Can someone show me info on global warming?
Answer:
The problem isn't the warmth we're seeing now. The problem is the trend.
CO2 in the air is rising at an exponential rate, and currently there appears to be no end in sight. That's bad enough, but when you consider that the CO2 we put in the air stays there for centuries, and continues to warm the planet for the entire time it's in the air -- the long-term implications are huge.
By long-term, I'm talking a century from now. Most people simply don't care about what might happen a century from now: it's somebody else's problem. Maybe that's Glenn Beck's attitude. But changing the climate is like turning a supertanker: you can't do it quickly, so you simply MUST think very far ahead.
What separates man from the animals is our ability to understand the consequences of our actions. If those consequences are harmful, we have a duty to mitigate that harm to the best of our ability.
Here's the IPCC summary report on the effects of GW:
http://www.ipcc.ch/spm13apr07.pdf...
And here's what we can do about it. (It's not as difficult or expensive as most people think):
http://www.ipcc.ch/spm040507.pdf...
You should watch Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, to learn more about why global warming is a big problem.
Britain's prediction that 2007 will be the warmest year on record is based in part on a moderate El Nino, a natural cycle that is already causing havoc in Australia, where farmers like Andrew Higham have seen their land dry up. Australia is witnessing its longest drought on record.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16465430/...
Many climatologists, along with policymakers in a number of countries, believe the rapid temperature rise over the past 50 years is heavily driven by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities that have spewed carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere. A vocal minority of scientists say the warming climate is the result of a natural cycle.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...
Glacier melting in the Himalayas is virtually certain to disrupt water supplies within the next 20 to 30 years. Floods and rock avalanches are virtually certain to increase. Heavily-populated coastal regions, including the deltas of rivers such as the Ganges and Mekong, are likely to be at risk of increased flooding.
Economic development is likely to be impacted by the combination of climatic change, urbanisation, and rapid economic and population growth.
Forecast changes in temperature and rainfall are likely to reduce crop yields overall, increasing the risk of hunger.
The presence of lethal diarrhoeal diseases associated with floods and droughts is expected to rise in East, South and Southeast Asia and rises in coastal water temperature could exacerbate cholera in South Asia.
Nearly all European regions are expected to be negatively affected by some future impacts of climate change.
Central and Eastern European countries could face less summer rainfall, causing higher water stress. Health risks due to heat waves are expected to increase. Forest productivity is expected to fall and the frequency of peatland fires to increase.
Southern European countries are very likely to see reduced water supplies, lower crop production, more wildfires and health impacts from increased heatwaves.
Northern countries are likely to benefit from increased crop yields, forest productivity, and food supplies from the North Atlantic. By 2020, most areas of Europe are likely to see an increased flood risk.
by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) Jan 07, 2007
Temperatures in rugged Tibet have hit record highs in recent days, China's state press said Sunday, as a scientific survey warned of the impact of global warming in the Himalayan region. Friday's temperature in the Qamdo area of eastern Tibet was 21.8 degrees Celsius (71 degrees Fahrenheit), 1.7 degrees higher than the previous record set for the same day in 1996, Xinhua news agency reported.
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/record...
New Zealand enjoyed the warmest May on record, according to the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa).
Niwa scientist Dr Jim Salinger said the national average temperature of 12.4degC was 1.7degC above normal, the warmest since temperatures were first kept in the 1860s.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4083504a10.html...
America is facing its worst summer drought since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. Or perhaps worse still.
From the mountains and desert of the West, now into an eighth consecutive dry year, to the wheat farms of Alabama, where crops are failing because of rainfall levels 12 inches lower than usual, to the vast soupy expanse of Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida, which has become so dry it actually caught fire a couple of weeks ago, a continent is crying out for water.
In the south-east, usually a lush, humid region, it is the driest few months since records began in 1895.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/amer...
Record high temperatures in Boston by Susan Powell
On Monday 23 April Boston, Massachusetts smashed temperature records for this day. The mercury rose to 30 Celsius (86F) at Logan International Airport. This broke the record of 29.4 Celsius (85F) dating back to 1908.
This is 17 degrees above the average temperature expected for Boston in April, which is normally 12 Celsius (54F).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/news/...
The world experienced its warmest period on record during this year's northern hemisphere winter, the US government said today.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report said the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature for December to February was the highest since records began in 1880.
During the three-month period, known as boreal winter, temperatures were above average worldwide, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and areas in central United States.
http://www.globalwarming101.com/forum/lo...
Here's a nice picture. It shows all the forces affecting global warming. Natural forces used to be the most important, but about 50 years ago, our huge increases in making greenhouse gases (mostly by making fossil fuels) took over and are now clearly the most important thing.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/ima...
Because of the data, there's vastly less controversy in the scientific community than you might guess from the few skeptics talked about here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/scientific_...
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fu... and:
"There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know. Global warming is almost a no-brainer at this point,You really can't find intelligent, quantitative arguments to make it go away."
Dr. Jerry Mahlman, NOAA
Even rock solid conservatives accept it:
"Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich challenged fellow conservatives Tuesday to stop resisting scientific evidence of global warming"
Here are careful discussions by scientists of the arguments by Glenn Beck and other non-scientists:
http://environment.newscientist.com/chan...
Good websites for more info:
http://profend.com/global-warming/...
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/sci...
http://www.realclimate.org
"climate science from climate scientists"
The choice of who to trust here isn't really a difficult one. Given the choice of trusting a. Political pundits who have little no to scientific education, and who have a vested interest in global warming not being real, or b. Climate scientists, who are experts in their field and have dedicated many years of study to the science, I think the choice should be obvious. You can respect the pundit's opinions of politics without accepting their naive views on climate science.
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Now, I'd love to give you some good sites arguing against the theory but, well, there aren't any. So here are my favorite sites =for= the theory instead.
The latest IPCC report was issued less than a month ago, and has all the latest information and data regarding global climate change in it. It was written by a team of about 500 climate scientists, and represents quite possibly the largest scientific paper ever published. Much of it is highly technical, but the FAQ section was written in a language lay-peeps like you and me can understand. You can read the whole thing online for free here:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.
RealClimate is a Blog run by fifteen highly qualified climate scientists. It's mostly dedicated to tackling the claims made by the skeptics, but has loads of other info as well.
http://realclimate.org/
This next is one of my all time favorite sites on the theory. It's a well written and comprehensive history of the whole thing, from its origins in the early 19th century to the present. Highly recommended, if you read only one link I've given you, make it this one:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.h...
And of course, you couldn't possibly make an informed decisions regarding current change without understanding =past change= now, could you? So here's a short but sweet whirlwind tour of Earth's climate history:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperatur...
Enjoy!
Notice that others here are trying to convince you that since everybody else agrees you should agree to. When science deems an issue settled you no longer see any papers. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.
Here is a good article that try to explain why the sun is the culprit for most of the 20th century warming we have observed; http://www.geocraft.com/wvfossils/refere...
Quite simply, do not listen to talk radio. Rush Limbaugh, for example, flunked out of college. He has zero scientific background. You should listen to the scientists and their findings, which I will summarize for you as simply and best as I can.
The planet has been warming since we came out of the last ice age. Global warming has accelerated since the Industrial Revolution, and particularly since about 1960:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warmin...
Climate scientists have modelled the different components of global climate change (sun, volcanoes, ozone, CO2, etc.) and found that natural causes account for most of the warming until the past few decades, at which point greenhouse gases dominate. They find that greenhouse gases account for 70-95% of the recent global warming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/image:clima...
This evidence is sufficient to convince the vast majority of climate scientists that humans are the primary cause of the recent increased global warming. For further details, I suggest you read the IPCC report Summary for Policymakers which is just 18 pages long and is a summary of the best climate science, and contains lots of nice charts and graphs.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.
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