There are two comments above I am compelled to respond to.
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The first thing that comes to mind when I doubt man made global warming is the climate change throughout history and corrosponding CO2 levels coupled with the fact that the Earth moves on it adapts and corrects.
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This is a fairy tale. The earth neither adapts nor corrects. In fact, such diction is nonsensical in this context. The earth does not need to adapt nor correct. It will persist regardless of whether or not life perishes. There will be no spontaneous rectification. The earth does not exist for the preservation of life. It will impetuously turn as hostile as Venus given the first chance. Your teleological argument is extraordinarily dangerous and naive.
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we belong here, the planet made us and I believe it can take what we throw at it.
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We don't
belong here. We are a transient species. Believing that life will persist despite what we do is once again an endearing thought, yet horrifically naive.
Adrenachrome, you somewhat scare me. You claim to be unbiased on the issue, however your sources are highly prejudicial. You will not find an unbiased presentation of the facts on a site like iceagenow.com. Cherry-picking from sites espousing your personal views is worse than merely ignoring evidence; it is self-proselytization.
Credible sources do exist that argue against anthropogenic global warming, however they are the minority. Your sources, however, are not exactly what one would call credible. Some deny global warming altogether. Denying anthropogenic global warming is one thing, however denying global warming altogether is simply absurd. Some of your sources have an obvious conservative bias. Other sources are news reporters. News reporters are not exactly the best scientific commentators. For instance,
here some news reporter claims that scientists have
confirmed an extraterrestrial signal. Though an anomalous extragalactic signal was picked up that day, nobody seriously thought that this was confirmation of extraterrestrial contact. My point is that the general media is not a completely credible source for scientific reports.
So what constitutes a credible source? Anything from a respected peer-reviewed journal works. I provided links as examples in another thread, but I will provide some more examples. For instance, you claimed earlier that Greenland recovered all its lost ice. This is simply
fiction. In fact, the arctic lost ice the size of Texas and California combined in 2007 alone. A climate model based on conservative estimates of climate change has us with an ice-free arctic by 2030. How credible can your sources be when they directly contradict empirical evidence?
[1-2]
To understand global warming one must have a basic understanding of the greenhouse effect. It is beyond the scope of this post to discuss the geochemical processes involved in the greenhouse effect, but I will discuss it on a superficial level briefly.
The greenhouse effect is a consequence of the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These gases include, but are not limited to, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases. Greenhouse gases trap heat in the atmosphere. This heat is radiated down, thus increasing global temperature. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The greenhouse effect is a natural process on earth, and without it the average temperature on the surface of this planet would be -19 degrees Celsius as opposed to 14 degrees Celsius as it is now.
It is imperative to understand that humans have significantly increased the greenhouse gas content in the atmosphere through activities such as burning fossil fuels and biomass. This has also introduced aerosols into the atmosphere, which play a very similar role. Though greenhouse gases and temperature vary through natural causes, there is apodictic evidence which should lead us to conclude that human activity has played a very significant role in increasing the greenhouse gas content, and as a corollary, the temperature on earth.
Over the past 650,000 years, the natural range of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has been 180-300 parts per million.
[3] It is currently at 380 ppm. By the end of the 20th century scientists predict it will be in between 490-1260 ppm.
[4] Either nature is inherently anomalous during times when the industry flourishes, or we need to seriously consider the cause of global warming to be anthropogenic.
It is not difficult to see that greenhouse gases have increased significantly since the industrial revolution.
Carbon Dioxide
Methane
Nitrous Oxide
[5]
Notice how that instead of the gentle cyclic pattern that is normal, we see sharp spikes around the advent of the industrial revolution when we should be seeing drops in greenhouse gas concentration. Consequentially, this is exactly the time we also start seeing a global rise in temperature.
[6] Nature did not decide to fool us by waiting for the industrial revolution before warming the globe by releasing enormous amounts of greenhouse gases from hidden sources. This is
our doing.
The increase in temperature will not be evenly distributed throughout the earth. The change will become more severe as you approach the poles. One or more biomes may disappear completely and there will be species extinctions associated with the loss of those biomes. There is already concern about the survival of polar bears in the wild. We are already seeing ice thinning and the reduction in the size of glaciers at high latitudes and altitudes. We will probably have to change the name of Glacier National Park sometime this century.
In terms of global warming effects on the U.S., some models predict a major eastward movement of the latitude where the rainfall exceeds 20 inches. The current line is at the 100th meridian (near San Antonio), it may move as far east as the Mississippi river. If you look at a map of the U.S., there are no major cities west of the 100th meridian, with the exception of Denver, until you get to the West Coast. The lack of rainfall and water is the major reason. If this model is correct, Texas will not have enough water to support its large cities.
[3]
[1] Stroeve, J., M.Serreze, S. Drobot, S. Gearheard, M. Holland, J. Maslanik, W. Meier, and T. Scambos. 2008. Arctic Sea Ice Plummets in 2007. EOS Transactions. Vol 89, No. 2, pp 1-2. January 8, 2008.
[2] Stroeve, J., Holland, M.M., Meier, W., Scambos, T., Serreze, M. (2007). Arctic sea ice decline: Faster than forecast. Geophysical Research Letters, 34(9) DOI: 10.1029/2007GL029703
[3] Campbell, N., Reece, J. (2005). Biology. Pearson.
[4] Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Joseph Alcamo, Gerald Davis, Bert de Vries, Joergen Fenhann, Stuart Gaffin, Kenneth Gregory, Arnulf Grübler, Tae Yong Jung, Tom Kram, Emilio Lebre La Rovere, Laurie Michaelis, Shunsuke Mori, Tsuneyuki Morita, William Pepper, Hugh Pitcher, Lynn Price, Keywan Riahi, Alexander Roehrl, Hans-Holger Rogner, Alexei Sankovski, Michael Schlesinger, Priyadarshi Shukla, Steven Smith, Robert Swart, Sascha van Rooijen, Nadejda Victor, Zhou Dadi (1996). Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. IPCC.
[5] www.epa.gov
[6] Mann, M.E., Bradley, R.S., Hughes, M.K. (1998). . Nature, 392(6678), 779-787. DOI: 10.1038/33859
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