UN wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters - Times Online
The science is settled.

 

Do these people ever tell the truth? But the science is settled right? Riooght.

FOXNews.com - Climate Researchers Manipulated and Hid Data

 

I'm one of those that firmly believe that our planet is just simply going through a cycle. I know that the pollution that the human race is creating isn't good for the planet, but I believe that the amount of CO2 that we produce isn't really causing global warming.

If we look up the percentage of gases that make up our atmosphere, CO2 is known as a trace gas; less then 1% by volume of the Earth's atmosphere. Actually, CO2 only accounts for roughly .038%, thirty eight hundredths of a percent. Considering the low amount of time that humans have been putting CO2 into the atmosphere compared to the timeline of our planet is pretty insignificant.

The temperature of our planet also varies greatly on our sun. During the past couple of years, scientists have noticed that the CO2 ice caps on Mars have been declining during the past couple of years. This could lead one to a good assumption that the heat output of our sun is slightly changing. It could also be contributed to a slight change in the planet's orbit or tilt in relation to the sun, which affects the amount of solar radiation that is used to heat the planet.

 

I used to believe global warming was a serious problem, but over time, I became more skeptical mainly because of conflicting atmospheric models. The science isn’t settled and it will take some time for the scientific community to gain the public’s trust back. That does not mean that I now believe global warming is a massive conspiracy evil scientists are promoting so they can get more grant money. Conspiracy theories and accusations without evidence will only muddy the water even more as well basing conclusions on what you feel/believe is really happening. Climatology is a complex science that we really haven’t mastered.

Although CO2 is only a trace element, in chemistry, many times small changes lead to large results. Some closed system studies show that minuscule changes in CO2 produce very large changes in temperature. The problem comes when the experiments are scaled up to represent realistic atmospheric conditions. Some say it is because CO2 has little affect on temperature, and some say they have not been able to model the atmosphere accurately and therefore the affect CO2 has is still unknown.

The point is, there is a lot of conflicting evidence and there really isn’t enough evidence to jump to one side of the debate and claim it is right. The worst thing to do now is to make drastic changes such as putting barriers in our economy so that we switch over to carbon neutral energy and we shouldn’t act like humans have no impact on the environment and follow China in coal plant construction. So let’s keep looking for more studies and reports.

 

Kass:

It has nothing to do with the study of CO2 and differenting weather models.

There are ocean fossils in the dryest and highest lands on earth. And there are plant fossils under the ice in greenland.

Geology proves that the earth has been much warmer and much cooler than it is now. All of this happened well before developed humanity.

 

I agree that the earth has gone through severe climate extremes. We may indeed be going through one again (whether it is hot or cold). I was referring to undflyboy06’s comments about not believing CO2 can affect the temperature because it is only a trace element.

We don’t know what the long term trends in temperature will be and we don’t know what causes these temperature changes. Just because this has happened in the past, before humanity, doesn’t make me content. I don’t care if it is part of nature, if the temperature is going to change enough to affect our civilization, I want to know.

 

The earth is doing what the earth has been doing for 4.5 BILLION years. To think that we can model or predict the future based on 100 years of data points, which equates to roughly 0.000002% of life of earth, is ludicrous.

If the earth warms or cools, there's not a damn thing we can do about it.

 

Even if we could make significant inputs, it might result in the climatic equivalent of a P.I.O., aggravating the next natural change.
For all we know, AGW may delay the onset of another ice age, which would otherwise be approaching.

I do think we should conserve energy and reduce pollution, but for other reasons (health, economics, and aesthetics).

 

All in favor of wasting energy and increasing polution raise your hand. Your 2nd paragrapgh is part of the problem; unitentionally (I think) you sort of imply that you are either for the earth or against it. I am for any and all types of energy I am just against government picking the winners and losers.

 

The "tax this and subsidize that" horse is long out of the barn, and good luck herding it back in. New forms of energy (hydroelectric, nuclear, solar, geothermal) usually require government start-up assistance, because the economic break-even point is too far in the future to attract enough private capital. And yes, government can be very clumsy in its choices, but so can CEOs.