Global Warming, yes or no?

I do relise that there have been changes in the world. Yes, I can say that it is definatly warmer. But the real question [this has been stated before] is, is man the cause of this? Al Gore, the slef proclaimed "founder" of global warming says that global warming is indeed a man made problem. Personaly, I think Al Gore hyped up "global warming"to waht it is today for selfish puroses such as MONEY. Last I heard of Al Gore he drives a Ram 1500 with a hemi engine that has a carbon foot-print the size of his ego. Reguardless of the cause, man made or natural, it definatly has effect that may come back to bite us. {maybe}

You can take data from different segments of time to support either claim. If you use the miniscule period of time from the 80's to today - the planet is warming. If you go back much farther into centuries, the planet warmed a little but less so than at many other times. Go back farther and ice core samples indicate that the planet had many times more "green house gases" than today. Thermometer data does not go back very far in history. If we want to go way way back then the toasty atmosphere was packed full of carbon before single celled organisms began to photosynthesize and changed the planet completely. Life has changed the planet several times.

No no no RJB. Let's only believe those whose conclusions fit those you believe to save headaches. Those others who work in the same field ut who disagree can be ignored or harrassed so that they don't violate the tenents of the "accepted" scientists. Gaia forbid that anyone question falsified or manipulated data and cause everyone to think about things like a single volcano belching more carbon into the air than.... well, do your own research and draw your own conclusions.

It is the human psyche to do this. No matter what your belief system, it is a rare person who will consider anything challenging to what they believe. Rather than honest debate, most will resort to raising their voice to drown out dissenters. The Catholic church was notorious for this during the Dark Ages. I don't know if they still do but I hope not.

I maintain the opposite. Pure science is always open to debate and those who are dismissing/ manipulating/ and denigrating without considering a thought outside of their beliefs are just small minded (dare I say unevolved?). Science has had a long history of failures as well. Is science the cause? Heck no; Scientists are. 90% or even 100% of people in a field can use data to believe something and still be wrong. It can be 1 person in a field who can have an epiphany which revolutionizes a field as well. I am asking for all people to be able to listen to others who disagree without being so devolved as to insult, denigrate, or resort to negative inferances. I assert that all creatures in the homo sapiens line are capable of of dishonesty which derails science. Not only do I understand how science works, I also understand how humans work as well. My dad always used to say "and what does the big picture show?" One method of measuring temperature used to track temps over a short time and creating a cause and effect scenario is insufficient. What does the big picture show? When you take all measuring methods and include the last million or so years, what does that show? When this is factored in, what do the climatologists say? I'm really asking..... What do they say then? How do they relate vulcanism, ice cores, paleo botany, sunspots, written history, and even geo magnetism over such a span of time? I think they are missing the big picture. It is ok though, specialization in a field necessarily occludes the big picture. The scientist who can put aside emotions and faith and look at the big picture would conclude what? If this makes me anti science, then science has failed. I apologize to the revolutionary scientist Aristotle who I have held in high regard.

Ok nomihoudai. "Reasonable" is not excluding data that is only a few hundred years old. If you want to only include the last few decades, then that is unreasonable to me. The industrial revolution spewed more unfiltered toxins, including CO2, than today or yesterday (or 30 years ago - what ever is reasonable). This is important. Why is it not factored in to predictions? Is it human ego? Fuel with lead in it was phased out in the 1970's. Could the planet have rebounded now since the temperatures could now be dropping and lead is no longer in te air? Are CFC's mostly gone too? The claim was that when they were severely damaging the ozone. If the ozone is still bad or worse, is it reasonable to question if CFC's were to blame? A belief that can encompass and accept discussion is a growing one. To reject all else would be easy for some but others prefer to grow and learn and debate. The point of relavance of time is brilliant nomihoudai and it makes us question where the data is appropriate. Good!

First, specializing does not exclude understanding the bigger implications of your work- in fact it is usually just the opposite, because by the time you have become "specialized" you have already been exposed to the big picture. You specialize so you can better understand a part of the big picture, so we don't walk around saying the earth is flat. It also indicates that you are capable of higher level thinking and that you have proven your capacity to learn new things.

Second, why do you accuse all of the people posting here and all of the scientists who support the idea of a human-mediated rise in average global temperatures of "small-minded" because we disagree? You literally say "without considering a thought outside of their beliefs" as though you have way of knowing what we have and have not considered. It suggests a bit of hypocrisy- it is you who denigrates our opinions because you have made your decision already based on a white elephant of a study and anything we (or the vast majority of the educated world) say that contradicts it you obligatorily refute. You are doing the very thing you suggest is going on with the rest of us. Understanding people, you should know that we often like to superimpose our own faults on everyone around us to justify our own mode of thinking. It's amazing to me that you can somehow tell, without really knowing any of us, what literature we have or have not seen on the subject and make a judgment that all of the people who are saying something you chose to ignore are basing their entire perspective on Al Gore, for example.

You are right about one thing- it is much easier to plug your ears and shout louder than to read comprehensively the calculus functions that define the models and parameters which guide climate science. It's much easier than learning the physics of fluid dynamics. It's far simpler than learning everything that all the "specialists" spent their lives investigating. But it certainly makes you a lot less capable of understanding what the heck the big picture you are looking at actually is.