. I still dunno.

It has been an article of faith among geologists for nearly a century that global cimate was a lot colder in the recent past- ie we were last in an ice age about 11,000 years ago and now we're not.
Geologists tend to think of 10000 years as essentially yesterday. So yesterday was colder than today over much of the planet. Call that "global warming" if you will. Climate has always changed. Right now it's getting warmer.

Did we cause that? No.
Are we making it worse? Yes.
To what extent? Dunno. More than I thought a few years ago. Less than some think now.
Not much use, I fear.
 
Melting ice sheets and methane bubbling out from lakes in the Russian arctic.
 
Thanks all, keep the votes and strongest arguments coming. I'll gather them up into two lists, for and against. Once I have both lists, I'll number them and post them and ask for counter arguments against each one.

I thought about putting "undecided" in the poll, but I didn't think about it until just now. Is it possible to add an option to the poll after the fact?
 
Con:
Models aren't validated with past data and are full of pre-set constant to make it fit.
CO2 is a follower to warming.
CO2 contributed by man is a negligible portion of total C02 in the atmosphere.
There is no physic explanation about how CO2 can increase temperature in a system like earth.

Pro:
(I can't really think now about a convincing explanation in the PRO side.....there are papers about the earth getting warmer but when it comes to attribution to CO2 CONTRIBUTED BY MAN the alleged explanations doesn't fly.)
 
I can't vote either way. I have followed the discussions here and there just seems to be a lot of mud slinging. Even visiting sites like realclimate and climateaudit, I find it hard to get straight answers.
 
So far we have stereolab and Qubit as undecided and then four for and four against human caused global warming. We also have a group of arguments supporting each side. Keep it coming.

As has been expressed by some, I'm hoping that by following this format we can avoid mud-slinging debate and let the water clear a bit.
 
FOR MY POSITION: Natural cycles of climate explain most or all of recent temperature changes. The CO2-as-a-driver of climate change is extremely weak. Pollution, soot, "Asian brown clouds", man's changes in land use, these do have quantifiable effects.

AGAINST MY POSITION: Beats me. I keep asking for good counter arguments...offhand can't think of any worth repeating here.
 
kerikiwi said:
Fact: Climate warming and cooling happens independently of human influence.
Human activity may speed up the process, but that does not mean it is the main cause.
Click to expand...

The poll question is a little ambiguously. The main cause of the global temperature, of course, is the sun. The question is what is causing the current warming?

There have been several reasons for warming and cooling in the past, but the theory is that those other causes aren't a factor at the moment.
 
It needs a Planet X option, as well as two or three more options. Phrasing it as 'is anthropogenic global warming real' might have been a better idea. I voted 'yes' as this is essentially what the question asks, from what I know of rconk's previous posts, but I think it should be rephrased and rest.
 
The planet has gone from Medieval Warm Period-->Little Ice Age-->Now. Prior to that there have been several cycles of ice ages to warm periods.

Since the Now temperature can't be shown to be higher than the Medieval Warm Period I say mostly natural cycle. Although land-use changes may show human inhabited areas to be warming, this is a rather small area compared to the size of the globe.

Gases come out of solution as temperature rises. Atmospheric CO2 levels tend to follow temperature change, not lead it. The atmosphere is roughly proportional to the thickness of a piece of paper wrapped around a basketball. I think water(clouds, oceans) moderates global temperature, not humans.
 
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