How big of a threat is global warming?

I think that most of us agree that both human activity and natural processes over which we have no control contribute to Global Warming and Climate Change.

The disagreement appears to be primarily over the estimate of the amount of the contribution from Human Activity and the amount of the contribution from natural processes over which we have no control.

It appears to me that the majority of the contribution is from natural processes over which we have no control. The contribution from human activity will just make the climate change come a little sooner.

We have to prepare for the climate change because it is coming. It is inevitable.

All of the efforts that we make to cut drastically cut back on the amount of greenhouse gases that we release to the atmosphere will only slow it down a bit because natural processes over which we have no control are going to result in warming and climate change no matter what we do.

We will have to be prepared to cope with the changes.

This is really nothing new. As recently as 10,000 years ago much of the North American continent was covered with a sheet of ice over 1 mile thick.

We are fortunate that we are in a natural warming period or much of the northern United States and Canada would be uninhabitable.

The opposing view is that the majority of the contribution is from human activity and a lesser contribution is from natural processes.

There appears to be conflicting data that can be used to support either position.

Assuming that the position that the majority of Global Warming and climate change is caused by human activity is the correct position, the next question is what if anything can we do to prevent it.

In order to prevent the Global Warming and climate change under that scenario we would have to shut down the economies of all of the nations on this planet including the economies of the developing nations.

My liberal friends tell me that it would not be fair to shut down the economies of the developing nations. My answer to my liberal friends is.....I agree.

But as long as you lack the political and military will to shut down their economies, global Warming and Climate change is afact of life no matter what else you do. The best that you can hope for is to slow it down a little bit.

The only way that you could ever accomplish that would be to completely shut down our economy. If we did that we would have starvation and misery in this country on a scale that we have never seen.

The result would be chaos and political instability that would prevent us from shutting down our economy for very long.

The small efforts such as turning out the lights in rooms that you are not using and more recycling are primarily feel good measures that are good public relations but will produce little in the way of actual results.

To stop Global Warming assuming that it is almost entirely caused by human activity, you would have to be able to shut down the economy of the People's Republic of China. We do not have the political will or military capability to do that.

I guarantee you the People's Republic of China will not shut down their economy to accomodate the desires of the Global Warming crowd.

If we do not shut down the economy of the People's Republic of China there is no chance that we will be able to avoid Global Warming if it is true that the majority of Global warming is caused by the release of greenhouse gases as a result of human activity.

Under either scenario Global Warming and Climate change is a fact of life and we are going to have to figure out how best we are going to deal with it.

Essentially no matter which side in this debate is correct about the cause of Global Warming and Climate Change, Global Warming and Climate change are facts of life. We will not be able to prevent them We need to start planning now how we are going to deal with them.

The good news is that we will be able to deal with Global Warming and climate change. We have the ability to help people move from low lyng areas to higher ground especially if we accept the fact that it is coming and we start making arrangements now.

There is no reason for panic. We have dealt with change in the past and we will deal with change in the future.

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The growing body of evidence is showing that it is the sun that is the primary driver of the 20th century warming. Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. “[My conversion from believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle investigator),” Patterson explained. “Over the course of about a year, I switched allegiances,” he wrote. “As the proxy results began to come in, we were astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity records were full of cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot cycles. About that time, [geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to publish reasonable hypotheses as to how solar signals could be amplified and control climate,” Patterson noted. Patterson says his conversion “probably cost me a lot of grant money. However, as a scientist I go where the science takes me and not were activists want me to go.” Patterson now asserts that more and more scientists are converting to climate skeptics. "When I go to a scientific meeting, there's lots of opinion out there, there's lots of discussion (about climate change). I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority,”

Critics of the theory only focus that the sun's energy
output through an 11-year sunspot cycle varies only by around 0.1 percent. This energy output variability is
insufficient on it's own, to cause the 0.6 degree Celsius increase in global temperature observed through the 20th
century. It is the by product of the increase in the sun's output, solar flares, and its interaction with cosmic rays and cloud formation that is the cause. You can read a detailed explanation here: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Reference_Docs/The_Geologic_Record_and_Climate_Change.pdf

Well, considering Global Warming take 100 years, it probably not a big threat.
Considering Asteroid 1997 XF 11 will hit Earth in 2028. I would assume it a bigger threat.
But, life goes on and the Asteroid may miss and not be a threat.
Global Warming may just be the Historical movements of Earth around the sun, moving in and out over 100's of years.
So, if it a big threat, there not much people can do.

hype. when i was a kid in the early seventies, all the scientists and government people were saying the earth was cooling and we would be entering a rapid ice age in thirty years. from what? carbon dioxide.
There have been a spate of recent solar flares and this is most likely the cause of the earth warming trend. has absolutely nothing to do with humans. one volcanic blast puts off more carbon and particulate matter than human being do in ten years. mt. pinatubo in philippines, mt. st helen's in the usa, etc.
Only a few thousand of the approximately 100,000 scientists who work on climate, are saying that there is such a thing as global warming and that it is man made.
South Africa had the coldest winter in history a just recently (since it is summer for us, winter for them) and 58 people died.
we had cows dying in the fields of wyoming this past year.
remember the ice storms back east? horrible.
so...no such thing

Of course its a big threat! How can ppl not understand that the actions that we do today will have repercussions? The evidence of global warming is here and in our face. So what if ppl think that those evidence are mostly theories? Better safe than sorry. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

It's not a big threat yet but in the next 100 years more people will die from heat and cold(depending on your area) and the Earth's rotation will increase by 12 milliseconds. Eventually it will grow and be a bigger problem.

I'm going to mention worldwide warming when you consider that because the Earth heats it's going to reason a shortage of assets which would lengthen the results of a worldwide recession. Beyond that a recession can also be "constant" when you consider that markets will ultimately get well with the advent of latest merchandise and offerings. A 2001 IPCC file states There is new and more potent proof that among the warming located over the final 50 years is resulting from human routine. Detection and attribution stories continuously discover proof for an anthropogenic sign within the local weather list of the final 35 to 50 years. These stories incorporate uncertainties in forcing because of anthropogenic sulfate aerosols and ordinary elements (volcanoes and sun irradiance), however don't account for the results of different forms of anthropogenic aerosols and land-use alterations. The sulfate and ordinary forcings are poor over this interval and can not give an explanation for the warming; while all these stories discover that, over the final 50 years, the expected price and value of warming because of growing greenhouse gases by myself are related with, or higher than, the located warming. The excellent contract among mannequin simulations and observations over the final a hundred and forty years has been discovered while the entire above anthropogenic and ordinary forcing elements are mixed, as proven in Figure SPM-two.

global warming increases the temperature of the earth .This wiill lead to heavy rainfall and the coastal areas would be submerged&the polar ice caps will melt.

It's a gigantic threat,ice caps o f the north and south poles are melting,increasing the water level of the world.Also making the animals in the 2 poles no where to land on,so they would drown and starting to vanish from this world.Pollution is also a big problem.

Big threat. But my words won't convince you, you need to read the links.

Scientific data shows it's not the sun or volcanoes. Proof here, peer reviewed data:

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

Volcano put out much less greenhouse gas than man. All of them combined. Proof:

http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/climate_effects.html

Here';s a discussion by serious solar experts about why it's not the sun:

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/FAQ2.html

Outside of a few skeptics, the scientific community agrees it's real, and mostly caused by us. Proof:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

The bottom line:

"There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know - except maybe Newton's second law of dynamics. Global warming is almost a no-brainer at this point,You really can't find intelligent, quantitative arguments to make it go away."

Dr. Jerry Mahlman, NOAA

Good websites for more info:

http://profend.com/global-warming/

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/

http://www.realclimate.org

"climate science from climate scientists"