Is human activity primarily responsible for global climate change?

[Political_dude]

Yes it is responsible for Global Climate Change

No. Global Climate Change is natural

No. But Global Climate change isn't real.

[Anon85]

We've only had accurate tools to measure this stuff for less than 200 years, and the only evidence of manmade global climate change is based on assumption after assumption about our planet's history.

The only time man has caused climate change was on a local level with dangerous levels of smog, such as during the industrial revolution - damage which reversed itself naturally after our factories were improved. China is the only place I know of that is still doing damage like that, and there is no evidence that they are damaging our atmosphere on a global level

The climate changes all the time, but the fact is we have no solid reason to blame it on humanity

[BlueCoyote]

Yes. And that's not a question anymore. The science is out and very clear on the matter. The debating is over. At this point, anyone who doesn't believe in the human impact of climate change makes himself look like an uneducated fool and will be remembered along with the same people who used to deny that the sun is the center of our solar system.

[RidingForever2]

How exactly were humans responsible for global climate change that occurred prior to human existence?

[BlueCoyote]

@RidingForever2 The type of long-term climate change that occurred previous to human industrial activity is completely incomparable to the type of extreme, sudden changes that we have brought about. This is why "global climate change" is a very misleading term. "Global climate disruption" would be more accurate. During the past 150 years, our planet has heated up more one 1 degree on average. In some areas of the world, it's almost 2 degrees already. That alone tells you that it's not natural. Such drastic changes have never occurred before in a comparably short period of time.

[BlueCoyote]

@RidingForever2 Furthermore, the whole thing is actually very straightforward: it's simple bookkeeping. If you add up the increase of CO2 and other relevant gases in the higher atmosphere and compare it to the decrease, there used to be a balance between the two. However, now that we have human activity, our atmosphere keeps building up these gases because it can't get rid of them fast enough. This development is further strengthened by the fact that we burn huge areas of precious rain forest around the world.
For a long time, this building up of CO2 and other gases was okay but now we have reached a tipping point. Planets work like giant ships. It takes a long time until you even realize that the ship is getting of course but once it is, it's hard to get it back on course.
And a run-away green house effect is not some theoretical concept, it is observable in nature. All you need to do is look at Venus, where the balance broke down at one point in the planet's history.

[BlueCoyote]

But let Neil deGrasse Tyson explain it for me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VUPIX7yEOM

[LittleSally]

Primarily?
Nope...
Sorry, I voted for B... but it's not extremely natural... it's just something that's meant to happen - we're already a little late for a huge cataclysm... (as it has happened for millions of years before... every once in a while - usually exactly spaced apart - that's why I say we're due for one soon- there has been a cataclysm)...
So no... it's for the most part natural, but a bit man-made as well.

[themetalhead]

I think we play a huge part in it. though I do also think that a small part of it is natural. unfortunately humans have been making it much worse than it should. We're taking up land with landfills, taking away the ozone layer , taking down trees that provide us with the clean air we need, polluting our waters, etc, it all ties in to the global climate change in my opinion.

[Anonymous]

Primarily? I am not sure of.

Demonstrated to have negative climate impact in certain situations? Yes.

[Cammy137]

I think humans have contributed to climate change and certainly aspects of it are entirely due to humans but global climate change was going to happen regardless of human activity

[AlwaysBelieving]

I say between choice A and B. If you look in the past, the earth goes in cycles. Humans are just speeding up the process by a factor of 38 - 40 (current average) times. The factor has actually gone down since the US industrial revolution. Different areas of the Earth also have different multiplier factors

[cybersamurai]

Yes. Millions of years ago, there was a lot of greenhouse gasses in our environment.
Overtime, these carbon based molecules were filtered by plants, these plants (fern) were buried underground, making environment very low in greenhouse gasses.
Overtime, these plants turned into petroleum, coal etc. Humans dug them out and have been using as fuel, resulting in greenhouse gasses being released. It took thousands of years to eliminate greenhouse gasses from atmosphere, but humans, in last 50 years, have released almost 50% of petroleum, resulting in massive increase in greenhouse gases causing temperature rise.

[NickoN]

no, global climate change is a made up scheme by reach bankers to charge us even more.
practically, they want to charge us for oxygen we breathe.

Just look who are main proponents of climate changes and every each of them is either a banker or a politician.

[Chiral]

I don't see why warming the planet is a bad thing anyway. I think it would be net positive.

[janna_jcb]

The sea levels could rise which could lead to big areas of land disappearing, all the people in the deserts would have to move bc the deserts wouldn’t be liveable anymore. Just two of the many things why it’s bad

[Chiral]

If you look where the land masses are distributed around the globe at this point in geological time you've got a lot of land near or over the poles. Warming would make vast stretches of land that is currently frozen and lifeless, habitable.

[janna_jcb]

Good point

[COCOCHANEL]

interesting

[Political_dude]

@Chiral I don't think this is a good idea. North pole is just a frozen ice. If it melts, we get ocean not land. Also you're talking about drowning cities like New York, Mumbai, etc for super cold (-49) and undeveloped land

[Chiral]

Sure, there are costs, but I don't think it's obvious that they outweigh the benefits, especially the more long term you consider. The North Pole is frozen sea but you have a lot of land in Russia, Canada, alaska, Greenland and the south Pole is an entire continent.

[Chiral]

Aristoriana: if you ever develop a genuine interest in the area you claim to be an expert in you may be interested in this: en.m.wikipedia.org/.../Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth

[Chiral]

@BlueCoyote I cannot post anymore in reply to aristorianas opinion as she blocked me.

[Chiral]

@BlueCoyote I applaud your enthusiasm for science and your willingness to embrace subject matter outside your chosen fields of study but unfortunately by showing no appreciation of the scientific method or the spirit in which scientific enquiry is made, you are adding to the problem of ignorance and misunderstanding in the public' perception of climate science. Don't you see how weak it makes your case appear when you have to block someone for pointing out something as uncontroversial as a few facts on a wiki page that you had clearly never encountered before?

[BlueCoyote]

I agree the blocking was unnecessary... that's why I haven't blocked you. I understand what you're saying and I think it would have been better for her to simply not reply anymore (if she doesn't want to continue the discussion). However, I also understand her annoyance. Because yes, the issue is uncontroversial.

Also, I should maybe add that personally, I'm not interested in policing private opinions. If you're just some dude, you can think about climate change whatever you want. You can also think about evolution whatever you want. That's fine by me and that's your right. What I find highly problematic and dangerous is when people in power make decisions based on ideas that are simply not true, scientifically (such as Trump, who claims that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese).

[Chiral]

I assure you that I'm not in any position of power and neither will I be any time in the future. I was going to say the fact that I'm on gag should make that obvious, but then considered some of Trump's appearances on social media and realised that's not necessarily the case.

[BlueCoyote]

Haha, then we're all good ;-)

[Chiral]

Just to be clear, I'm not arguing that climate change is not real or is not being currently driven by human activity, I agree that much is largely uncontroversial. What I object to is the lack of honesty in the refusal to acknowledge that the utility this represents to humankind in the long term is almost completely unknown. For me this is crucial but as demonstrated here it's something no one seems interested in even acknowledging let alone attempting to quantify.

[Chiral]

I see the consensus view among climate scientists similar to the consensus view that you would get from any medical professional that "drugs are bad". Although it's understood that alcohol does far more damage than say mdma, you're not going to hear a health care professional publicly advise anything other than abstinence because the truth is complex and they want to convey a simple message. This isn't science though, it is politics, and in the end undermines trust and confidence in the advice that is being given.

[BlueCoyote]

What would be the utility of climate change though? Having more beach days?

[Chiral]

No, it is the enormous amount of land that would become habitable because of the expanse of the Asian continental landmass far north as well as the entire continent at the south Pole. At this time the Equatorial regions are largely ocean. Also the huge amount of fresh water frozen at the south would enter the water cycle which with high co2 levels would benefit agriculture

[BlueCoyote]

Uhm, no, that's not really true. First of all, the arctic doesn't have any land. That's just ice. Once it's all frozen, it will just be ocean. As for the antarctic: every inch of land you gain at the antarctic will be an inch of land you lose somewhere else. In fact, there will be a net loss of land because ice is more compact than water. And even if it was a net-zero balance, what's the point of that? Do you want to root up your entire life and move to a completely empty, tundra-like continent because your home town has been flooded? I don't see any benefit in that.
As for fresh water entering the water cycle: the problem is that this will happen very unequally. This is what climate scientists have calculated and predict. Instead of every spot on earth receiving a tad more rainfall, there will be regions with constant flooding and thunderstorm similar to Katrina while other regions will be extremely arid and deserts will expand.

[Chiral]

The North Pole itself is not land but get a globe and look at the distribution of land. Its heavily weighted towards northern areas - the siberian, northern Canadian / alaskan and Greenland land masses. Going south towards the Caribbean / atlantic and Pacific Equatorial regions the land thins out and its open ocean. If you have an approximate inverted triangular shaped piece of land, then warm from the Equatorial regions outwards the narrow land mass that gets too hot is more than compensated for by the broader area that thaws, even if net land is lost around the edges due to rising oceans.

[Chiral]

There's also the fact that we are tropical creatures ourselves and heating billions of artificial environments for us to carry our natural environment into the inhospitable northern latitudes is a luxury that comes at massive cost of energy. I live in the UK and if I was just set down now outside with only what I'm wearing and had no access to fossil fueled heated environments I would be dead in a couple of hours.

[BlueCoyote]

We're not really tropical creatures but like you said yourself, such a move to the north would come at a massive cost. Nevermind the fact that even if Greenland or northern Canada become ice-free, that's still tundra. Do you want to live in the tundra? I certainly don't.

It therefore seems far more reasonable to protect what we have now. It's the same as the people who are talking about finding new planets for humanity to live on. I love astronomy and scientific research but I think our goal number one should be to keep THIS planet intact. There's only one like it.

[Chiral]

Well I would call a creature that could not survive anywhere outside the tropics without specially adapted heated environments and or synthetic skins and furs tropical.

Why are you refusing to acknowledge that as the whole region warms, the habitable land will expand outwards smoothly? It's not going to go from temperate to tundra as soon as you step over an imaginary line.

The predictions that desserts will get drier and flooded areas get worse are just wild guesses. They have no accurate models that can predict such specifics with any confidence. It's far too complex and chaotic a system and it's not well understood.

[BlueCoyote]

You're wrong, there are accurate models. Moreover, it's already happening. To give you an example, the Sahara dessert is growing about 3km every single year. The same goes for flooding. The Florida keys are currently experiencing flooding every spring/summer. It has become so bad that some cities in Florida are now considering to build a ridiculously expensive draining system. But that won't help either because in 20-30 years, southern Florida will be uninhabitable. There are already a few small Pacific islands that have gone under water and whose inhabitants had to be evacuated permanently.

As for the northern regions: But you were talking specifically about the areas that are currently still covered in ice. That's mainly Greenland and some parts of northern Canada. Greenland will never be 20 degrees C., it will always be tundra, regardless of warming.
And again, do YOU want to move there? You act like land shortage was a problem, it's not. Most of the land in the world isn't used.

[Chiral]

It's almost as if you are suggesting that warming the planet would make it less hospitable to life. That is obviously absurd though. This planet has had no permanent ice at the poles for 80% of the time and those much warmer times have brought the greatest abundance of life. It was during such periods when the fossil fuel reserves we're now using were living tropical forests that covered a wide band around an earth teeming with life.

[BlueCoyote]

Yes, that's precisely what I'm suggesting and that's also what the scientific community suggests. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of global warming. Like I said earlier, the warming by means of burning fossil fuels cannot possibly be compared to the natural warming that happened over thousands of years. Within just a few decades, we have been releasing the amount of CO2 into our atmosphere that was stored up over MILLIONS of years. It's common sense that this can't be good.
And like I also said earlier, "global warming" or "global climate change" are actually misnomers. "Global climate disruption" would be far more accurate. The problem of global warming is not that it's getting warmer. The problem are all the massively negative consequences this warming has. The weather extremes, the destruction of ecosystems, the wars... I mean, Astoriana and me already listed all these things to you.

[Chiral]

Maybe I am wrong. I need to have a closer look at it before I say any more.

[CubsterShura]

It's December and still not cold here. I blame global warming.

[Political_dude]

Read the question again. I'm not asking if global warming is real or fake. Is it man made or natural?

[CubsterShura]

Man made.

[Political_dude]

OK!.

[Chaz269]

"Primarily responsible"? No. There's plenty of evidence that the planet went through natural warming and cooling cycles even before mankind walked this earth. There is also abundant evidence that proves our presence and, frankly, our avarice & ignorance are contributing to exponentially higher volumes of greenhouse gas emissions than any period in the recorded history of the planet.

[Astoriana]

As an environmental engineer, the ignorance here is painful.

[JuanFrank7]

Ignorance normally is painful some cases worse than others

[BlueCoyote]

I can only imagine because I'm not an expert in the field and it's already painful to me...

[Chiral]

@Astoriana I'm not looking to win arguments and I'm not a climate scientist. I would welcome any arguments that demonstrate the ignorance of the opinion I've given so please don't hesitate to explain where I'm going wrong.

[Astoriana]

@Chiral upsetting the balance of the planet will be a net negative. Currently habitable land will be unlivable. Oceans will rise and sink most of the eastern seaboard, and all of the Caribbean. Deserts will expand, including the one in America. All of the current breadbasket of the central US will become a desert. Water scarcity will kill thousands by the day. Increasing temperatures creates more extreme weather conditions, including more floods and droughts, severely impacting our ability to grow food.

So tell me, how is any of this a net positive?

[Chiral]

Well it clearly isn't but that's because you excluded all the positives.

[Astoriana]

@Chiral darling, there aren’t any. There’s very little landmass in the Arctic. You can’t just north and hope for the best. There’s also no topsoil. How do you propose we survive in a place with very little surface area and no way to grow food?

[Astoriana]

*head north

[Chiral]

My dearest @Astoriana, you probably thought that I would be annoyed and irritated by you calling me darling, that I would feel you were condescending to me. Well you underestimated my vanity I'm afraid: the slightest interest shown in me by a female, even if purely in jest, and I instantly lose all interest in whatever intellectual argument we were having.

[Astoriana]

Plus, asker, from a recent survey of climate science (specifically academic research published in academic journals) related to climate change, 96-97% of authors are in agreement that climate change has an anthropogenic cause. The ones who do not agree have ties to ExxonMobil and/or the Koch foundation.

[JuanFrank7]

Then go ahead and take your leave now

[Astoriana]

@Chiral you can go now if you’re not going to take this seriously.

[Chiral]

@Astoriana That's better. As I see it, the question of how negative warming would be, after taking into proper consideration the significant benefits is one that is not properly addressed. It's important because the costs of imposing regulation and carbon quotas is very real and is felt immediately.

My understanding is that the current climate of earth is not typical. There are icehouse periods with a very long cycle within which ice ages occur with greater frequency.

[Chiral]

We are currently in an icehouse period although between ice ages. For the vast majority of geological history, there has been no permanent ice at either pole and the earth has been far warmer than it is now. In view of this I don't see the justification for treating the current climate as some optimal state, divergence from which would inevitably by negative as you seem to be implying.

[Astoriana]

@Chiral false. Bye.

[Astoriana]

We break the number of record high temperatures every year. But yeah, we’re in an icebox period. 🙄

[BlueCoyote]

@Chiral I have to correct @Astoriana in one important detail, which ironically makes her case even stronger: it's not 97% of authors who agree (this could be viewed as an "appeal to authority" fallacy), it's 97% of scientific ARTICLES that have been published on this topic that agree. In other words, of ALL the field experiments, observations, calculations etc. that have been made, 97% came to the exact same result: global climate change is largely caused by humans. This is an insanely high number. There are more articles that disagree on relativity and yet we take it as a scientific fact.

Also, @Astoriana has ONLY pointed out the IMMEDIATE causes of climate change to you. She didn't even say anything about all the indirect ones. Example: there's so many right-wingers currently crying about the "refugee crisis" in Europe. If you are one of them, I would like to say this: you better start working on climate change solutions cuz YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHING YET. Climate change will (cont.)

[BlueCoyote]

lead to flooding and desertification as Astoriana has explained. These environmental changes will lead to MASSIVE migrations on a scale humanity has not experienced for thousands of years. Now we're getting a "a couple" of Syrians and Iraqis. What do you think will happen when all of Saudi Arabia and Iran become uninhabitable because it's constantly too hot? What if Bangladesh gets flooded? Bangladesh is in the same position as the Netherlands but they've got over 100 MILLION people. Good luck finding a new place for them. These migrations will lead to bitter wars of scarce resources, resentment and hatred in the western world, which in turn lead to anti-democratic, totalitarian government forms, pogroms, the abandonment of civil rights etc. We are heading towards a freaking canyon with full speed and frankly, we might already be past the point of no return. I don't mean to be melodramatic here but I can say that climate change will make all other global problems look like peanuts.

[Astoriana]

@BlueCoyote thanks! I blocked him for being ridiculous but thanks!

[BlueCoyote]

No problemo

[Astoriana]

I just think it’s funny how a Masters degree is somehow less valuable than a fucking Wikipedia article. It says something interesting about the American public, n’est-ce pas?

[BlueCoyote]

Absolutely. And I feel your pain about that one particularly strongly because I experience it myself a lot on this site. I'm not completely done with my Masters but almost. I'm doing two majors in the realm of liberal arts (English and History) and there it's even worse. When it comes to natural sciences, there's at least a minimal respect sometimes. At least that's my impression. When it's liberal arts fields, there's so many idiots who think they know just as much as me or even more just because they've recently watched a documentary about something. It's particularly strong with History. You wouldn't believe how often people (even in real life) try to teach me something about Henry XIII. or the French Revolution or god knows what. And in relation to English (linguistics) I often have to explain to right-wing people that there is no such thing as a "pure language" that's being corrupted by foreign influences. I try to tell them that languages always change. That's a (cont.)

[BlueCoyote]

scientific fact. But then they would just say: "No, you're wrong. If xy language didn't corrupt my language, it would be pure". They think it's just a matter of opinion (like with climate change too). And yes, that's iiiiincredibly obnoxious.

[Astoriana]

@BlueCoyote I would move off into a cave to be away from the idiots if it didn’t make my bum knee ache from the dampness.

[TripleAce]

Probably not lol
I mean the earth itself goes through these changes. Sure humans contribute and speed up the process but not the cause at all

Venus? Obviously lol

[Lovemycountryboy]

Yes we are responsible because the liter and pollution is our faults to including cutting down trees where animals live is our faults to

[Anonymous]

The impacts of the human activities and less knowledge about sustainability are also effect of the global climate change we are experiencing. Remember that our Earth is just only one and we should protect and love it.

[Nivinxus]

I wouldn't say primarily responsible for global climate change as it is natural. But I'd say they are responsible for accelerating it.

[HateYourCellphone]

We are creating climate change and it is also normal.

[AlwaysBelieving]

Pretty much.

[SarahsSummer]

It’s a combination but the human element plays a major role.

[Anonymous]

Depends how you look at it. Do you think or believe that pollution caused by humans have a significant impact on the climate and environment? If you do, then it is to is to you.

[AGuyWhoKnowsALittle]

I think it plays apart but through carbon dating it looks like its a natural phenomenon for carbon levels in the air to fluctuate.

[Cody01]

Human activity is speeding it up.
Some of these comments are triggering me.

[Clyde_123]

Yes it is primarily responsible for global climate change, People should become more aware on how to control it

[NearlyNapping]

Most likely yea. That's what the experts are saying and I have no reason to not believe them. I seriously don't understand why it's so much of a controversy.

[Pluto4prez]

I'm not an expert so I'm going to go with the opinion of the overwhelming majority of scientists who've spent their lives studying this stuff and say yes.