Do you believe in global warming?

american's (re: american liberals) fear of admitting defeat is just one reason why our kids will be working for chinese conglomerates in the 21st century as liberals push US companies to bankruptcy...

sadly, most american's won't actually open their mind and respect another opinion even if it jumped up and kicked them in the arse...because we all know that protesting, pointing fingers, filibusting and monday morning quarterbacking are the easiest way of making a political statement rather than actually working toward compromise with the people we just don't agree with...so it is easier to go into ostrich mode and villify conservatives and organized religion as pawns of the 'gasp' democratically elected administration....

:twocents:

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jrjo

I always suspected global warming was really a Republican vs Democrat thing.

I know it's on NPR (gasp!), but I thought this was a pretty good look at some different views.

Three Views on Global Warming

I also meant to ask, what research/reading have you done to come to your conclusion that there is or isn't global warming?

american's (re: american conservatives) fear of science is just one reason why our kids will be working for chinese conglomerates in the 21st century...
Mega,
I'm an engineer by trade. I went to Georgia (freaking) Tech for 6.5 years of my life. Needless to say, but I have ZERO fear of science.
You might want to take your paint brush in a different direction the next time you want to make a large swipe at the canvas.
:twocents:

Mega,
I'm an engineer by trade. I went to Georgia (freaking) Tech for 6.5 years of my life. Needless to say, but I have ZERO fear of science.
You might want to take your paint brush in a different direction the next time you want to make a large swipe at the canvas.
:twocents:
then tell me exactly what kind of proof is lacking in this debate? what do you and don't you accept as evidence that there is or isn't global warming...
i still stand by my broad brush generalities, whether they apply to you specifically or not...
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megawill

Anyone?

Anyone?
For me, (and this goes for most science), its hard to sort through all the information from both sides of an issue (in this case global warming), and come to a conclusion whether or not the science is fact, fiction or a mix of both.
For every five people/organizations that say there is global warming there are five people/organizations who say there is not. Both have data, facts, etc to substantiate there case. So its a coin flip in most cases.
How is a person supposed to agree or disagree with something when the scientific community can't?
Most of the time, I will consider the source of the information that I am reviewing, prior to making a determination of whether or not something is true, and then do my own research, from other sources.

How is a person supposed to agree or disagree with something when the scientific community can't?
I wish I could find article I read (I'll look for a link), but I don't think there actually is all the much disagreement within the scientific community. Of course there are some who disagree, which you will have in any case, but the majority of atmospheric scientics agree global warming is happening.

We know it's real. It's been warming for several hundred years, ever since the last ice age. The question should be whether we humans are causing it which is quite unlikely and are we contributing to it significantly. The last part is the only question that has much merit and that is where the differing opinions seem to occur. On the side of those saying we are there are also those who want to see the government take more control over every aspect of our lives o the other side are the ones who think it already has taken too much freedom away along with those who actually interpret statistics to show we are not to blame. What makes the whole thing rather comical is the chicken littles were preaching the coming ice age with Al Gore in the lead until about 30 years ago when we had a very hot summer and they changed their rant to the coming world barbeque. Al continued to blame both opposites on the same object of his hatred, the infernal combustion engine.

The data isn't published in this story to critique nor is the method/assumptions used to do the modeling but the sources appear to be pretty credible...

November 1, 2005 New Study Warns of Total Loss of Arctic Tundra By ANDREW C. REVKIN If emissions of heat-trapping gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere at the current rate, there may be many centuries of warming and a near-total loss of Arctic tundra, according to a new climate study. Over all, the world would experience profound transformations, some potentially beneficial but many disruptive, and all at a pace rarely seen in nature, said the authors of the study, being published today in The Journal of Climate. "The question is no longer whether we will need to address this problem, but when we will need to address the problem," said Kenneth Caldeira, an author of the study and a climate expert at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, based at Stanford University. "We can either address it now, before we severely and irreversibly damage our climate, or we can wait until irreversible damage manifests itself strongly," Dr. Caldeira said. "If all we do is try to adapt, things will get worse and worse." The paper's lead author, Bala Govindasamy of the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said it might take 20 or 30 years before the scope of the human-caused changes becomes evident, but from then on there is likely to be no debate. The researchers ran a computer model that simulates both the climate system and the flow of heat-trapping carbon into the air in the form of carbon dioxide, then back into soils and the ocean. Most simulations of the potential human impact on climate have been confined to studying the next 100 years or so, but in this case the scientists started the calculations in 1870 and let the computers churn away through 2300. The authors stressed that the uncertainties were high over such a time span, and said the study was intended to illustrate broad consequences rather than project specific ones. They programmed the model to run as if the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide rose about 0.45 percent a year through 2300. That is slightly less than the current rate, about 0.5 percent. In the simulation, the concentration of carbon dioxide doubles from pre-industrial levels in 2070, triples in 2120, and quadruples in 2160. The results are sobering, Dr. Caldeira and other climate experts said, because the computer model used in this study tends to produce less warming from a greenhouse-gas buildup than many of the other climate simulations being run by other research teams. It also presumes that plants and the ocean will continue to sop up carbon dioxide in the future, limiting the amount retained in the atmosphere. Many other independently developed models calculate that at some point, chemical and biological shifts caused by warming would reverse that flow and cause even more greenhouse gases to flood into the atmosphere. Consistent with many other studies, the model showed that the Arctic would see the most warming, with average annual temperatures in many parts of Arctic Russia and northern North America rising more than 25 degrees Fahrenheit around 2100. Antarctica would follow suit later, with temperatures there rising sharply around 2200. The impact on vegetation and landscapes would transform large areas of the earth. In the simulation, at least one ecosystem, the scrubby Arctic tundra largely vanishes as climate zones shift hundreds of miles north. Tundra would decline from about 8 percent of the world's land area to 1.8 percent. Alaska, in the model, loses almost all of its evergreen boreal forests and becomes a largely temperate state. But vast stretches of land that were once locked beneath permanent ice cover would open up. The area locked beneath ice would diminish to 4.8 percent of the planet's total land area, from 13.3 percent. Several climate scientists not associated with the study said its main benefit was akin to the murky visions of possible futures experienced by Ebenezer Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol." "It's a cautionary tale," said Gerald A. Meehl, a climate modeler at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who has conducted similar studies. "The message is not to give up because the changes appear overwhelming, but instead the message should be the longer we wait to do something, the worse the consequences."

I watched several minutes of a special hosted by Alanis Morrisette on Global Warming. If someone who could tell me about how hurtful her breakup was, thinks we have global warming......SIGN ME UP AS A BELIEVER.

That's who that was - I missed the intro identifying her. Don't know who they could have gotten instead but Alanis seemed like an odd choice to host something like that.

Note - I didn't say a BAD choice.

well, if the cave man wouldn't have discovered fire, the ice age would not have happened. It's definitely man's technology NOT the earth's natural changes