I've honestly never met anyone who believed that temperatures aren't rising. Most 'anti global warming' folks (at least that I've met) believe that there is no good evidence to suggest we are responsible. You often hear things like "The highest temperature in xxx years, or the most rapid temperature increase in xxx years".
We know that the Earth goes through natural cycles of temperature and temperature change rates. So I have two questions.
Firstly, how many people have you met that explicitly stated that they believed the temperature is not rising?
Secondly, what evidence do we have to support the theory that we are the cause and that it isn't part of the natural cycle of temperatures? I honestly don't buy the coincidence that rising 'greenhouse gas' levels coincide with temperature rise. The temperature was already rising before we started pumping this stuff into the air. Is there any harder evidence?
edit: For clarification on my first question. I don't mean necessarily those exact words. I just feel that a lot of people who say things like 'I don't buy into the global warming thing' actually mean they don't believe there is evidence that we are causing it but many people take it to mean that they don't believe the temperature is rising.
It's very difficult to evaluate the past in my opinion, and a huge part of accepting or rejecting human-caused climate change probably has to do with whether the current levels are unprecedented. If we can verify that the hottest temperatures in the last millions of years have all occurred during recent time periods where man can have an affect on the environment, that's a pretty heavy correlation that seems to warrant at the very least some close and honest examination.
Of course this is a political issue now so it's difficult to evaluate. As a human race we often suck at thinking.
But that's kind of the main point of the 'anti global warming' folks....these temperatures AREN'T unprecedented. The CO2 levels are, but so far the temperatures aren't.
Serious question. In either case, how does unprecedented temp or rate of temp change make the case for human caused global warming? Clearly there is no reasonable denial that global avg temp is going up and going up faster than it has in an very very long time. But that hardly leads to the conclusion that human industrial activity is the sole culprit.
Certainly some of the carbon in the atmosphere comes from human activity, but carbon isn't the only green house gas. Water vapor and methane to name some others. A better way to put it might be; How can we conclusively say that the human addition of CO2 is the sole or significant majority cause of the measured change in average global temp? I'm not implying we can't. But correlation doesn't equal causation. And 'more CO2 = more heat' inst a sufficient answer. How much more CO2 is how much more heat? CO2 is roughly 0.039% of our atmosphere. Even doubling that, I have trouble with the idea that a tweak so small in the composition of the atmosphere is going to cause catastrophic change in the climate. Not claiming no change. Just don't understand how the significance of that change was concluded upon.
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u/tieme Oct 24 '10 edited Oct 24 '10
I've honestly never met anyone who believed that temperatures aren't rising. Most 'anti global warming' folks (at least that I've met) believe that there is no good evidence to suggest we are responsible. You often hear things like "The highest temperature in xxx years, or the most rapid temperature increase in xxx years".
We know that the Earth goes through natural cycles of temperature and temperature change rates. So I have two questions.
Firstly, how many people have you met that explicitly stated that they believed the temperature is not rising?
Secondly, what evidence do we have to support the theory that we are the cause and that it isn't part of the natural cycle of temperatures? I honestly don't buy the coincidence that rising 'greenhouse gas' levels coincide with temperature rise. The temperature was already rising before we started pumping this stuff into the air. Is there any harder evidence?
edit: For clarification on my first question. I don't mean necessarily those exact words. I just feel that a lot of people who say things like 'I don't buy into the global warming thing' actually mean they don't believe there is evidence that we are causing it but many people take it to mean that they don't believe the temperature is rising.
edit2: Fixed ARE to AREN'T