After seeing The Great Global Warming Swindle i belive i know the reason for global warming. im curious what the science forum thinks is the main reason.

all of the planets are warming

eris has caused the planets to deal with newly reintroduced gravitational pull

we are approaching alignment with the sun and center of our galaxy and this is causing the poles to shift, read up on Einstien for more info.

C02 has magnified the issue

Eris/alignment has caused increased solar flares also

pole shifting doesnt sound like any fun..

One scary thing is that the "evidence" al gore presents is flat out wrong... the c02 levels increase after the temperature increases (the oceans gets warmer and emits c02 because the sun is heating up the oceans)...

im having trouble beliving in pole shifting..

please provide me some scientific material for this theory..

I know it sounds hokey but the person who told me knows things sometimes.

I cannot divulge my source, sorry

The knowledge will be more commonplace soon

Sigh.... this has been discussed so much on this site. The concept is positive feedback, I never saw Gore's movie so he might not understand it, but it doesn't matter, any decent scientist in any field does. The underlying issue is how can you possible have an opinion on a highly empirical modern field of science with such poor understanding of a concept that most people learn in grade school?

Question is a false dichotomy, because there are many factors of global warming. But man-made CO2 emissions certainly play a role.

Not quite. More water vapor is present in the atmosphere because of the feedback, but that's not the same as CO2.

Wow that is awesome.

Man is to blaim, specifically, taxpaying man.

According to Sourcewatch.org:

In July 2008, the British government's media regulator, Ofcom, issued a split ruling on "The Great Global Warming Swindle," a film commissioned and broadcast by Channel 4. Ofcom received 265 complaints about the film, including "a detailed 'group complaint' from scientists and concerned individuals that ran to 176 pages and accused Channel 4 of seriously misleading viewers."
Ofcom found that Channel 4 broke impartiality guidelines and the film misrepresented statements by former British government scientist David King, in a scene with global warming skeptic Fred Singer. Ofcom also found that the film unfairly treated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and MIT professor Carl Wunsch.

A letter from Dr. Wunsch regarding The Great Global Warming Swindle.

From Joint science academies’ statement: Global response to climate change:

There will always be uncertainty in understanding a system as complex as the world’s climate. However there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring. The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes to many physical and biological systems. It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities (IPCC 2001). This warming has already led to changes in the Earth's climate.

The existence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is vital to life on Earth – in their absence average temperatures would be about 30 centigrade degrees lower than they are today. But human activities are now causing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases – including carbon dioxide, methane, tropospheric ozone, and nitrous oxide – to rise well above pre-industrial levels. Carbon dioxide levels have increased from 280 ppm in 1750 to over 375 ppm today – higher than any previous levels that can be reliably measured (i.e. in the last 420,000 years). Increasing greenhouse gases are causing temperatures to rise; the Earth’s surface warmed by approximately 0.6 centigrade degrees over the twentieth century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected that the average global surface temperatures will continue to increase to between 1.4 centigrade degrees and 5.8 centigrade degrees above 1990 levels, by 2100.

From U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's website:

Scientists know with virtual certainty that:

• Human activities are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times are well-documented and understood.
• The atmospheric buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.
• An “unequivocal” warming trend of about 1.0 to 1.7°F occurred from 1906-2005. Warming occurred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and over the oceans (IPCC, 2007).
• The major greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries. It is therefore virtually certain that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will continue to rise over the next few decades.
• Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations tend to warm the planet.

… use of "virtual certainty" (or virtually certain) conveys a greater than 99% chance that a result is true.

I'll consider the AGW skeptics' arguments when they start publishing their "studies" in well respected, peer reviewed scientific journals. That's where credible scientific claims are made, not in the media.

your poll doesn't make sense is that global warming couldn't happen without both of those.



this graph is data taken at an area very far from industrial processes and thus most likely not affected by anything but natural CO2 levels. the rise is clear, and moreover data shows not only that CO2 and nitrous oxide rise has occurred in recent history only since the industrial revolution but also that the only greenhouse gases which have increased significantly are those created by humans.

I think I'll answer...[D] Both and more.

lol IPCC.

"We produce a draft, and then the policymakers go through it line by line and change the way it is presented.... It's peculiar that they have the final say in what goes into a scientists' report".

"I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergo...Climate_Change

lol carboncreditaments

I like this one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52KLGqDSAjo

It is unclear what Shine was implying with his ambiguous comment. From your source, immediately following Shine's quote:

"It is not clear, in this case, whether Shine was complaining that the report had been changed to be more skeptical, or less, or something else entirely."

Any particular reason that you failed to credit the quotes to those who said them?

"I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report" - Frederick Seitz, solid state physicist (criticizing the work of climatologists on the topic of climatology ), who helped perpetrate the Oregon Petition drive.

"The mailing is clearly designed to be deceptive by giving people the impression that the article, which is full of half-truths, is a reprint and has passed peer review," complained Raymond Pierrehumbert, a meteorlogist at the University of Chicago. NAS foreign secretary F. Sherwood Rowland, an atmospheric chemist, said researchers "are wondering if someone is trying to hoodwink them." NAS council member Ralph J. Cicerone, dean of the School of Physical Sciences at the University of California at Irvine, was particularly offended that Seitz described himself in the cover letter as a "past president" of the NAS. Although Seitz had indeed held that title in the 1960s, Cicerone hoped that scientists who received the petition mailing would not be misled into believing that he "still has a role in governing the organization."
The NAS issued an unusually blunt formal response to the petition drive. "The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal," it stated in a news release. "The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy." In fact, it pointed out, its own prior published study had shown that "even given the considerable uncertainties in our knowledge of the relevant phenomena, greenhouse warming poses a potential threat sufficient to merit prompt responses. Investment in mitigation measures acts as insurance protection against the great uncertainties and the possibility of dramatic surprises."

Seitz's comments about the IPCC seem rather hypocritical. It also appears that Seitz's comments were not justified.

From your own source, "Benjamin D. Santer, Convening Lead Author of Chapter 8 of 1995 IPCC Working Group I Report, replied :

"All revisions were made with the sole purpose of producing the best-possible and most clearly explained assessment of the science, and were under the full scientific control of the Convening Lead Author of Chapter 8.

"None of the changes were politically motivated."


According to Dr. Benjamin Santer, in a letter to the editor of The Wall Street Journal, published 25 June, 1996:

The deletions quoted by Seitz relate to the difficulties involved in attributing climate change to the specific cause of human activities, and to uncertainties in estimates of natural climate variability. These issues are dealt with at great length in the published chapter. The basic content of these particular sentences has not been deleted.

Dr. Seitz is not a climate scientist. He was not involved in the process of putting together the 1995 IPCC report on the science of climate change. He did not attend the Madrid IPCC meeting on which he reports. He was not privy to the hundreds of review comments received by Chapter 8 Lead Authors. Most seriously, before writing his editorial, he did not contact any of the Lead Authors of Chapter 8 in order to obtain information as to how or why changes were made to Chapter 8 after Madrid. He also did not contact either Prof. Bert Bolin, the Chairman of the IPCC, or those in charge of the report, the Co-Chairmen of IPCC Working Group I, Sir John Houghton and Dr. L.G. Meira Filho, in order to determine whether IPCC rules of procedure had been violated by the changes made to Chapter 8.

Scientists examine all items of evidence before drawing conclusions. They generally avoid making pronouncements outside their own areas of expertise. Seitz has failed on both counts, and his conclusions are incorrect. We urge readers of The Wall Street Journal to read the IPCC report ("Climate Change 1995: The Science of Climate Change," Cambridge University Press, 1996). They will see for themselves that, as stated in and required by and stated in IPCC procedural rules, the detection chapter is a "comprehensive, objective and balanced" review of the science.

It appears the critics of the IPCC are significantly more laughable than the IPCC itself.

Like I said, I'll consider the skeptics' arguments when they publish their studies in well respected, refereed scientific journals.