How is global warming not a natural cycle of the earth?
Most things you read these days talk about what a drastic and horrible effect we causing on the environment, yet when you look at the earths history the "global warming" we are experiencing is a completely natural and harmless cycle.
Also why do people think that we as humans could have such drastic effects on an earth that has been here billions of years? Arrogance? That seems to be the only reason someone would think something as insignificant as humans compared to the earth could cause such effects.
It’s a natural part of the cycle of the sun.
“We find that CO2 is about 30% higher than at any time, and methane 130% higher than at any time; and the rates of increase are absolutely exceptional: for CO2, 200 times faster than at any time in the last 650,000 years.” http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=221
Look at how slowly CO2 rose at the end of each glacial period compared to now. In the Dome C core EPICA 17,000 BP it was 190 ppm and took 5400 years to rise to 250 ppm:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/epica_domec/edc-co2.txt
So while CO2 levels do fluctuate naturally, the evidence points towards the both current CO2 levels and the current rate of change being a highly unnatural event.
CO2 remains a warming influence in the air for 1000+ years, so what we’ve already put there will subject us to a grand experiment for hundreds of years to come (assuming we’re still around that long as a species).
So given your knowledge of the past, how many past natural warming cycles has human civilization survived? Can you find a peer-reviewed paper or two published in a scientific journal backing up your claim that the current warming is completely natural and harmless, or are you just repeating denial propaganda from some ExxonMobil-financed blog somewhere? There are hundreds of peer-reviewed papers that say we’re in deep trouble, so I’m wondering why you’ve taken a position not supported by the evidence.
What happened during the entirely natural climate change at the Permian-Triassic boundary? I’ll give you a clue… most species on the planet died. Permanently. Extinct.
If you really want some food for thought, look up "Toba Catastrophe Theory" and "mitochondrial Eve". There’s ample evidence that humans have almost gone extinct at least once or twice in the past. With our help, the planet may actually pull it off this time around.
Surely the truly arrogant position is to ignore our genetic past (what even temporary climate shifts may have done to humankind in the past), ignore the vast consensus of peer-tested science, and recklessly take a position that has no factual support.
I guess a lot people just want to help Al Gore pay his electric bill.
first you need to understand that global warming is NOT a natural or a harmless cycle!!!!!!!!!!
for centuries and centuries the temperature of the earth had been constant!!!!!!!!
but now the earth temperature is rising THIS IS NOT NORMAL!!!!
if the temperature of the earth will rise then the poles will start melting and the most of the places will be flooded!!!!!!!!!
even now many places are almost below the sea-level!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
and if it continues life on earth will finish!!!!!!
now the human arrogance thing!!!!
well humans actually destroyed the ozone layer and this caused the U-V rays to enter the earth and then that is how the temperature of earth rose in first place!!!!!!!!!!
SO that is why it is humans fault that life on planet earth will finish on day!!!!!!!!!!
we humans exploited it and it was our arrogance that will result in discontinued of life on earth!!!!!!!!!!
Who says it’s a cycle? There are certain climatic patterns that the fossil records show to be stable for the Earth. If you’re taking differential calculus then think about Newton’s method and how there can be multiple solutions depending on where you start. The fossil records show that there is a warm stable state, an ice age stable state and a snowball Earth state. We are currently in an ice age state though temperatures can still vary widely during an ice age. While Earth is in a warm state, there is no ice cap period. The fossil records show that the warm states have low biodiversity, low oxygen levels, high hydrogen sulfide levels and there tends to be extinctions. There are increased oxygen levels and increased biodiversity. During the snowball Earth state, the Earth is just plain frozen completely, snowball Earth was difficult for scientists to accept because it’s a very stable state and for a long time scientists couldn’t figure out a mechanism that would get Earth out of a snowball state. Currently, they think that something caused a massive release of methane from the frozen hydrides and the resulting greenhouse gases got us out of the snowball state.
The recorded history of man is just a small sliver of time inside the current ice age. The medieval warm period and the little ice age are just minor fluctuations. The issue of global warming is that we’ve been releasing CO2 that had been stored for millions of years in a very short period of time, the concern is that if the warming is enough to get us past the tipping point then natural forces will take us to the more stable warm state. We don’t know how much it would take or what will happen when it does, the concept of flooding coast lines is just a simplification for the laymen, in truth the sea level will rise in equatorial regions but will drop in regions towards the poles as water will move due to the rotation of the Earth.
We do know what we’ve seen in the fossil records such as with the Permian extinction which occurred when Earth’s temperature was just a little warmer than it is now. Of course the Permian extinction probably happened over thousands of years which in geologic terms is virtually instantaneous.
What happened then was that when seawater rises in temperature, it holds less oxygen hence favouring anaerobic life instead of aerobic life causing the sea to go anoxic. Aerobic ocean life dies off and anaerobic bacteria takes over which unfortunately causes the oceans to release vast quantities of hydrogen sulfide which is deadly to aerobic life. 95% of all life went extinct during the Permian extinction.
We do see similar dead zones in coastal warm waters every summer, most notably the Gulf of Mexico and these zones have been getting larger each year but we don’t have as much marine wild life to create the soup of dead creatures for the bacteria to feed on so we don’t know if our current warming will result in anoxic seas however five out of the six major extinctions have been traced to anoxic seas. The exception is the KT extinction coincided with a comet hit.
Yes the Earth’s global temperatures has varied much and when it varies past certain points, it will go towards a different stable point. Human activity is contributing a warming effect that wouldn’t otherwise be there so the question is whether the contribution of humans however small it might be, increase the probability of passing a tipping point. The Earth going to a warm state isn’t anything unusual in Earth’s history nor does it require any incredible human contribution but the contribution that man makes is certainly significant and does increase the probability that we would surpass a tipping point trigger.
Examples of when a small effect triggers a larger effect via positive feedback would be the pine beetles of the British Colombian forests in Canada. A warm winter failed to cull the pine beetle population so there were massive die offs of Pines in the following summer. Now the decomposing trees are releasing more CO2 than five years of automobile emissions in Canada.
Think of it as a game of snakes and ladders, one wrong step and we slide or get transported to another level. Alternatively think of it as a forest of dominos, knocking one over will likely knock a bunch over.
It doesn’t take arrogance to step lightly and to try and choose our steps carefully but it is arrogant to simply say that since most of the mines in the mine field aren’t ours, we can just walk wherever we want to.
ok, I understand your arguments, but if you look at the data, it shows the natural warming and cooling cycles of the earth, and then it shows what we are going through right now, and it is much greater than anything that has happened in the past.
I personally believe that we humans have had a great impact on these natural cycles because we are using more natural resources than have ever been used before, because we have no precedent for what impact we will have on the world around us (and we cannot deny that we will have an impact) I believe that we have to look for the worse, or else we will ignore any potential problems until it is too late for us to act.
I also must add, even though it’s not in your question, that I don’t really think it matters what the source of the current climate change (because global warming is a misnomer) is. If the current trends continue, we will soon find ourselves on a globe that is uninhabitable. We are using all of our natural resources without replacing them. Some may say that that is also a natural cycle, and that all species will eventually go extinct, but that is also just an opinion. I hope you consider what I have said. If you want to get into a discussion about this issue, I would be glad to hear more on your point of view.
Your assessment is correct. One of the answers below, ie Tss, states that the earth has been a constant temperature through the eons. Well, the Ice Age just proved that wrong now didn’t it. Tss is confused on what he considers science and most likely got his information from a friend who got it from a friend who got it from Al Gore’s wife. The statistics of a biosphere being exactly the same temperature for billions of years is well astronomical and is a rather silly thing to say.
Yes it is the arragance of the liberal left who found yet another issue to propagate their power, to bring people to their issue for political gain.
The ozone layer has nothing to do with it and some liberals say that ozone is one of the greenhouse gases, but in reality this is what the liberals want you to believe, nonsense. It is social engineering similar to how Adolf Hitler wooed his people to believe in the fallacy of a Master Race.
Only the sun has the power for changing world climate and new data is coming out that even the earth core itself might be warming and sending magma closer to the surface. There are hundreds of reasons why natural cycles occur, we do not yet understand it.
Now in closing, the scientific process is to take measurements, make observations and then make a hypothesis. In this case, Al Gore said the planet has a temperature and then they went out to try and prove it, thus the many different changes on their hypothesis and theories.
One thing that will help you is Ockham’s Razer. Google it and then you can understand better the natural process and how to come to a logical conclusion.
You need to give J S the Best Answer for this question – an excellent answer supported by real objective evidence.
This is very simple – if you’re so sure it’s all just a natural cycle, then which cycle is responsible for the recent rapid global warming?
Is it solar activity, which hasn’t increased in about 60 years? Is it the Earth’s orbital (Milankovitch) cycles, according to which the planet should be gradually cooling right now? Is it the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which has had one warm and one cool cycle over the past 50 years?
http://greenhome.huddler.com/wiki/global-warming-and-climate-change-causes
Climate scientists are well aware of the Earth’s natural cycles, and they cannot account for the recent warming. An enhanced greenhouse effect due to humans burning fossil fuels, on the other hand, can.
i really think it is a natural cycle. just look, weve had two ice ages before, and where did the ice go? it melted because thats what the earth does. it goes through cycles and people freak out about it. theres no logic in thinking that people could affect the earths climate more than the sun…its absolutely crazy. humans dont look at all the facts before coming to illogical conclusions.
Whats really funny is that the globe is not warming, so soon people will have to refer to global warming in the past tense.
Nowhere in history has the climate changed so FAST!
It has a lot to with belief.
Despite the fact that there is no evidence that humans cause climate change, many want to believe it in order to make them feel better about themselves by trying to do something about it.
It’s likely a mental disorder, but it’s rooted in guilt over living a prosperous existence.
The thing most people don’t want to admit is that the environmental movement was taken over many years ago by a bunch or anti-capitalists who don’t care a bit about the environment, they just don’t like capitalism and want it destroyed.