Climate Change - Fact or Fiction?
 

I want to get a debate going on why or why not people think climate change is or isn't occurring.

The fact is that temperatures are actually cooling in many places in the world with data sets used for scientific studies not collaborating with repeated studies. There is no evidence to suggest that scientists 'for' the climate change theory have taken into account that cities have grown in the past 100 years dramatically, which would in turn increase the warming such as from the use of air conditioning. Funnily enough scientist's studies are often only focus on urban areas which are lined with statistical uncertainties, whereas they could be focusing on rural areas to determine the effectual changes with temperature over time.

I propose that there is a possibility that we are slowly heading into a glacial cycle (cooling period) and out of an interglacial cycle (warming period), which would explain the temperature decreases in the past decade.

If anyone finds this topic really interesting I highly recommend you read Air Con - A seriously inconvient truth about global warming by Ian Wishart.

change is inevitable, it's the only way to measure growth.

i figure the actual 'truth' about climate change is somewhere between the nay-sayers that want to believe none of their actions have had any effect on the environment and the environmentalists who are certain our actions towards the environment will be catastrophic if we don't keep funding their research so they don't have to get real jobs in offices.

Wasn't there some cooling in the 50s?

i happen to be a conservationist that isn't quite as naive as the gung-ho Al Gore-types about global warming.

there's no doubt in my mind that climate change is certainly occurring -- but i believe that human beings have little to say about in the matter. not that i feel conservation efforts aren't necessary (we need to preserve our planet for our posterity), but that if our planet's going to get warmer, it's going to do so irrespective of humanity's involvement.

you see, our planet is mediated by oceanic currents which control almost 95% of the climate we see on land. and those certainly change periodically, altering climates with them, and without the discretion or approval of humans behind them.

fiction.

We as humans only know have records dating back to the 1800's. So 150 years or less. It is more likely that the earth goes through natural cycles of climate change, instead of some stupid theory that our technology is polluting the earth.

DH is right, the records that are most accurate are tree ring data and glacial data. Temperature is not an appropriate indicator of climate change without use of other methods to reconstruct the past climates.

Yeah, **** scientific evidence that suggests we are actually doing harm! I only want to have blind faith in overly egotistical media that doesn't care about evidence!

So what are you saying exactly?

I definitely believe in global warming, and with the backing of the majority of the scientific community, I'm pretty comfortable in my belief. Generally I think the reaction against climate change is driven by lobbyists and the media, without any real scientific merit to their argument.

Even on its own, the graph that links the atmospheric carbon dioxide and average temps is quite convincing (going back hundreds of thousands of years, hmmm DH). It's hardly a coincidence and those are hard figures, which can't really be spun.
Jesus you are an idiot. Regardless of climate change, it is pretty much irrefutable that human technology pollutes the earth.

He disagrees with the popular notion in the first few responses but is not smart or articulate enough to construct a reply so he's just going to call everyone else ignorant.

I don't think there is any argument that the climate isn't changing, however I also agree it's unlikely there is much we are doing or could do to impact. There is lots of scientific evidence of much more severe climate change predating humans.

I have no doubt we should strive to be an environmentally friendly society, simply because it's the right thing to do however not because we're saving the world.