I personally do not believe in human aided global warming. It is a fact that the mean global temperature is rising which is causing ice glaciers to melt and a change in weather conditions all over the world, but I personally do not believe that humans have had any effect on this, positive or negative. I have posted my reasons for this before, so here is a quote of exactly why I don’t believe global warming is happening:
Global warming facts:
1. In the roman times the temperature was possibly as much as 3 degrees hotter than it is now.
2. We know that we are currently exiting an ice age which means the planet is naturally warming anyways.
3. A considerably large amount of carbon is needed to produce the insulating effect predicted and we do not produce nearly enough to genuinely effect our atmosphere.
4. The vast majority of the "freak weather" can be attributed to known metrological effects. This includes things such as salt concentrations in the ocean as seen in the film, the day after tomorrow, but we know the effect would not be as epic as we see in the film.
5. Flooding can happen in cycles and tends to shift around the world, the Sahara desert was once the Sahara ocean.
6. Most weather and climate changes are gradual and take thousands of years.
7. Recent evidence shows that the planets temperature overall may be DECREASING even with the strange weather we are experiencing, this is disputed however.
8. The total emissions from human influence are less than 0.1% the total global natural emission.
9. Carbon Dioxide is dissolved into the sea and released in what is known as a dynamic equilibrium; this means there is always a constant amount of Carbon Dioxide in the sea as out of it, and no matter how much carbon you add, the sea will always absorb it to balance this equilibrium.
10. The atmosphere is many many times greater in volume than the volume of Carbon Dioxide we release, a few million tons of carbon is nothing compared to a few trillion tons of atmosphere.
Small Micro organisms are accountable for a lot of carbon intake by locking it in the structures of their shells. Tiny marine organisms like Foraminiferas, Coccoliths and Calcareous Algae capture atmospheric carbon and use it to make their shells. This can be seen by the chalk build-ups which are the fossilised remains of these organisms. One cubic centimetre of chalk can contain one thousand litres of carbon.
Since 1850, it has been estimated, we have released about 100 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Naturally, mostly by Volcanoes, about 200 billion tons of carbon is released into the atmosphere ever year. Our total yearly release of carbon is an estimated 7 billion tons.
Wikipedia said:
The average mass of the atmosphere is about 5,000 trillion metric tons
That means we have put 100,000,000,000 in 5,000,000,000,000,000 (5 Quadrillion) which is 1 ton for every 50,000 tons of atmosphere or 0.002% which is virtually nothing. And that is taking into the consideration that the carbon has just stayed static for the last 157 years; so it hasn't been in any photosynthesis and it hasn't been absorbed into the sea and it hasn't been taken in by sea creatures to make their shells. Even thinking that it has just sat there doing nothing for over a century then we still have only put an extra 0.002% of carbon in the atmosphere, which is really too little to even consider realistically.
For these reasons I don’t believe global warming is happening due to humans producing Carbon Dioxide. However it is important to remember that the global temperature is increasing (supposedly) in part of a cycle which causes ice ages to happen and then disappear. This is because our planet is a closed system and it will always move to balance any changes that happen; this is the reason wind exists. Something happened many years ago which caused our planet to plunge into an ice age, this could have been a meteor impact or a super-volcano but it imbalanced the environment and so the planet plunged into an ice age to re-balance it. We are currently coming out of the ice age into a much milder and warmer time. So we should be expecting to have an increased temperature. I believe this process is natural and part of a giant cycle due to the reasons I mentioned above.
The question for me is how hot is it going to get? At some point the temperature will even out and remain stable but it is unknown when that will happen. It is also unknown if the ice caps will stop melting when this happens; potentially, all the horrible events could happen but we would be unable to stop it as it is natural.
An interesting consideration is the idea of a giant cycle of temperature change. Potentially the temperature could keep increasing naturally and melt all the ice caps; this would disrupt the salinity levels in the sea and hence the cycle of hot water which keeps the northern hemisphere warm via the Gulf Stream (and other deep sea currents). If this were to happen the planet would again be plunged into an ice age due to the lack of heat; this is actually the event that happens in the film “The Day After Tomorrow” and it completely possible, however it would never happen quite as fast as it did in the film. If we entered another ice age the planet would then balance itself by warming up which is exactly what is happening to us now. We do not know if we are in an endless circle of ice ages, it is unlikely, but it is still a possibility. To me this basically means we have no control over the temperature of our planet.
It has been known that at least 3 times in history large stores of methane (which is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2) have been released by the billions of tons. One such event supposedly released as much as 10 trillion tons of methane in a single event. While we cannot determine exactly what happened at that time, but we can be sure that the planet has manage to override this change and continue on.
Another thing I think about when it comes to global warming is the fact that the average lifetime of any species is about 100 million years and we have passed that milestone. 30 billion is the common estimate for the number of species that have ever existed, but that figure has been cited as high as 4,000 billion. Whatever cause the 99.9% of species to die out doesn't matter, the fact is that most things end up dying off if they don’t evolve. Of all the natural phenomenon which is much worse than global warming (the KT comet impact killing 95% of species in a single instance for example) animals have strived to evolve. Whether we have caused global warming or not is also irrelevant, we have been here for 100 million years so our time is almost up. The way I see it, we evolve or we die, whether we cause it, or whether a giant meteor does instead.
It is important to realise that we should be controlling our Carbon emissions, I definitely fall in column A. There is absolutely no reason why we should continue using oil, coal and gas when we have the capability to generate energy by alternate means. Oil is being wasted in cars when it could be used to produce pharmaceuticals, plastics and other useful materials; burning it seems like a bit of a waste when we have other uses for oil and other options for energy. Not only that but burning fossil fuels produces other things apart from Carbon Dioxide. Although catalytic converters have reduced toxic emissions, sulphur and nitrogen compounds which can become acid rain when hydrolysed still exist, especially in developing nations. There will be no need to burn fossil fuels in future years hopefully.
One of the main contributors to global warming is the media. Usually taking scant predictions and blowing them out of proportion until people believe the world will end in a week. Taking the consideration that we are causing global warming I do not even think it will be as bad as it has been predicted. As I have said the planet tries to balance things and it will absorb the change. This isn’t to say that nothing will happen, but it is to say that the world won’t end because the massive increase in heat will result in the complete opposite eventually arising; a massive drop in heat. The planet will never be uninhabitable because of the way it reacts to a change to bring about a balance. It is not an easy way to explain but the planet will always find an even medium, no matter how long it takes. After the worst catastrophes such super-volcanoes, comets and floods the world has persevered and it will always do. Anyways, the new conditions might force us to evolve into something better! Nothing like a global catastrophe to spice up the species list! And I think, even though there are people who strongly disagree, that these changes will take a long time. Not centuries or decades but thousands of years; our planet in fortunately slow in its endeavours.
There is nothing we can do, it is inevitable and will be impossible to simulate or predict. Anything could happen, the temperature could stay exactly as it is, it could get massively hotter or it could even get massively cold and anything in between. The natural global warming cycle usually makes temperatures a lot hotter and then something significant happens, like a volcano or meteor impact which would cause it to get colder again. It’s not really a cycle as such because each time we go from hot to cold it is different and for different reasons. but what I think will happen in the coming tens of thousands of years is a large increase in temperature which will completely change the world (but not destroy it or anything, infact it should promote rain forest like areas to appear all over the world) followed by a sudden drop over a few thousand years which will kill of a lot of species. That time scale could even be upped to millions of years, or shortened to hundreds of years because again it’s completely unpredictable.
Ultimately, you can believe in whatever you want, but you have to accept the possibility that any result could happen. While I personally don’t believe in global warming causing massive catastrophe or humans causing it, I still accept it may be true and I think precautions should be put in place. These precautions should be there for more reasons that just global warming too because of the harm they cause in general.
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