Misplaced Pages

Please note that this page does not constitute any part of the article space for wikipedia, and only exists as a useful place to put frequently asked questions and their frequently given answers. Do not use this as a debating place. Feel free to add other common question/answer pairs, or alternative answers, that are properly sourced in the scientific literature.

Is there really a scientific consensus on global warming?

• Yes. The IPCC position has been derived using a consensus process. This has been recognized by a number of prestigious scientific organizations and reinforced by independent analysis of the scientific literature, see Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Oreskes.2C_2004.

Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas!

• See Greenhouse_gas#The_role_of_water_vapor and Greenhouse_effect#The_greenhouse_gases for details.

  Water vapour is indeed a major greenhouse gas, and contributes significantly to the greenhouse effect. However, water vapour has a very short atmospheric lifetime, and is very nearly in a dynamic equilibrium in the atmosphere, which globally maintains a nearly constant relative humidity. Increased temperatures will increase the absolute amount of water vapour in the atmosphere, and hence the greenhouse effect. This is an example of a positive feedback effect. Thus, while water vapour does not act as a climate driver, it does tend to amplify existing trends.

There is a substantial segment of the scientific community that strenuously disagrees with the premise that global warming is dooming our planet

• This page is about the science of global warming. It doesn't talk about planetary doom or catastrophe.

Scientists only support global warming to get more money

• Scientists participate in international organizations like the IPCC as part of their normal academic duties. They do not receive any extra compensation beyond possibly direct expenses.
• Scientific grants also do not usually award any money to a scientist personally, but only towards his or her scientific work. Typically, the grant holder does not even see any of the money. It goes to his or her university (or other institution), which deducts its overhead (from 20 to 50% - that covers not just administration, but also things like buildings, energy, lab space, generic infrastructure, and so on). The grant holder can then charge project expenses such as research assistants, specialized equipment, or travel costs to attend meetings. However, there can be an effect on the scientists' career trajectory: Having grants is seen as a good thing, and may help the scientist when renegotiating the base salary with the university (mostly in the US), with tenure and promotion, or when applying to other universities.
• In the U.S., global warming is seen as a politically sensitive topic under the present administration, and this discourages scientists from working on the topic.
• It could also be argued that more money lies in examining the policy debate on global warming.

It was obviously much warmer when the Norse settled Greenland

Greenland was not significantly warmer during the period of Norse settlement. While much of Greenland was and remains under a large ice shelf, the areas of Greenland that were settled by the Norse were coastal areas with fjords that, to this day, remain quite green. Please see the following images for reference:

• A map of the Eastern Settlement
• A satellite image of that area today .
• A map of the Western Settlement ;
• A satellite image of that area today .
• A zoom in on the general area where the Brattahlid and Gardar farms were located .
• A zoom in on the general area of the Sandnes farm .
• Ruins:
  • Photos of the Gardar ruins:
  • The Brattahlid ruins :
  • Hvalsey church:

The IPCC reports are prepared by biased UN scientists

• The IPCC reports are not produced by "UN scientists". The IPCC does not employ the scientists who generate the reports, and has no significant control over them. The scientists are internationally recognized experts, most with a long history of successful research in the field. They are employed by a number of different organizations, including scientific research institutes, agencies like NASA and NOAA, and universities. They receive no extra pay for their participation in the IPCC process, which is considered a normal part of their academic duties. The latest (fourth) IPCC report was prepared by over 850 authors and reviewed by more than 2500 expert reviewers from all over the world.

I don't believe that global warming is happening or that it is caused by human activity!

• If you have documented evidence from the peer-reviewed literature, or if you have other information that meets standards of verifiability and reliability and no original research consider adding it to the article. Also remember that neutral point of view requires that minority perspectives should not have equal prominence with majority perspectives. There are many forums which welcome discussions of global warming but this is not a forum. Please limit your talk page comments to improving the article, not discussing the topic.

Pluto is warming, too (so it's the sun!)

• Pluto has an extremely elliptical orbit with a period of about 248 years. It also is extremely far from earth, and hence any data is extremely sparse. There are conflicting measurements, but two data points from 1988 and 2002 seem to indicate that Pluto has indeed warmed between those two dates. Pluto's temperature is heavily influenced by its elliptical orbit - it was closest to the sun in 1989 and has slowly receeded since. If it has any thermal inertia, it is expected to warm for a while after it passes perihelion. No other mechanism has so far been seriously suggested. Here is a reasonable summary, and this paper discusses how the thermal inertia is provided by sublimation and evaporation of parts of Pluto's atmosphere. A more popular account is here and in Misplaced Pages's own excellent article.

  By the way, "temperature" is measured very indirectly in this case. When Pluto passes in front of a star, observers note how fast the light drops off. From this, they deduce the density of the atmosphere, and that is used as an indicator of temperature.

Jupiter is warming, too (so it's the sun!)

• There is no reliable source claiming that Jupiter is warming. However, observations of the Red Spot Jr. storm suggest Jupiter could be in a period of global climate change. This is hypothesized to be part of an approximately 70 year global climate cycle, characterized by the relatively rapid forming and subsequent slow erosion and merging of cyclonic and anticyclonic vortices in Jupiter's atmosphere. These vortices facilitate the heat exchange between poles and equator. If they have sufficiently eroded, heat exchange is strongly reduced and regional temperatures may shift by as much as 10 K, with the poles cooling down and the equator region heating up. The resulting large temperature differential destabilizes the atmosphere and thereby leads to the creation of new vortices.

There was once a time when the majority of scientists believed the earth was flat!

• No, there was not. Knowledge about the approximately spherical shape of the Earth was widespread among educated people long before the advent of modern science. Eratosthenes already gave a very good estimate for the diameter in 240 BC. Christopher Columbus was not laughed out of court because he believed the Earth was round, but because he assumed an unrealistically small diameter to make Asia reachable. See Flat Earth, which, among other goodies, has a sourced statement that "since the eighth century, no cosmographer worthy of note has called into question the sphericity of the Earth."

  Yes, this really is one of the more frequent questions/suggestions in the global warming debate.

Can't the presently high levels of CO2 just be the result of temperature changes rather than fossil fuels, as they may have been in the past?

• While these claims are popular among global warming skeptics, even some academically trained ones, they are patently wrong. Over geological times, volcanic outgassing is responsible for a large part of atmospheric carbon dioxide. But current human emissions are at least 100 times larger than volcanic emission. Volcano eruptions affect the climate in other ways, primarily by injecting aerosols into the atmosphere and thus exerting a (comparatively short term) cooling influence. We know from isotopic analysis of atmospheric carbon dioxide that the observed increase is from fossil fuels, and cannot have come from volcanoes or the ocean.
• Furthermore, if the increased carbon dioxide came from the oceans we would also see a small increase in atmospheric oxygen content, since the same processes that cause oceanic outgassing of carbon dioxide would also cause outgassing of other gases (such as oxygen). Instead we have measured a small decrease of atmospheric oxygen. And if the oceans were giving off some of their carbon dioxide, we would obviously expect a decrease in their carbon dioxide content. But instead we are measuring an increase in the oceans' carbon dioxide concentration, resulting in the oceans becoming more acidic (or more accurately, less basic).

Given that summer 2007 is so cold in (region X)...

• It's called "global warming", not "(region X) warming". Even then, what rises is the average temperature over time -- that is, the temperature will fluctuate up and down within the overall rising trend. In any case, what is tracked and reported is the "anomaly" that is, the change from normal over time, not absolute readings. If temperature goes up .5 degrees centigrade, it doesn't matter if that is added on to -10 or +10, it has still gone up .5

Weren't they saying in 1970 that pollution was going to freeze the world over by 2000?

• No: see global cooling

Isn't global warming "just a theory"?

• As is often the case, the term "global warming" is used with more than one meaning. That the temperature is rising is a fact. The explanation for this warming is a scientific theory. This is different from the common use of the word "theory" to mean a guess or supposition. A scientific theory is a coherent set of explanations that is compatible with the known observations, that allows predictions to be made, and that has a number of other properties (see the above linked article). A theory that makes a number of verifiable predictions that turn out to be correct gains credibility. Strictly speaking, science does not prove anything. A theory is the best it can provide.

What is the optimal temperature of the earth - and how do we know it's not 6 degrees warmer?

• There's no such thing as an "optimal" temperature of the earth. The nearest concept that is relevant is that there are ranges to which species and human society have adapted. Though it may not sound like much, a global temperature rise of 6 degrees is huge in climate terms. For example, the sea level rise it produced would flood coastal cities around the world.
• Earth climate has varied significantly over geological ages. The question of an "optimal temperature" makes no sense without a clear optimality criterion. Over geological time spans, ecosystems adapt to climate variations. But global climate variations during the development of human civilization have been remarkably small. Human civilization is highly adapted to the current stable climate. Agricultural production depends on the proper combination of soil, climate, methods, and seeds. Most large cities are located on the coast, and any significant change in sea level would strongly affect them. Migration of humans and ecosystems is limited by political borders and exisiting land use. In short, the main problem is not the absolute temperature, but the massive and unprecedentedly fast change in climate, and the second order-effects to human societies. The IPCC AR4 WG2 report has a detailed discussion of the effects of rapid climate change.

Aren’t climate variations inevitable with or without humans?

• Yes. Climate varies both with and without humans. But the current anthropogenic climate change is much faster than any known climate change in the past, giving ecosystems and human societies less time to adapt. It thus will have a stronger impact on ecosystems and human settlement than natural climate changes. However, this is only borderline related to the topic of this article. We have a fairly good understandig of the predominant causes for the current global warming, and know with good certainty that it is mostly caused by human action.

Since methane is a much more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2, why isn't it viewed as the culprit behind global warming?

• True, methane is more potent molecule for molecule. But there's far less of it in the atmosphere, so the total effect is smaller. One of the reasons for the lower concentration is that the atmospheric lifetime of methane is a lot shorter than that of CO2. Methane in the atmosphere decomposes into water and CO2. In other words, methane closely tracks current emissions, while CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere over long time periods. For details see the greenhouse gas and global warming potential articles.

Global Warming Revisited

The elements of Global Warming herein identified are symptoms of a deeper cause. In March 2006, Popular Science reported that the earth received from meteorites alone over two hundred tons of mass debris daily; this does not include other forms of mass increase. Knowing this and applying the mass accumulation into E=mc2, we know that an acceleration is taking place. Unless some phenomenon halts this, then logically and very much realistically, earth can accelerate itself into energy. On this path to energy, primarily due to acceleration, heat will increase. This is the real cause of global warming. As doctors in the medical field mask symptoms because they fail to discover cause, so scientists today are dealing with the mere symptoms of global warming (greenhouse gases, polar melts,etc.), rather than the real issue, which is earthly mass increase that causes acceleration, which acceleration is attended by heat necessary for transitional phases from mass to energy. Yes, really think about it. The consequential symptoms, atmospheric gasses including the actions and inventions producing such of mankind who have been so arrogant so as not to see their own actions calculated and affected by forces which affect the earth, can and will only give a variagated explanation without ever addressing the actual cause, which is, again, attendant heat that accompanies mass increases.

Phillip Frank, a contemporary physicist with Einstein, wrote in his book, Phillip Frank, that if a body is know to be gaining mass, it is also known to be accelerating in direct relationship with its mass accumulation. Some have tried to counter by arguing that even though it is gaining in mass, that all the other universal variables, changing accordingly, hold its surge toward energy in check. However, this is a weak argument, since if mass on the atomic level, surrounded by a microcosmic universe, accelerates with its increase.

This is not my personal version of anything. The formula for energy has already stood the test of time. Its says this: if mass is increasing, it is accelerating. The earth is increasing daily in tons of mass. Plug the mass gain into the formula E=mc2 and let the figures formulate your truth. It is accelerating. The mass expansion, along with the acceleration cause heat. For example, take a round, deflated balloon and cup it between your two hands. When it expands by being blown up very rapidly, you will feel heat upon the skin of the balloon. The rapid, molecular expansion causes heat. For example, take a round, deflated balloon and cup it between your two hands. When it expands by being blown up very rapidly, you will feel heat upon the skin of the balloon. The rapid, molecular expansion causes heat. Though this example is not an exact one, it will do as an illustration for the elementary mind of those less steeped and matured in the law of energy transformation. That light is affected by gravity had to be proved by shooting a laser beam past the moon during an eclipse because there were those learned, but elementary scientists who simply hadn't the visual acumen to imagine what Einstein had.--Jaymes2 (talk) 14:16, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

References

1. J. L. Elliot, A. Ates, B. A. Babcock, A. S. Bosh, M. W. Buie, K. B. Clancy, E. W. Dunham, S. S. Eikenberry, D. T. Hall, S. D. Kern, S. K. Leggett, S. E. Levine, D.-S. Moon, C. B. Olkin, D. J. Osip, J. M. Pasachoff, B. E. Penprase, M. J. Person, S. Qu, J. T. Rayner, L. C. Roberts, Jr, C. V. Salyk, S. P. Souza, R. C. Stone, B. W. Taylor, D. J. Tholen, J. E. Thomas-Osip, D. R. Ticehurst and L. H. Wasserman (10 July 2003). "The recent expansion of Pluto's atmosphere". Nature (424): 165–168. doi:doi:10.1038/nature01762. {{cite journal}}: Check |doi= value (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
2. Philip, Marcus S. (2006). "Velocities and Temperatures of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and the New Red Oval and Implications for Global Climate Change". American Physical Society. Retrieved 2007-05-09. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
3. Goudarzi, Sara (2006-05-04). "New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change". Space.com. Retrieved 2007-05-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
4. Philip, Marcus S. (2004-04-22). "Prediction of a global climate change on Jupiter" (PDF). Nature. 428 (6985): 828–831. Retrieved 2007-05-09. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
5. Yang, Sarah (2004-04-21). "Researcher predicts global climate change on Jupiter as giant planet's spots disappear". University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved 2007-05-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
6. "More Notes on Global Warming". Physics Today. May 2005. Retrieved 2007-09-10.
7. "The Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report". 2007. Retrieved 2007-10-22.