100+ Answers
No, global warming is not a "hoax".
There are many more interesting questions, such as: is global warming real, what is the evidence that global warming is occurring, what is the rate at which it is occurring, is global warming primarily human-caused, and so on. But a "hoax" is a deliberate attempt to fool people. For global warming to be a "hoax", there would need to be a world-wide conspiracy of scientists and many other people, all trying to fool us. This is extremely implausible, given how scientists love to advance their careers by gaining attention - and the best way to gain attention would be to reveal the existence of this world-wide conspiracy.
If global warming were a hoax, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would need to be part of this conspiracy:
![]()
See: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
The National Academy of Sciences, an organization whose members include
2,200 top scientists from the US, would also need to be part of this conspiracy. They write:
This is one sentence from their free online book on global warming:
http://books.nap.edu/open
The Economist, a top-notch business magazine with a strong free-enterprise ideology, would also need to be part of the conspiracy. They have a special issue on what should be done to stop human-caused global warming:
http://www.economist.com/
The Chinese government would also need to be part of the conspiracy. As the Economist report points out:
And so on - I could go on for hours. If global warming is a hoax, it's the world's biggest hoax.
There are many more interesting questions, such as: is global warming real, what is the evidence that global warming is occurring, what is the rate at which it is occurring, is global warming primarily human-caused, and so on. But a "hoax" is a deliberate attempt to fool people. For global warming to be a "hoax", there would need to be a world-wide conspiracy of scientists and many other people, all trying to fool us. This is extremely implausible, given how scientists love to advance their careers by gaining attention - and the best way to gain attention would be to reveal the existence of this world-wide conspiracy.
If global warming were a hoax, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would need to be part of this conspiracy:
See: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/
The National Academy of Sciences, an organization whose members include
2,200 top scientists from the US, would also need to be part of this conspiracy. They write:
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, concentrations of greenhouse gases from human activities have risen substantially. Evidence now shows that the increases in these gases very likely (>90 percent chance) account for most of Earth’s warming over the past 50 years.
This is one sentence from their free online book on global warming:
http://books.nap.edu/open
The Economist, a top-notch business magazine with a strong free-enterprise ideology, would also need to be part of the conspiracy. They have a special issue on what should be done to stop human-caused global warming:
http://www.economist.com/
The Chinese government would also need to be part of the conspiracy. As the Economist report points out:
UNLIKE America’s leaders, China’s bosses are not much troubled by recalcitrant legislatures. The government has therefore had no difficulty in executing a smart volte face [turnaround] on climate change. Around three years ago its fierce resistance to the notion of any limit on its greenhouse gas emissions started to soften. It now seems to be making serious eff orts to control them.
One reason for this change is the country’s growing awareness of its vulnerability to a warming world. The monsoon seems to be weakening, travelling less far inland and dumping its rainfall on the coasts. As a result China is seeing floods in the southeast and droughts in the northwest. At the same time the country’s leaders are deeply concerned about the melting of the glaciers on the Tibetan plateau, which feed not just the Ganges, the Indus, the Brahmaputra and the Mekong but also the Yangzi and Yellow rivers (see map).
And so on - I could go on for hours. If global warming is a hoax, it's the world's biggest hoax.
Global warming is actually happening. Here is the theory behind it:
1. There is CO2 gas, the direct result of people burning things like fossil fuel, which has become a larger constituent of the Earth's atmosphere than it was previously.
2. The molecules of this gas are large enough to scatter heat back to the Earth's surface -- so the Earth is less effective at radiating heat out into space. Any molecule which has three or more atoms is large enough to scatter heat. (According to a lecture I heard by the Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland, who has just left us.) This heat scattering is called the 'greenhouse effect' in popular and some scientific literature.
3. Heat drives storms. Storms are based on convection -- the movement of material based on its density difference compared to its surroundings -- which, in the case of the near atmosphere, is akin to saying based on heat -- since heat sets up great density differences. The rock record shows a huge amount of extra weathering during the most recent previous warming period where the climate change happened as rapidly as in our current world (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum). Cores drilled and retrieved show a hugely thick layer of sedimentary rock formed from weathered continental material correlated with the last global warming period. That weathering was most likely due to storm activity. Big storms are incredibly dangerous.
Here is the paper I've referenced about the increase in weathering during the last period of warming:
Productivity feedback did not terminate the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)
Here are some observations supporting the reality of global warming. These are from the following NASA website:
http://climate.nasa.gov/e
1. Sea Level Rise: Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century. The rate in the last decade, however, is nearly double that of the last century.
2. Global Temperature Rise: All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880. Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years. Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase.
3. Warming Oceans: The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969.
4. Shrinking Ice Sheets: The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006, while Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles) of ice between 2002 and 2005.
5. Declining Arctic Sea Ice: Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades.
6. Glacial Retreat: Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa.
7. Extreme Events: The number of record high temperature events in the United States has been increasing, while the number of record low temperature events has been decreasing, since 1950. The U.S. has also witnessed increasing numbers of intense rainfall events.
8. Ocean Acidification: Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30 percent. This increase is the result of humans emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the oceans. The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the upper layer of the oceans is increasing by about 2 billion tons per year.
There are lots and lots of things a person and communities can do to reverse this trend. Personally, I think the easiest thing is for people to get serious about planting trees, while larger entities are sitting on their hands deciding what to do. Trees sequester CO2, and I would think that a concerted effort has some good potential to reverse the global warming trend. Here are some other things I favor:
1. Industry might make more of an effort to use bio-based plastics and composites. (Basically, making plastic from things like soy or corn oil instead of petroleum. Growing crops pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere.) Who wouldn't like to combat global warming by generating plastic to be thrown out? That's something we'd all be good at doing!
Here is a link to books on bio-based plastics and composites.
http://www.amazon.com/s/r
2. Governments and science might start looking at creating extra ice in the polar regions, to create a heat sink, artificial ice fields. This is feasible -- but the infrastructure to transport water for deposition (and later freezing) on high-latitude land in the Fall or early Winter would be significant. The extra ice would serve to sequester some of the heat from the atmosphere in the Springtime, as the ice fields melt. I do not know if it is possible to trap all of the extra heat in this fashion, but it is an interesting proposition. Artificial ice fields would have a stabilizing effect on global temperatures.
3. Stop burning fossil fuels. These put extra greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as the endproduct of combustion, and this is a source of carbon which had been previously sequestered in the ground. It is much better not to introduce any of this fossil carbon into the atmosphere -- and make fuels from plants or other means. Research on alternative energy is progressing well. I've got a paper published on catching lightning for alternative energy. There are many, many more untried or up-and-coming technologies and ideas for energy.
4. Do anything that strikes your fancy which will result in sequestering CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Give more cut flowers, use wood which would otherwise be trashed for a project -- anything which pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere.
5. Put yourself squarely behind wanting to make this change. It will happen if enough people get active. Some solutions (like switching from petroleum to bio-based plastics) are technological -- beyond most peoples' immediate reach. But others, like planting a tree every two weeks, as weather permits, are reasonably achievable.
Finally, governments need to put plans in place for how to deal with more catastrophic storm events. Municipalities ought to have new plans drawn up, with contingencies for several major storms, back-to-back, and start training for this kind of emergency.
I'm not sure I like the tone of my answer -- much too didactic. Forgive me! Thanks for the question!
1. There is CO2 gas, the direct result of people burning things like fossil fuel, which has become a larger constituent of the Earth's atmosphere than it was previously.
2. The molecules of this gas are large enough to scatter heat back to the Earth's surface -- so the Earth is less effective at radiating heat out into space. Any molecule which has three or more atoms is large enough to scatter heat. (According to a lecture I heard by the Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland, who has just left us.) This heat scattering is called the 'greenhouse effect' in popular and some scientific literature.
3. Heat drives storms. Storms are based on convection -- the movement of material based on its density difference compared to its surroundings -- which, in the case of the near atmosphere, is akin to saying based on heat -- since heat sets up great density differences. The rock record shows a huge amount of extra weathering during the most recent previous warming period where the climate change happened as rapidly as in our current world (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum). Cores drilled and retrieved show a hugely thick layer of sedimentary rock formed from weathered continental material correlated with the last global warming period. That weathering was most likely due to storm activity. Big storms are incredibly dangerous.
Here is the paper I've referenced about the increase in weathering during the last period of warming:
Productivity feedback did not terminate the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)
Here are some observations supporting the reality of global warming. These are from the following NASA website:
http://climate.nasa.gov/e
1. Sea Level Rise: Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century. The rate in the last decade, however, is nearly double that of the last century.
2. Global Temperature Rise: All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880. Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years. Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase.
3. Warming Oceans: The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969.
4. Shrinking Ice Sheets: The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006, while Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles) of ice between 2002 and 2005.
5. Declining Arctic Sea Ice: Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades.
6. Glacial Retreat: Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa.
7. Extreme Events: The number of record high temperature events in the United States has been increasing, while the number of record low temperature events has been decreasing, since 1950. The U.S. has also witnessed increasing numbers of intense rainfall events.
8. Ocean Acidification: Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30 percent. This increase is the result of humans emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the oceans. The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the upper layer of the oceans is increasing by about 2 billion tons per year.
There are lots and lots of things a person and communities can do to reverse this trend. Personally, I think the easiest thing is for people to get serious about planting trees, while larger entities are sitting on their hands deciding what to do. Trees sequester CO2, and I would think that a concerted effort has some good potential to reverse the global warming trend. Here are some other things I favor:
1. Industry might make more of an effort to use bio-based plastics and composites. (Basically, making plastic from things like soy or corn oil instead of petroleum. Growing crops pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere.) Who wouldn't like to combat global warming by generating plastic to be thrown out? That's something we'd all be good at doing!
Here is a link to books on bio-based plastics and composites.
http://www.amazon.com/s/r
2. Governments and science might start looking at creating extra ice in the polar regions, to create a heat sink, artificial ice fields. This is feasible -- but the infrastructure to transport water for deposition (and later freezing) on high-latitude land in the Fall or early Winter would be significant. The extra ice would serve to sequester some of the heat from the atmosphere in the Springtime, as the ice fields melt. I do not know if it is possible to trap all of the extra heat in this fashion, but it is an interesting proposition. Artificial ice fields would have a stabilizing effect on global temperatures.
3. Stop burning fossil fuels. These put extra greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as the endproduct of combustion, and this is a source of carbon which had been previously sequestered in the ground. It is much better not to introduce any of this fossil carbon into the atmosphere -- and make fuels from plants or other means. Research on alternative energy is progressing well. I've got a paper published on catching lightning for alternative energy. There are many, many more untried or up-and-coming technologies and ideas for energy.
4. Do anything that strikes your fancy which will result in sequestering CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Give more cut flowers, use wood which would otherwise be trashed for a project -- anything which pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere.
5. Put yourself squarely behind wanting to make this change. It will happen if enough people get active. Some solutions (like switching from petroleum to bio-based plastics) are technological -- beyond most peoples' immediate reach. But others, like planting a tree every two weeks, as weather permits, are reasonably achievable.
Finally, governments need to put plans in place for how to deal with more catastrophic storm events. Municipalities ought to have new plans drawn up, with contingencies for several major storms, back-to-back, and start training for this kind of emergency.
I'm not sure I like the tone of my answer -- much too didactic. Forgive me! Thanks for the question!
Here's an interesting fact. If you ask climatologists, paleoclimatologists, meteorologists, atmospheric chemists, atmospheric physicists, geophysicists, oceanographers, and those that study aeronomy, 98% agree that climate change is real and 90% of scientists from all fields of science in general believe it is real. 97.1% of all scientific papers which take a position on climate change agree that it is real, is caused by humans and serious. Survey finds 97% of climate science papers agree warming is man-made
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If you ask the average non scientist American it varies between 40-60% believe it is happening. Recently one climatologist explained his reasoning for why he thinks most Americans are out of tune with what most scientists believe. He said it is the media's tendency to have "expert guests" on shows and always put one that supports the idea on TV and one that doesn't. If they wanted it to be accurate they would pick Ten scientists at random to debate the issue and odds are at most 1 would disagree that global warming is a reality the rest would tell you it is happening and we need to take serious steps to prevent it from getting worse…
Scientific opinion on climate change >> http://en.wikipedia.org/w
Wikipedia has a good list of scientific organizations and references to studies and surveys you can look up and see that there is a clear consensus and for 90%+ of scientists to agree on something like this, we should be taking this FAR more seriously than most people do.
![]()
EDIT: See the comments for some great discussions on the related science.
EDIT2: It's great to see so much interest in this question here around Earth Day let us hope we do not forget these things as the year wanes on. Combating Climate Change requires commitment to big and little changes and we can all do our part. From recycling, low flow shower heads and LED light bulbs to supporting stronger anti-pollution laws we can all make improvements.
EDIT3: Article on a recent study that shows how recent weather trends can not be explained by random chance alone. If global warming was not happening the recent series of events year after year could not be explained as mere spikes in probability. Each event would be a 1 in a million year event instead they are happening repeatedly decade after decade. http://www.washingtonpost
EDIT4: Adding from the comments to the answer..
Comment
My Reply
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Not a perfect list but a good start to simple changes to be more responsible.
http://www.50waystohelp.c
If you ask the average non scientist American it varies between 40-60% believe it is happening. Recently one climatologist explained his reasoning for why he thinks most Americans are out of tune with what most scientists believe. He said it is the media's tendency to have "expert guests" on shows and always put one that supports the idea on TV and one that doesn't. If they wanted it to be accurate they would pick Ten scientists at random to debate the issue and odds are at most 1 would disagree that global warming is a reality the rest would tell you it is happening and we need to take serious steps to prevent it from getting worse…
Scientific opinion on climate change >> http://en.wikipedia.org/w
No scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion;
Wikipedia has a good list of scientific organizations and references to studies and surveys you can look up and see that there is a clear consensus and for 90%+ of scientists to agree on something like this, we should be taking this FAR more seriously than most people do.
EDIT: See the comments for some great discussions on the related science.
EDIT2: It's great to see so much interest in this question here around Earth Day let us hope we do not forget these things as the year wanes on. Combating Climate Change requires commitment to big and little changes and we can all do our part. From recycling, low flow shower heads and LED light bulbs to supporting stronger anti-pollution laws we can all make improvements.
EDIT3: Article on a recent study that shows how recent weather trends can not be explained by random chance alone. If global warming was not happening the recent series of events year after year could not be explained as mere spikes in probability. Each event would be a 1 in a million year event instead they are happening repeatedly decade after decade. http://www.washingtonpost
EDIT4: Adding from the comments to the answer..
Comment
Joshua Theobald
I'm really astonished that somehow humans are solely responsible for "global warming" let alone a significant contributor. We've been burning fossil fuels, clearing trees and the like for 2000 years. The Sahara Desert isn't claimed to be a man made disaster, nor the global cooling of the 1970's. We can't predict the weather, we just report what is observed to be heading in one direction or another. Until we can grasp our complex environment and start understanding all the factors that go into warming and cooling of our planet, I prefer not to be blamed as the major contributing factor to our planet warming up for a couple hundred years.
My Reply
We may not like it. We may not want it. We may feel powerless to stop it but that does not mean we are not responsible for it. I am partially responsible for my local landfill, nuclear waste produced in powering my home and many other icky things and so are you, this is true if we like it or not.
We produce 26 Gigatons of CO2 per year and we do not absorb any.
That's 29,000,000,000 tons of CO2!
58,000,000,000,000 pounds CO2 PER YEAR! No joke. It's an unfathomable number. We are producing that much of a GAS per year. When you put it in that perspective it's pretty scary.
The environment naturally absorbs and produces CO2. With 6 billion people we are enough to offset a natural balance that never had to deal with us before.
About 40% of human CO2 emissions are being absorbed, mostly by vegetation and the oceans. The rest remains in the atmosphere. As a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years. A natural change of 100ppm normally takes 5,000 to 20.000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm has taken just 120 years.We are just enough to be too much.
Man-made CO2 emissions are much smaller than natural emissions. Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Respiration by vegetation emits around 220 gigatonnes. The ocean releases about 332 gigatonnes. In contrast, when you combine the effect of fossil fuel burning and changes in land use, human CO2 emissions are only around 29 gigatonnes per year. However, natural CO2 emissions (from the ocean and vegetation) are balanced by natural absorptions (again by the ocean and vegetation). Land plants absorb about 450 gigatonnes of CO2 per year and the ocean absorbs about 338 gigatonnes. This keeps atmospheric CO2 levels in rough balance. Human CO2 emissions upsets the natural balance.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/...
http://www.50waystohelp.c
OK, here goes.
The thesis that global warming is a result of man-made CO2 is open to legitimate criticism. We live in a culture where such skepticism is essentially considered heresy; this is both an unscientific and undemocratic trend.
First, let me be ad hominem. Anthropogenic global warming is refuted by MIT atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen. Dr. Lindzen is a nationally famous luminary in his field, often called "The Dean" by his colleagues across the country. You can hear him speak on the topic here -
Second, let me try to be factual. Al Gore loves to go around the country showing this graph, which displays global temperature along with atmospheric CO2 levels. (This information is gleaned from ice core data in the arctic, see National Climatic Data Center) :
![]()
Yellow is temperature. Red is C02 in the atmosphere.
Wow. Sure looks like CO2 drives climate change. It even appears that CO2 is the only driver of climate change. So we're done - anyone who denies this is crazy, on-the-take from big oil, stupid, or all three.
As Columbo used to say in the old TV-series, "Um ... Just one more thing before I go, ma'am."
Isn't a little weird that CO2 is the only driver of climate change? Water vapor retains more heat, as does methane and sulfur dioxide. Strange.
But never mind that. Let's take those two graphs and plunk them on top of each other. Superimposing them gives :
![]()
OK, look really carefully. CO2 (blue) is lagging slightly behind temperature (red.) The average lag is 800 years.
A cause must precede an effect. The ice cores show temperature driving CO2 levels, and not the other way around.
And more than this. Look at the big red dip, around 125,000 years ago. Even though CO2 is at a peak level - the temperature dives, dragging CO2 down with it.
Put simply - CO2 is not seen to drive climate change in the past.
You might protest - but we *know* CO2 is a greenhouse gas. If we put more in the atmosphere, the temperature *must* increase. It's simple physics.
Too simple. The earth's climate is a complex system, involving feedback loops and mathematically "chaotic" behavior (Chaos in the Atmosphere). If we simply calculate the effect of CO2 added by humans to the atmosphere we get less than a degree Celsius of warming.
The thesis that the added CO2 will result in several degrees of warming is based on models which invoke feedback loops and "tipping points". This is very tricky business; very sensitive to assumptions and omitted dynamics (like cloud cover, ocean currents, etc.) We haven't got this complex mechanism figured out. We don't know how to model it. This is what happened when we tried :
![]()
So the projections don't seem to work. It's only 10 years - fair enough. But our models didn't exactly get a standing ovation from nature.
To recap : We don't see CO2 driving climate change in the past. Our attempt to predict it in the future failed. Oh - and what are temperatures doing dropping anyway, given that man-made CO2 emissions are at their highest ever?
"And one more thing, ma'am."
Take a look at the first two graphs. Those warm spikes - don't they seem to be pulsing ? Like there is some sort of rhythm involved? We might be so reckless as to use the term cyclic?
Last graph, I promise :
![]()
Oh. That top line is the shape of the earth's orbit. The earth's 0rbit changes shape in a rhythmic cycle, going from nearly circular to more eliptical and back again. These are called Milankovitch cycles.
The earth's orbit doesn't give a crap how hot or cold earth is or what's in its atmosphere. Nothing is going to push it around.
And this graph shows two things : Ice ages recur about every 100,000 years, just as the earth's orbit starts to become less eliptical. And ... we are right on schedule for another one.
So Dr. Lindzen - "The Dean" is not crazy. "Deniers" - can we call them skeptics? - are by no means crackpots. They should be heard. The future of mankind may depend on it.
If they are right - a new ice age is coming no matter what we do. So we must prepare for it; build lots of nuclear reactors, reduce global population, develop ways to produce food in cold climates. By running around chasing CO2 we are solving the wrong problem.
Our engines will be silenced soon enough by glaciers.
The thesis that global warming is a result of man-made CO2 is open to legitimate criticism. We live in a culture where such skepticism is essentially considered heresy; this is both an unscientific and undemocratic trend.
First, let me be ad hominem. Anthropogenic global warming is refuted by MIT atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen. Dr. Lindzen is a nationally famous luminary in his field, often called "The Dean" by his colleagues across the country. You can hear him speak on the topic here -
Second, let me try to be factual. Al Gore loves to go around the country showing this graph, which displays global temperature along with atmospheric CO2 levels. (This information is gleaned from ice core data in the arctic, see National Climatic Data Center) :
Wow. Sure looks like CO2 drives climate change. It even appears that CO2 is the only driver of climate change. So we're done - anyone who denies this is crazy, on-the-take from big oil, stupid, or all three.
As Columbo used to say in the old TV-series, "Um ... Just one more thing before I go, ma'am."
Isn't a little weird that CO2 is the only driver of climate change? Water vapor retains more heat, as does methane and sulfur dioxide. Strange.
But never mind that. Let's take those two graphs and plunk them on top of each other. Superimposing them gives :
OK, look really carefully. CO2 (blue) is lagging slightly behind temperature (red.) The average lag is 800 years.
A cause must precede an effect. The ice cores show temperature driving CO2 levels, and not the other way around.
And more than this. Look at the big red dip, around 125,000 years ago. Even though CO2 is at a peak level - the temperature dives, dragging CO2 down with it.
Put simply - CO2 is not seen to drive climate change in the past.
You might protest - but we *know* CO2 is a greenhouse gas. If we put more in the atmosphere, the temperature *must* increase. It's simple physics.
Too simple. The earth's climate is a complex system, involving feedback loops and mathematically "chaotic" behavior (Chaos in the Atmosphere). If we simply calculate the effect of CO2 added by humans to the atmosphere we get less than a degree Celsius of warming.
The thesis that the added CO2 will result in several degrees of warming is based on models which invoke feedback loops and "tipping points". This is very tricky business; very sensitive to assumptions and omitted dynamics (like cloud cover, ocean currents, etc.) We haven't got this complex mechanism figured out. We don't know how to model it. This is what happened when we tried :
To recap : We don't see CO2 driving climate change in the past. Our attempt to predict it in the future failed. Oh - and what are temperatures doing dropping anyway, given that man-made CO2 emissions are at their highest ever?
"And one more thing, ma'am."
Take a look at the first two graphs. Those warm spikes - don't they seem to be pulsing ? Like there is some sort of rhythm involved? We might be so reckless as to use the term cyclic?
Last graph, I promise :
Oh. That top line is the shape of the earth's orbit. The earth's 0rbit changes shape in a rhythmic cycle, going from nearly circular to more eliptical and back again. These are called Milankovitch cycles.
The earth's orbit doesn't give a crap how hot or cold earth is or what's in its atmosphere. Nothing is going to push it around.
And this graph shows two things : Ice ages recur about every 100,000 years, just as the earth's orbit starts to become less eliptical. And ... we are right on schedule for another one.
So Dr. Lindzen - "The Dean" is not crazy. "Deniers" - can we call them skeptics? - are by no means crackpots. They should be heard. The future of mankind may depend on it.
If they are right - a new ice age is coming no matter what we do. So we must prepare for it; build lots of nuclear reactors, reduce global population, develop ways to produce food in cold climates. By running around chasing CO2 we are solving the wrong problem.
Our engines will be silenced soon enough by glaciers.
"Hey, I never said the global warming hoax wasn't elaborate..."
One could add the thousands of scientists who are part of the conspiracy, all the faked temperature measurements, the insurance companies who are lieing to their investors about future costs, the fraudulent measurenents of sea levels....
![]()
One could add the thousands of scientists who are part of the conspiracy, all the faked temperature measurements, the insurance companies who are lieing to their investors about future costs, the fraudulent measurenents of sea levels....
