Do you believe in man-made climate change?

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I am pretty sure the consensus is that the climate is changing and certain green house gases produced by man contribute to this i.e CO2 (fossil fuels), CH4 and N2O; however, in my CHEM 2200 class we performed an analysis to derive the relative level of green house gases produced by man, and it was about 5% of total green house gases currently in our atmosphere (not including water vapor). One thing my professor mentioned is that water vapor is the most prevalent green house gas and is often ignored when we talk about green house gases.

This is the first link that is displayed when I googled "man made green house gases vs total green house gases" http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

To my understanding, this analysis is pretty easy to replicate (seeing as we did it as sophomores in college).

Since vegetation takes CO2 out of the atmosphere (CO2 is between 70% and 85% of all non-water vapor GHGs, depending on the resource you rely on), and man is responsible for various deforestation initiatives, man's contribution of additional greenhouse gases does not fully gauge it's contribution to climate change. I am sure there are other talking points I am not aware of as well. The debate is whether or not man's impact is material.

Charts like this are a little short sighted ![https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/state-temps/data/NewYork_tavg…]

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/state-temps/

Earth is 4.5 billion years old, so 120 years is hardly a data set. However, there is technology which can estimate the temperature thousands of years back. The question is how reliable is this technology and is 10,000 years even a significant data set?

The climate change theory has created an entire industry. To ask who stands to profit from it makes me question your financial aptitude.

[https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/state-temps/data/NewYork_tavg… https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/state-temps/data/NewYork_tavg…

But in reality it's not that simple. Unlike pregnancy, you can be a little in and a little out. There are nearly limitless positions one can have on climate change, ranging from the position that the climate is changing, it's caused by man, the climate changing is completely bad, and we have to do something yesterday to avoid catastrophe and that policy prescription is centered on cap-and-trade and "clean" renewable energy to the position that the climate is changing, mankind has some influence, there are pros and cons to climate change, and the cons are manageable and that one of the policy prescriptions is nuclear. The problem is, the former position in my list has turned into a religion and anyone who doesn't hold that position is a "denier," or, as you insinuate, doesn't "trust scientists."

Under your assumption people were right to believe cigarettes weren't harmful in the 50's? Or that it could even benefit a mother during pregnancy?

I'm not trying to nitpick, and it is 2016 not 1950, but I think your logic regarding the scientific community could be flawed. My belief is we probably don't have nearly enough information to make a case either way.

OP was trying to start a discussion. You belittle him saying he needs to do more research and then fail to cite anything when you assert there is "absolute scientific consensus (based on evidence)." You also deride OP for saying he is "of two minds." Why is it so hard to comprehend someone is spending time coming to an independent decision and not immediately hopping on one pole or the other?

You are everything that is wrong with our country.

QGKZ:

What do "government scientists" have to do with this? You need to do more scientific research on this (if you've done any at all). I am not referring to blog posts and conspiracy theories - I'm referring to peer-reviewed, scientific research.

There is absolute scientific consensus (based on evidence) that climate change is a man-made phenomenon, and if left unchecked will result in disastrous consequences for future generations of humans (and indeed, all other life on Earth). Denying anthropogenic climate change is no less idiotic than denying evolution - it is a fact.

You state that you are "of two minds" with regards to climate change. Are you a scientist with enough knowledge and evidence capable of refuting the entire scientific community and the associated body of research on anthropogenic climate change? If so, feel free to publish your research - the world would like to see it. If not then what are you hesitant about? Are you "of two minds" when you cross a bridge constructed by engineers? What about when flying on a plane? Although not all humans are scientists, they don't need to be; rational individuals trust in the scientific consensus (based on evidence) of the professionals.

Evolution is a fact? Are you retarded? Even Darwin doesn't agree with you.

Let me preface my statement by saying that I do respect your viewpoint, but the problem is, it's NOT a scientific fact that climate change will have "disastrous" consequences--that's a matter of opinion or interpretation. And therein lies the key disagreement--what public policy, if any, should be implemented to deal with anthropogenic climate change. There are tangible, calculable consequences of cap-and-trade or shutting down the coal industry, ranging from lost jobs to higher energy prices for all Americans. The consequences of climate change, however, are left largely to speculation, even if, in reality, the consequences do turn out to be dire. My larger point is, there is a balance between dealing with climate change and the human consequences of those polices, and good people have come to wildly different conclusions about the proper public policy.

You have to look at funding sources for scientific studies, who is actually doing the studies on both sides of the argument. Consensus is not science, it is merely people agreeing. I can find tens of thousands of people who agree bigfoot is real, doesn't make their consensus valid.

I've read reports from people studying global warming and believe it is 100% true and is happening. Then I go and look at their sources of funding for the study and find things like NGOs that receive funding from governmental orgs that have a vested interest in global warming being real. This same thing can be said in reverse for those who object to global warming.

The biggest key factor for me, when it comes to data, is the timing of when these debates are hitting their peak. You have to look at everything, which political movements are at their peak globally , which long term weather patterns are happening, etc. The biggest pushes for global warming always happen during El Nino climate patters because that climate pattern happens to provide positive numbers for the global warming camp. While the La Nina climate pattern appears when the talks about global warming subside because the data doesn't skew that direction.

The biggest factor period is the language that is used surrounding the discussion. I use global warming because that is an anchor point and can always accurately describe what is trying to be pushed. You can make arguments about global warming, you can't make arguments about climate change because that is just a reality of time regardless of the activities of any animals on the planet. So to say there is a consensus that climate change is happening is about as useful as agreeing that gravity is real, even though there are idiots that would disagree with that.

To say that all major scientists agree that climate change is man made is also a vastly inaccurate statement. Roughly 30,000 scientists signed a letter to the UN that provided a shit load of data about how the current climate cycle we find ourselves in is completely natural and there is basically nothing we can do about it in any shape be that slowing it down by limiting our outputs or speeding it up by increasing our outputs.

I for one just don't give a shit either way, both sides do downright dispicable things trying to get their point across, be it completely falsifying data to prove their preconceived point, taking money to find a result that the people providing the money find agreeable. Or even more simple than that, finding results that seemingly justify your job title.

So the Asians killing off sharks and whales are doing so for good purpose afterall?

If this is the same guy that cooks Steve Harvey for saying that evolution is BS, guy is hilarious. If not, look up that video.

Extremely well said, and pretty much exactly how I feel/think about it. I often click on topics, read them, and think about making a comment only to scroll down and see that you've already written almost everything I wanted to say. Clutch.

Member of the Year 2016. FtB is funny, but like Bo--thebrofessor knows.

!BroBro

http://imgur.com/zcnaZ2Z

Bro: Imgur

thebrofessor:

climate change is real, I just don't believe it's solely a human thing. looking at this chart by NOAA (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temp...) it's pretty evident that there's a strong correlation between CO2 and temperature change. there were no SUVs 300,000 years ago so it's very possible for the planet to cool and warm without human intervention. if you didn't take geology in college, essentially we go through eons of glaciation and warming due to all sorts of things like orbital wobble. there have been times where the arctic was a dense forest, and times when Africa was covered in ice. humans alone will not change that.

do I think humans have exacerbated/not helped the problem? absolutely. do I think anything can be done to stop climate change? fuck no. even if we stop using cars, stop using coal fire plants, and go back to subsistence living, the earth is still in a warming period. the ice caps will melt, the polar bears will adapt, and life as we know it will change but still go on. the earth has been through these cycles before, and they will continue if humans ever become extinct.

what I do think is an issue is pollution affecting water & air quality. I could give a fuck less about CO2 emissions because until alternative energy sources are vastly cheaper and there's infrastructure in place globally (not just your bubbles in San Fran or Denver), it's not a viable replacement. I think Cali did a nice thing by banning plastic bags, I think Sweden's burning of garbage and harvesting the energy is a good step as well, but many parts of the world don't have access to clean water, why don't we fix that before giving me the stink eye at Trader Joe's because I don't have 15 lululemon bags for my bananas. sorry, that was a bit of a tangent.

there's 2 issues here. shiite environmentalists believe that the problem is solely a human problem and if we get rid of all of the plastic, gasoline, coal, nuclear, and convert everything to wind/solar right now, all the problems will be solved. no doubt we'd improve our air quality, no doubt that'd be a step in the right direction, but the problem with environmental intervention on the economy is it creates waste. either wasted spending on subsidies for alternative energy or by preventing expansion of existing energy infrastructure (pipeline protesters trying to protect a contaminated water source, great fucking idea). is that waste outweighing the negative externalities by companies harming the environment? I don't know, it's been a while since I took environmental econ. poorer countries literally could not survive without fossil fuels. you care about the middle east? take away oil and watch the crusades break out again. you care about starving kids in india/nepal? take away oil and watch them die. it's a nice thought, but the economics don't warrant a 100% exit from fossil fuels...yet. invest in the technology, sure, but don't demonize oil companies when you don't understand basic econ.

the other issue is close minded god fearing republicans don't understand science and they believe the Donald when he says retarded things like global warming is due to the chinese. sure, the chinese have terrible air quality, but can we really believe it's all on them? fuck no. so they claim all sorts of conspiracies when the fact of the matter is whether or not humans are causing climate change, CO2 levels are rising. we can make a choice as to whether or not we want to do anything about it, and I think the vast majority of people would agree that it makes sense to keep the earth clean while not infringing upon basic freedoms. for example, I'm not going to start walking to work, but if the new Audi Q5 came out and still could go offroad with an electric/hybrid motor and didn't cost a fortune, I'd buy it. but if my building decided to only use HVAC when there was enough solar/wind power to make it work or we had to suffer brownouts, fuck that.

if the two sides could stop arguing about what's causing climate change and just say something like this, the world would be a better place: "look, whether you think it's a human problem or not, CO2 is rising, and the more that rises, the worse air & water quality get. you may not give a fuck about the polar bears, but I bet you care about not breathing in smog when you're in a deer stand exercising your 2nd amendment rights. so let's come together and just try to leave the planet a little better than we found it, just like they taught you in Sunday school."

I really fucking hate people sometimes, because this issue moreso than many others.

You're invoking a straw man by stating that humans are not solely responsible for changes in the Earth's climate. I am not aware of any research that claims humans are 100% responsible for the Earth's changing climate - that would be an absurd violation of established science.

In science asking the correct question is everything. The question is not whether humans are the sole cause of climate change; the question is to what extent humans are affecting the natural climate cycle and what are the consequences of this. In answering this question, scientists must isolate the natural climate cycle and then compare that with recent evidence to check for divergences. After doing so, there is a clear divergence between the natural climate cycle and recent evidence.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-07/models-observed-huma… https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-07/ghgconc2000-large.jpg http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/EOS_ChapmanDavis2010.png?w=450&h… http://pages.uoregon.edu/rdorsey/geo334/Chapman&Davis2010.pdf

"if you didn't take geology in college, essentially we go through eons of glaciation and warming due to all sorts of things like orbital wobble. there have been times where the arctic was a dense forest, and times when Africa was covered in ice."

Correct.

This is why scientists can ascertain that the level of warming we're currently experiencing is far beyond anything accountable by natural climate cycles.

"humans alone will not change that."

Again, the problem is not that the climate is changing - natural climate cycles have always been here. If that was all then there would never have been any discussion on climate change in the first place. The entire reason we are discussing climate change is because of the disastrous human contribution - not the natural cycle. As such, your statement is incorrect - humans can absolutely change that.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-07/ghgconc2000-large.jpg

"even if we stop using cars, stop using coal fire plants, and go back to subsistence living, the earth is still in a warming period."

This is false.

The Earth has been witnessing record warm temperatures despite the fact that the Earth should have been cooling due to increasing pollution and decreasing solar activity.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/tsi_vs_temp.gif http://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc/lectures/climatepart4.html http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page4.php http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/images/anthropo…

Our long-term climate models have been extremely accurate in predicting the continuous changes in the Earth's climate for the past 500 million years. Long-term changes in carbon dioxide explain almost all of the changes in temperature.

http://droyer.web.wesleyan.edu/PhanCO2(GCA).pdf http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~ajs/2001/Feb/qn020100182.pdf

What the research shows is that human activity is significantly affecting the Earth's natural climate cycles (the ones you alluded to in your post). What makes it significantly worse is that the Earth's climate is a delicate dynamic system consisting of positive and negative feedback loops. Because of these positive feedback loops any artificial contribution by humans results in disproportionately greater damage to the environment (higher sea levels, stronger hurricanes, increased salination, drought and flood, coastal erosion, and acidification of the oceans). That is why relatively small increases in global average temperatures can have such disproportionately disastrous consequences.

"I don't know, it's been a while since I took environmental econ. poorer countries literally could not survive without fossil fuels. you care about the middle east? take away oil and watch the crusades break out again. you care about starving kids in india/nepal? take away oil and watch them die."

You think taking away the oil will cause upheaval in developing nations? What happens when there are (even greater) water and food shortages? Perhaps they can eat and drink the oil?

And its not just developing countries that will suffer. Higher sea levels, stronger hurricanes, increased salination, drought and flood, coastal erosion, and acidification of the oceans - these will have catastrophic effects on the world's resources.

Scientists are taking all your factors into account and still believe that global warming is caused by humans. How is this so hard to understand?

American Psycho:

I think the the one thing both sides of this issue can agree on is pollution. Like @thebrofessor said, there have been warming stages and cooling stages. We won't really be able to stop the warming now, or a cooling in the future. What we can do is be more efficient with resources and figure out better waste management.

thebrofessor is wrong.

It is disheartening that so many people on WSO are willing to believe opinion posts with no evidence. I realise that people seek confirmation for their biases at the expense of facts, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't expect better from the people on WSO.

As I have previously stated, thebrofessor is a great contributor. In fact, I gave him my vote (again) for member of the year.

I've attempted to contribute meaningfully, but at the end of the day, people must decide for themselves what to believe. It's always chilling to remember that the only person one can control is oneself.

Best of luck to all.

there's a significant amount of sarcasm and climate change acceptance in this thread. I don't think a single person disagrees that the climate is changing. what I think is disagreed upon (and rightly so) is how to solve the problem and to what degree should we attempt to solve the problem. the science is clear, the solutions are not.

THANK YOU

About the crying wolf stuff, we also saw this with peak oil--for decades scientists and analysts were saying that we've likely reached peak oil and that the consequence is economic calamity, but year after year oil prospectors made further scientific advancements for economically reaching new oil reserves. The U.S. is now the new Saudi Arabia.

From a public policy standpoint, I'm convinced that we will scientifically overcome any potential calamities that lie ahead with climate change, solutions that are both economical and effective. And on this point, there is simply no scientific consensus because future human innovation can't be measured in a lab.

IBERST:

lmao "believe in" as if we're talking about Santa and not a scientific community consensus based on a very large amount of tangible evidence

might as well ask if we "believe in" dinosaurs

Charizard:

The Earth's average temperature has increased since 1880, most of that has been in the last 35 years. 15 of the 16 hottest years have been since 2001. We're in a period of solar decline, where the output of the sun cycles every 11 or so years. Despite the sun putting out less energy, the average continues to rise and in 2015 the Earth's average was 1C hotter on average than in 1890. That doesn't sound like much, but if we go some 0.7C hotter, we'll match the age of the dinosaurs when the whole planet was a tropical jungle.

Here's what I don't get as a layperson--wasn't the climate warmer 1,000 years ago than it is today? England used to be a hub for wine making due to the much warmer climate. Didn't the Earth enter a "little ice age" from the 14th to 19th centuries? Wouldn't we have expected the climate to have warmed from the late 19th century to today considering that the Earth exited the little ice age around 1870?

Honest question--what am I missing here?

To your point, Al Gore losing the presidency was probably the best thing ever for him--he's made literally hundreds of millions of dollars in the "Clean Energy" racket, and yet for all the wealth he's created for himself, it has had less than zero impact (possibly negative impact) on combating climate change.

And again to your point, if these people--in their heart of hearts--REALLY were concerned about the catastrophic consequences of anthropogenic global warming they'd be absolute prostitutes for nuclear fission.

I wasn't aware that there was a "scientific consensus" on how to solve global anthropogenic climate change. Scientists don't make public policy, they don't negotiate international trade deals, and they don't deal with the political fallout of lost jobs and higher energy prices; that's what politicians do, hence the intensity of the debate. You shut the coal industry down, for example, then you completely fck over the state of West Virginia. West Virginia has 2 senators and several congressmen who represent human beings who may suffer the immediate consequence of climate change public policies. Those politicians--from both political parties--see no "consensus" on how to "solve the problem" if that consensus is to fck over their constituents.

This is the political reality that many of the environmentalist activists have not grasped.