National Geographic News
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html
Is global warming happening? Yes. Earth is already showing many signs of worldwide climate change.
Are we causing global warming? • Industrialization, deforestation, and pollution have greatly increased atmospheric concentrations of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, all greenhouse gases that help trap heat near Earth's surface. (See an interactive feature on how global warming works.)
• Humans are pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than plants and oceans can absorb it.
• These gases persist in the atmosphere for years, meaning that even if such emissions were eliminated today, it would not immediately stop global warming.
The consideration and alarm. Some experts point out that natural cycles in Earth's orbit can alter the planet's exposure to sunlight, which may explain the current trend. Earth has indeed experienced warming and cooling cycles roughly every hundred thousand years due to these orbital shifts, but such changes have occurred over the span of several centuries. Today's changes have taken place over the past hundred years or less. Other recent research has suggested that the effects of variations in the sun's output are "negligible" as a factor in warming, but other, more complicated solar mechanisms could possibly play a role.
Other references
Global Warming Facts and Figures, http://www.pewclimate.org/global-warming-basics/facts_and_figures
UN Global Warming Report, and video (click on Global warming), scroll down http://knowledge.allianz.com/en/globalissues/climate_change/global_warming_basics/ipcc_report_facts.html
Submitted by Kathy Meeh
8 comments:
Get the UN out of America. They are anti-American and only support rogue terrorist nations. I would never believe anything they have to say.
UN the biggest SHAM of the CENTURY.
It is just a way to get money from all of us. I don't trust the United Nations either. Must be a Rogan thing.
Again, I don't think we are causing it. I think it is the life cycle of the Earth. Everything dies.
Kathleen and Lois (Rogan people) the UN is known to be an important component of hope for world cooperation and peace. If that varies from your view, what factual, neutral, unbiased information do you have to suggest the contrary? Your turn to research that one.
Lois, for sure our life-cycle is short, so as Kathleen said we should remember to have some good times along the way.
Who knows how long the humans and animals will survive? The sun is expected to continue 4.5 billion years before it becomes a red giant. By comparison currently the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and the sun about 4.57 billion years old. Isn't google great?
Kathy Meeh, No it is not. Only people in your group think so. The other group , do not think so.
The 2006 National Geographic article will need to be revised. This paragraph is telling
"He says that most climate models—including ones used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—already incorporate the effects of the sun's waxing and waning power on Earth's weather..."
This points to the reason why the recent revelations about the East Anglia Climate Research Unit are so important. To a very large degree, the IPCC climate models cited by National Geographic are based on the work of the East Anglia CRU. It is their work that is relied on by many who claim that CO2 effects are swamping sun or other effects. This article provides some perspective.
"Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.?... Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.
What this means, is that the science is not settled. Has there been global warming? Yes. However it may be much less than what has been predicted by the computer models. It is also not clear that CO2 is the dominant contribution.
Also, while it is a scientific fact that many of the glaciers and ice pack in the Arctic have been melting, it's less well known that the cause of this is a renegade band of evil scientists. Their motives are unclear, but apparently they are using hair dryers with really long extension cords. Occasionally, they will set a polar bear adrift on a stray iceberg just because they're sadists.
I'll get back to you with more details once Glenn Beck sends them to me telepathically through my tinfoil hat.
Why don't we just make more ice cubes in our freezers to replace the melting iceburgers?
There is little doubt or disagreement the planet is experiencing a massive climate upheaval. The real questions are whether humans have had that much effect on these changes, whether or not these changes are permanent, and whether or not the changes some people are proposing we make will have any significant effect on the planet's climate.
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