Is Global Warming a Myth?

Last year during the summer, I mentioned how my online friend doesn't believe in global warming, because we're currently in a cooling phase, according to a book from the 70's, which he owns. You guys provided me evidence that global warming does exist and how that book was outdated, so I accepted your words and believed in global warming again. That is, until I found this video last week (warning: strong language), so now I'm unsure again. According to the video, global warming was never a problem to begin with, because predictions from environmentalists in regards to global warming destroying our cities have been proven wrong various times, 1st world countries are trying to discourage other countries from developing to prevent competition, solar energy is completely impractical against the elements, and the world is currently going on a mini-Ice Age. I've seen this guy's other videos, and they're pretty spot-on with what's going on in the world (modern pop music making people dumber, political correctness, made-up sexual orientations). And just like those other videos, this video in question also provides evidence to back up its argument. Do you think this video is enough to prove that global warming is a myth and that we should continue using fossil fuels?

One video does not disprove scientific evidence. One youtube video made by some random guy against thousands of scientific papers is no match. These people feed on the fact that most of the population will never read a scientific paper and therefore are open to any claim as long as it's well presented and serious-sounding enough.

But hey, since you have brough up youtube videos, I suggest you watch potholer54's videos. Guy is an actual BBC science correspondent who bothers listing sources and evidence in all of his videos, and has made several ones explaining why global warming is very certainly surely 99.99% probably real:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL82yk73N8eoX-Xobr_TfHsWPfAIyI7VAP

Also, he has one specifically addressing cases in which people cherry-pick data to claim that "there has been no global warming in the past 20 years" or the "ice age" myth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUk0tm47yr8

I'll come post and back up my point later, but no, Global Warming is not a myth.

And I wouldn't really say that video offers evidence at all. Very cherrypicked arguments with no links or sources mentioned whatsoever in the description and in the video neither, really. While some webpages are recognizable, mostly the parts about news, every image conveniently hides the source of the information, including URLs. He could've invented the information, put it on a webpage and then use it as "evidence" for this video, for all we know.

Any serious video with the purpose to inform, to teach, to persuade, will have the sources listed in the description. It's very hard to take the video seriously at all.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Went.

If you want to know whether or not climate change ("global warming" is kinda misleading) is real, the right people to turn to are scientists. And according to this, "97.1% (of scientists) endorsed the ... position that humans are causing global warming." Not even "97.1% of scientists believe that climate change is real," because they consider that to be a given based on empirical evidence, but that we caused it. On literally any other topic, when 97.1% of scientists say something, we tend to believe them.

The reason there's so much doubt on this subject is thanks to the media making it sound as if this is still up for debate. John Oliver did a great little segment on this, and he says it far better than I can.

Pinkie-Dawn said:

According to the video, global warming was never a problem to begin with, because predictions from environmentalists in regards to global warming destroying our cities have been proven wrong various times, 1st world countries are trying to discourage other countries from developing to prevent competition, solar energy is completely impractical against the elements, and the world is currently going on a mini-Ice Age.

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I'm not going to watch the video, but the idea that "science was wrong about X, therefore it is wrong about Y" is ridiculous and basically goes against everything science is. The idea that scientists would want to use climate change to keep other countries from developing makes no sense, especially since such countries have found other ways to become viable, such as by not having laws about wages, so North Americans go to them for manufacturing, call centre and other jobs. But we're talking about economists VS scientists - again, scientists don't really focus on how other countries are doing.

Also, if you want to talk about alternative energy, consider the fact that the oil industry has everything to lose by allowing greener competitors to thrive. We know oil companies are supremely powerful and will do anything to retain their near-monopoly on the energy market, so they have every motivation to discredit climate change so people won't want to change to greener energy.

Pinkie-Dawn said:

I've seen this guy's other videos, and they're pretty spot-on with what's going on in the world (modern pop music making people dumber, political correctness, made-up sexual orientations).

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Just because you happen to like and agree with his other videos (which sound like they're very subjective if they're about political correctness and "made-up" sexual orientations), doesn't mean this one is correct. That's confirmation bias.


~Psychic

I was skeptical for a while, but I saw some really crazy (but factual statistics) that blew me away, so I think believe global warming is a real issue. But to what extent, I do not know. And I dont think it is just humans' fault- i think its the environment too.

Global warming's not a myth, no. Global temperatures and carbon emissions have both been on the rise for decades, if not more than a century now, and there's enough reputable sources to confirm that.

The issue comes with public interpretation of it. "Global warming", to the average person, sounds like the planet is warming up by several degrees a year and that within a few years the planet will be unbearably hot and we'll all suffer heatstroke. Really it's more like tenths of a degree every year iirc. Actual climate change takes a while y'know. Then a lot of people seem to think that our current warming trend is solely caused by humanity's use of fossil fuels, when while yes it is a major contributing factor and is possibly accelerating the process, it's not like global warming/climate change wouldn't have happened if people never made use of fossil fuels. It's quite natural for the planet to warm up and cool down all on it's own. It's done so many times over the course of geologic history, when humans, y'know, didn't exist. Global warming and climate change are both kind of poor terms to use really, though I'm not sure what would be a better term to use either.

The reason anyway I think why it's a cause for concern is that the majority of the world's population is in places that are very close to sea level. Global warming melts ice sheets and sea level rises and then those cities are underwater for who knows how long. Those same cities are particularly susceptible to hurricanes, which grow stronger when the ocean water is warmer. Not to mention that fossil fuels are nonrenewable and we should probably start looking for good alternatives for when the day comes that we run out of them.

Nah said:

The reason anyway I think why it's a cause for concern is that the majority of the world's population is in places that are very close to sea level. Global warming melts ice sheets and sea level rises and then those cities are underwater for who knows how long. Those same cities are particularly susceptible to hurricanes, which grow stronger when the ocean water is warmer. Not to mention that fossil fuels are nonrenewable and we should probably start looking for good alternatives for when the day comes that we run out of them.

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And yet according to the video, hurricanes have actually gotten weaker, and the predictions on what year cities close to sea level will be underwater back in the mid-2000's never occurred. Some would argue that we've started using less fossil fuels since to prevent the predicted scenario from happening, but it could also be that mass media was exaggerating the pace of global warming.

And I wouldn't really say that video offers evidence at all. Very cherrypicked arguments with no links or sources mentioned whatsoever in the description and in the video neither, really. While some webpages are recognizable, mostly the parts about news, every image conveniently hides the source of the information, including URLs. He could've invented the information, put it on a webpage and then use it as "evidence" for this video, for all we know.

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We could always look for those webpages he displayed ourselves and read the whole articles to find out if he's cherry-picking or not.

Or maybe it was storm frequency not intensity. I honestly only did a quick search but there's these 2 graphs:

Showing a slight downward trend in average storm intensity over the past ~25 years


And this one showing a slight upward trend in the number of storms per year for the past 150 or so years.

Either way that's not exactly a good thing.

Dunno how much farther I can go with this though, my knowledge on a lot of things is kinda limited.

We could always look for those webpages he displayed ourselves and read the whole articles to find out if he's cherry-picking or not.

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How exactly do you propose though that we find those specific pages amongst the....probably billions of pages that exist on the internet? He kinda should've provided links to his sources in the first place really.

If you don't think global warming is real and caused by humans, you need an education. Period. Only a truly dim person could look at the correlation between rising CO2 levels in our atmosphere and the start of industrial activity and say "nah, we're not doing anything wrong." The US is the only major country that has a political party that denies human involvement in climate change, and I think that says a lot about us as a nation. It's sickening.

If 97+% of scientists agree on something, I'm going to believe them. I mean, we can see it around us, Summers are hotter and Winters are colder. It's no surprise that spraying gas into the air and guzzling oil out of the ground is a bad thing. It makes perfect sense that it all adds up. I'm no scientists, but I do trust what they have to say about it.

Imho, climate change is happening. What's causing it is a bit of a gray area. On one hand, the Earth is overdue for a mass extinction event. On the other, there is absolutely no way that human pollution is causing no/minimal harm to the environment. I'm sure you've all seen/heard about air pollution issues in Chinese cities where people have to wear face masks so they don't develop lung cancer. But one thing people don't seem to mention is the impact of technology as well. I read somewhere that doctors/scientists are actually worried about the increasing use in technology, especially mobile phones. The radio waves that phones constantly give off is said to be equivalent to putting your head near a microwave (best tip I can give is don't have your phone near you when you're not using it, and DON'T PUT IT UNDER YOUR PILLOW AT NIGHT!). Sorry I went a bit off-topic, but the point I wanted to raise is that the ever-increasing presence of radio waves in populated areas is just as bad as polluting the environment. Now to leave a quote I heard which I love; "If all the insects were to disappear from the Earth, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish." -Jonas Salk

It was not that long ago that we had three hurricanes, each stronger than Hurricane Katrina in it's own right, all converging over the same ocean by Hawaii. That is a meteorological event that has never before been seen in all of recorded human history.

The polar ice caps are melting at an alarming rate.

Countries are experiencing droughts, floods and storms of extremes that I honestly find difficult to comprehend. My own country's climate has shifted to become drastically more tropical than it used to be (plus the horrible droughts).

Well over 90% of scientists in the relevant fields acknowledge that humans are having an effect on the climate. I honestly do not know why some people find it so hard to acknowledge something that is happening right before their eyes.

You can argue that climate change is a natural process, it actually is. Our planet has gone through numerous periods of climate change. What is not natural in the speed and severity at which it is changing now, because of human impact. We need to do something about our horrendous influence on the world around us because pretty soon we'll look like Venus and that won't be so good for life on Earth.

Pokemon Game Fan said:

If 97+% of scientists agree on something, I'm going to believe them. I mean, we can see it around us, Summers are hotter and Winters are colder. It's no surprise that spraying gas into the air and guzzling oil out of the ground is a bad thing. It makes perfect sense that it all adds up. I'm no scientists, but I do trust what they have to say about it.

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Not necessarily true, the video has argued that these scientists have actually lied about their scientific research by changing the numbers on their statistics, out of pressure from politicians perhaps. In other words, scientists are just as untrustworthy as environmentalists and Luddites.

Pinkie-Dawn said:

Not necessarily true, the video has argued that these scientists have actually lied about their scientific research by changing the numbers on their statistics, out of pressure from politicians perhaps. In other words, scientists are just as untrustworthy as environmentalists and Luddites.

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I haven't watched the mentioned video due to, well, lack of interest, but I am rather loathe to believe in a worldwide cabal of scientists and politicians coming together to fool the planet into believing in climate change.

Pinkie-Dawn said:

Not necessarily true, the video has argued that these scientists have actually lied about their scientific research by changing the numbers on their statistics, out of pressure from politicians perhaps. In other words, scientists are just as untrustworthy as environmentalists and Luddites.

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Except that there are also a ton of politicians who vehemently deny that climate change is real, many of whom are quite powerful and have made all kinds of attempts to discredit them. It's an incredibly weak argument to me. This sounds like pure conjecture - does this Youtuber have any evidence to back up this claim?

Again, I say: on literally any other topic, when 97.1% of scientists say something, we believe them. There is no "oh they must be being pressured by politicians" crap.

Even if we didn't have substantial evidence of these changes to the Earth, shouldn't we want to make a conscious effort to create a more sustainable world and ensure we leave behind a planet that will be safe and fruitful for generations to come? So much of what we've done has been selfish and focused on making money in the short term instead of caring about the long-term affects of our actions. The damage has been done. It's time to change course.

~Psychic

Nah said:

The issue comes with public interpretation of it. "Global warming", to the average person, sounds like the planet is warming up by several degrees a year and that within a few years the planet will be unbearably hot and we'll all suffer heatstroke. Really it's more like tenths of a degree every year iirc. Actual climate change takes a while y'know. Then a lot of people seem to think that our current warming trend is solely caused by humanity's use of fossil fuels, when while yes it is a major contributing factor and is possibly accelerating the process, it's not like global warming/climate change wouldn't have happened if people never made use of fossil fuels. It's quite natural for the planet to warm up and cool down all on it's own. It's done so many times over the course of geologic history, when humans, y'know, didn't exist. Global warming and climate change are both kind of poor terms to use really, though I'm not sure what would be a better term to use either.

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More or less my thoughts on this issue. I remember taking an oceanography class in college and the professor more or less said that during his lecture on climate change. Granted, that was like seven/eight years ago when I took that class, so climate change probably accelerated faster than expected since then.

Climate change is a completely natural thing. The Earth gets warm, then the Earth cools down. It's happened thousands of times since the Earth first appeared. The main reason for this is based on the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. When there is a lot of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse effect that keeps the planet at a livable temperature becomes more intense, and more heat from sunlight gets trapped in the atmosphere.

The problem going on is that, since the industrial revolution, humans have created a pretty massive amount of carbon dioxide. Global warming was already going on before, but now it's moving at an accelerated rate do to an unnatural increase in carbon dioxide. The effects of this acceleration are unknown, but most of the possible scenarios aren't good.

There are probably a billion sources I could find to back up what I say, but I'm hoping this one will be enough.

Psychic pretty much responded to it in the way I wanted to.

Personally, I believe that humans are having SOME impact on the earth's climate as we know it, but on the other hand, the earth does go through warming and cooling cycles. While some scientists like to attribute "global warming" as simply a heating or cooling cycle, there is evidence that human life is changing and having an effect on the climate, although I think that its not quite as much an impact that some would have us believe. That being said, I propose a question. Does it matter?

Psychic said:

Even if we didn't have substantial evidence of these changes to the Earth, shouldn't we want to make a conscious effort to create a more sustainable world and ensure we leave behind a planet that will be safe and fruitful for generations to come? So much of what we've done has been selfish and focused on making money in the short term instead of caring about the long-term affects of our actions. The damage has been done. It's time to change course.

~Psychic

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I thought that Psychic had an interest point, saying that we should try to leave the world a more sustainable place for future generations. Personally, and although its a bit of a negative and cynical view, I honestly believe that humanity will probably wipe itself out for the most part in the next couple hundred years. With nuclear and biochemical weapons becoming more and more powerful, and with science increasing, its only a matter of time before someone with ill intentions gets their hands on one (ISIS or others), and does something stupid. Kicks off WW3, nations take sides, etc. Its a bit of a negative view, but is climate change really our biggest problem at the moment when it comes to leaving a hospitable world for future generations.

Found these sources that support that youtuber's argument about global warming being a sham:

http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html

Q: Dr. Shaviv, your paper 'On climate response to changes in the cosmic ray flux and radiative budget' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; "Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimise". Is this an accurate representation of your paper?
A: "Nope… it is not an accurate representation. The paper supports the idea that cosmic rays affect the climate and that climate sensitivity is low. This means that part of the 20th century should be attributed to the increased solar activity and that 21st century warming under a business as usual scenario should be low (about 1°C). I couldn't write these things more explicitly in the paper because of the refereeing, however, you don't have to be a genius to reach these conclusions from the paper."
Q: Any further comment on the Cook et al. (2013) paper?
A: "Science is not a democracy, even if the majority of scientists think one thing (and it translates to more papers saying so), they aren't necessarily correct."

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Q: Dr. Morner, your paper 'Estimating future sea level changes from past records' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as having; "No Position on AGW". Is this an accurate representation of your paper?
A: "Certainly not correct and certainly misleading. The paper is strongly against AGW, and documents its absence in the sea level observational facts. Also, it invalidates the mode of sea level handling by the IPCC."

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Q: Dr. Carlin, your paper 'A Multidisciplinary, Science-Based Approach to the Economics of Climate Change' is categorized by Cook et al. (2013) as; "Explicitly endorses AGW but does not quantify or minimize". Is this an accurate representation of your paper?
A: "No, if Cook et al's paper classifies my paper, 'A Multidisciplinary, Science-Based Approach to the Economics of Climate Change' as "explicitly endorses AGW but does not quantify or minimize," nothing could be further from either my intent or the contents of my paper. I did not explicitly or even implicitly endorse AGW and did quantify my skepticism concerning AGW. Both the paper and the abstract make this clear. The abstract includes the following statement:
"The economic benefits of reducing CO2 emissions may be about two orders of magnitude less than those estimated by most economists because the climate sensitivity factor (CSF) is much lower than assumed by the United Nations because feedback is negative rather than positive and the effects of CO2 emissions reductions on atmospheric CO2 appear to be short rather than long lasting."
In brief, I argue that human activity may increase temperatures over what they would otherwise have been without human activity, but the effect is so minor that it is not worth serious consideration.

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http://www.express.co.uk/news/scien...NG-six-years-Arctic-north-pole-climate-change

NASA's Operation IceBridge is an airborne survey of polar ice and has finalised two overlapping research campaigns at both the poles.
NASA agrees ice has been lost in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica.
But says the gains elsewhere, which total 200billion tonnes a year, outweigh all these losses of 65billion tonnes a year – leaving a net annual Antarctic ice gain of 135billion tonnes.
Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, which was published in the Journal of Glaciology, said: "Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas."
They also used information on snow accumulation for tens of thousands of years, derived by other scientists from ice cores, to conclude that East Antarctica has been thickening for a very long time.
A spokesman added: "Extra snowfall that began 10,000 years ago has been slowly accumulating on the ice sheet and compacting into solid ice over millennia, thickening the ice in East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica by an average of 0.7 inches (1.7 centimetres) per year.

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/11/freeman_dyson_interview

At America's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dyson was looking at the climate system before it became a hot political issue, over 25 years ago. He provides a robust foreword to a report written by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cofounder Indur Goklany on CO2 – a report published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
An Obama supporter who describes himself as "100 per cent Democrat," Dyson says he is disappointed that the President "chose the wrong side." Increasing CO2 in the atmosphere does more good than harm, he argues, and humanity doesn't face an existential crisis. Climate change, he tells us, "is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?"

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Q: Are climate models getting better? You wrote how they have the most awful fudges, and they only really impress people who don't know about them.
A: I would say the opposite. What has happened in the past 10 years is that the discrepancies between what's observed and what's predicted have become much stronger. It's clear now the models are wrong, but it wasn't so clear 10 years ago. I can't say if they'll always be wrong, but the observations are improving and so the models are becoming more verifiable.
Q: It's now difficult for scientists to have frank and honest input into public debates. Prof Brian Cox, who is the public face of physics in the UK thanks to the BBC, has said he has no obligation to listen to "deniers," or to any other views other than the orthodoxy.
A: That's a problem, but still I find that I have things to say and people do listen to me, and people have no particular complaints. It's very sad that in this country, political opinion parted people's views on climate change. I'm 100 per cent Democrat myself, and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on this issue, and the Republicans took the right side.

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http://www.express.co.uk/news/scien...ate-change-and-says-world-will-soon-cool-down

Dr David Evans says global warming predictions have been vastly exaggerated in error.
The academic from Perth, Australia, who has passed six degrees in applied mathematics, has analysed complex mathematical assumptions widely used to predict climate change and is predicting world temperature will stagnate until 2017 before cooling, with a 'mini ice age' by 2030.
He says fundamental flaws in how future temperatures may rise have been included in the 'standard models' and this has led to inflated mathematical – and therefore temperature – predictions.
He claims to have found two reasons for it being wrongly applied, the first being a vastly over estimated impact on our temperature from CO2.
He said: "There is no empirical evidence that rising levels of carbon dioxide will raise the temperature of the Earth's surface as fast as the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts.
"Yes, CO2 has an effect, but it's about a fifth or tenth of what the IPCC says it is.
"CO2 is not driving the climate; it caused less than 20% of the global warming in the last few decades".
He said the other problem was the predictions had no reflection on changes that have actually been recorded and never saw the current 18-year temperature stagnation we are now in.

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http://www.express.co.uk/news/scien...cade-long-ice-age-predicted-as-sun-hibernates

At the National Astronomy Meeting in Wales, Northumbria University professor Valentina Zharkova said fluctuations an 11-year cycle of solar activity the sun goes through would be responsible for a freeze, the like of which has not been experienced since the 1600s.
From 1645 to 1715 global temperatures dropped due to low solar activity so much that the planet experienced a 70-year ice age known as Maunder Minimum which saw the River Thames in London completely frozen.
Research colleagues Simon Shepherd of Bradford University, Helen Popova of Lomonosov Moscow State University and Sergei Zarkhov of the University of Hull used magnetic field observations from 1976 to 2008 at the Wilcox Solar Observatory at Stanford University.
The theory appears to support claims of researchers who argue Earth will soon experience major global cooling due to lower solar activity as the sun goes into a sustained period of hibernation.
Environmentalists meanwhile claim global temperatures will increase over the period unless we drastically reduce carbon emissions.

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https://ca.news.yahoo.com/tackling-taboo-climate-activists-tender-approach-meat-155844316.html

Chances are that you believe in climate change, but would be furious if someone tried to take away your steak.
"This is one of the most delicate issues with climate protection, because we all have our habits and diet is something quite holy for some people, not to be meddled with," said Jo Leinen, an omnivorous German member of the European Parliament.
Negotiators from nearly 200 countries are focusing mainly on reducing carbon dioxide output from industry in order to limit global warming, rather than on diet.
But the livestock sector is responsible for about 14.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, through cows producing methane and production processes – comparable to all the direct emissions from cars, planes, ships and other transport.
The British think tank Chatham House says that merely applying existing recommendations from health bodies to limit meat consumption would generate a quarter of the emissions reductions needed to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, a key target of the Paris talks.

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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...-climate-deniers/story-e6frg6xf-1227635826746
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-summit-skeptics-idUSKBN0TQ2F220151208

The images of skeptics being hounded by green activists also feed conservative arguments that their critics are afraid of debate. The citizens' activist group Avaaz posted more than a thousand "Wanted" posters across the city featuring the images and names of climate skeptics opposed to a global accord, accusing them of responsibility "for destruction of our future".
Heartland spokesman James Taylor said it showed intolerance.
"The environmental movement doesn't want to have a debate; they just want to put forward a single message that everyone must adhere to," he said.
"When you try to smother different points of view, you disrespect science, and basic human rights."

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http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/03/europe/france-weatherman-sacked-climate/

Philippe Verdier, a meteorologist for France 2, announced his sacking in an online video released Saturday, in which he opened his letter of dismissal before the camera.
In the clip, he says that his book, "Climat Investigation" (Climate Investigation) had earlier led to him being "banned from being on the air, and I received this letter today.
Verdier, who rejects the label "climate skeptic," was initially taken off the air last month following a publicity tour for the book.
The book claims that scientists, politicians and the environmental lobby had generated a "hype" around climate change that amounted to a "global scandal," and made the French unnecessarily fearful.

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I have to thank this user by the name of lisalombs who provided these links in her thread from another forum.