Global warming

Global warming and climate change are terms for the observed century-scale
rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system and its related effects.
Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.
Although the increase of near-surface atmospheric temperature is the measure of
global warming often reported in the popular press, most of the additional energy
stored in the climate system since 1970 has gone into ocean warming. The
remainder has melted ice and warmed the continents and atmosphere. Many of the
observed changes since the 1950s are unprecedented over tens to thousands of
years.

Scientific understanding of global warming is increasing. The

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in 2014 that scientists
were more than 95% certain that global warming is mostly being caused by human
(anthropogenic) activities, mainly increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases
such as carbon dioxide (CO2). Human-made carbon dioxide continues to increase
above levels not seen in hundreds of thousands of years: currently, about half of the
carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels is not absorbed by vegetation
and the oceans and remains in the atmosphere. Climate model projections
summarized in the report indicated that during the 21st century the global surface
temperature is likely to rise a further 0.3 to 1.7 °C (0.5 to 3.1 °F) for their lowest
emissions scenario using stringent mitigation and 2.6 to 4.8 °C (4.7 to 8.6 °F) for
their highest. These findings have been recognized by the national science
academies of the major industrialized nations and are not disputed by any scientific
body of national or international standing.

Future climate change and associated impacts will differ from region to region
around the globe. Anticipated effects include warming global temperature, rising sea
levels, changing precipitation, and expansion of deserts in the subtropics. Warming
is expected to be greater over land than over the oceans and greatest in the Arctic,
with the continuing retreat of glaciers, permafrost and sea ice. Other likely changes
include more frequent extreme weather events including heat waves, droughts,
heavy rainfall with floods and heavy snowfall, ocean acidification; and species
extinctions due to shifting temperature regimes. Effects significant to humans include
the threat to food security from decreasing crop yields and the abandonment of
populated areas due to rising sea levels. Because the climate system has a large
"inertia" and CO2 will stay in the atmosphere for a long time, many of these effects
will not only exist for decades or centuries, but will persist for tens of thousands of
years.

Possible societal responses to global warming include mitigation by

emissions reduction, adaptation to its effects, building systems resilient to its effects,
and possible future climate engineering. Most countries are parties to the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose ultimate
objective is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change. The UNFCCC
have adopted a range of policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and
to assist in adaptation to global warming. Parties to the UNFCCC had agreed that
deep cuts in emissions are required and as first target the future global warming
should be limited to below 2.0 °C (3.6 °F) relative to the pre-industrial level, while the
Paris Agreement of 2015 stated that the parties will also "pursue efforts to" limit the
temperature increase to 1.5 °F (0.8 °C).

Public reactions to global warming and general fears of its effects are also
steadily on the rise, with a global 2015 Pew Research Center report showing a
median of 54% who consider it "a very serious problem". There are, however,
significant regional differences. Notably, Americans and Chinese.
Observed temperature changes

2015 – Warmest Global Year on Record (since 1880) – Colors indicate

temperature anomalies (NASA/NOAA; 20 January 2016).
 Earth has been in radiative imbalance since at least the 1970s, where less
energy leaves the atmosphere than enters it. Most of this extra energy has been
absorbed by the oceans. It is very likely that human activities substantially
contributed to this increase in ocean heat content.

Two millennia of mean surface temperatures according to different

reconstructions from climate proxies, each smoothed on a decadal scale, with the
instrumental temperature record overlaid in black.

NOAA graph of Global Annual Temperature Anomalies 1950–2012, showing the El

Niño Southern Oscillation
 The global average (land and ocean) surface temperature shows a warming
of 0.85 [0.65 to 1.06] °C in the period 1880 to 2012, based on multiple independently
produced datasets. Earth's average surface temperature rose by 0.74±0.18°C over
the period 1906–2005. The rate of warming almost doubled for the last half of that
period (0.13±0.03 °C per decade, versus 0.07±0.02 °C per decade).

The average temperature of the lower troposphere has increased between

0.13 and 0.22 °C (0.23 and 0.40 °F) per decade since 1979, according to satellite
temperature measurements. Climate proxies show the temperature to have been
relatively stable over the one or two thousand years before 1850, with regionally
varying fluctuations such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.

The warming that is evident in the instrumental temperature record is

consistent with a wide range of observations, as documented by many independent
scientific groups. Examples include sea level rise, widespread melting of snow and
land ice, increased heat content of the oceans, increased humidity, and the earlier
timing of spring events, e.g., the flowering of plants. The probability that these
changes could have occurred by chance is virtually zero.

Trends

Temperature changes vary over the globe. Since 1979, land temperatures
have increased about twice as fast as ocean temperatures (0.25 °C per decade
against 0.13 °C per decade). Ocean temperatures increase more slowly than land
temperatures because of the larger effective heat capacity of the oceans and
because the ocean loses more heat by evaporation. Since the beginning of
industrialisation the temperature difference between the hemispheres has increased
due to melting of sea ice and snow in the North. Average arctic temperatures have
been increasing at almost twice the rate of the rest of the world in the past 100 years;
however arctic temperatures are also highly variable. Although more greenhouse
gases are emitted in the Northern than Southern Hemisphere this does not
contribute to the difference in warming because the major greenhouse gases persist
long enough to mix between hemispheres.

The thermal inertia of the oceans and slow responses of other indirect effects mean
that climate can take centuries or longer to adjust to changes in forcing. Climate
commitment studies indicate that even if greenhouse gases were stabilized at year
2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) would still occur.

Global temperature is subject to short-term fluctuations that overlay long-term trends

and can temporarily mask them. The relative stability in surface temperature from
2002 to 2009, which has been dubbed the global warming hiatus by the media and
some scientists, is consistent with such an episode. 2015 updates to account for
differing methods of measuring ocean surface temperature measurements show a
positive trend over the recent decade.

Warmest years

15 of the top 16 warmest years have occurred since 2000. While record-
breaking years can attract considerable public interest, individual years are less
significant than the overall trend. So some climatologists have criticized the attention
that the popular press gives to "warmest year" statistics; for example, Gavin Schmidt
stated "the long-term trends or the expected sequence of records are far more
important than whether any single year is a record or not."

2015 was not only the warmest year on record, it broke the record by the
largest margin by which the record has been broken. 2015 was the 39th consecutive
year with above-average temperatures. Ocean oscillations like El Niño Southern
Oscillation (ENSO) can affect global average temperatures, for example, 1998
temperatures were significantly enhanced by strong El Niño conditions. 1998
remained the warmest year until 2005 and 2010 and the temperature of both of these
years was enhanced by El Niño periods. The large margin by which 2015 is the
warmest year is also attributed to another strong El Niño. However, 2014 was ENSO
neutral. According to NOAA and NASA, 2015 had the warmest respective months
on record for 10 out of the 12 months. The average temperature around the globe
was 1.62˚F (0.90˚C) or 20% above the twentieth century average. In a first,
December 2015 was also the first month to ever reach a temperature 2 degrees
Fahrenheit above normal for the planet.

Initial causes of temperature changes (external forcings)

Greenhouse effect schematic showing energy flows between space, the

atmosphere, and Earth's surface. Energy exchanges are expressed in watts per
square meter (W/m2).

This graph, known as the Keeling Curve, documents the increase of

atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from 1958–2015. Monthly CO2
measurements display seasonal oscillations in an upward trend; each year's
maximum occurs during the Northern Hemisphere's late spring, and declines during
its growing season as plants remove some atmospheric CO2.

The climate system can warm or cool in response to changes in external

forcings. These are "external" to the climate system but not necessarily external to
Earth. Examples of external forcings include changes in atmospheric composition
(e.g., increased concentrations of greenhouse gases), solar luminosity, volcanic
eruptions, and variations in Earth's orbit around the Sun.

Greenhouse gases

The greenhouse effect is the process by which absorption and emission of

infrared radiation by gases in a planet's atmosphere warm its lower atmosphere and
surface. It was proposed by Joseph Fourier in 1824, discovered in 1860 by John
Tyndall, was first investigated quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896, and was
developed in the 1930s through 1960s by Guy Stewart Callendar.

On Earth, naturally occurring amounts of greenhouse gases cause air

temperature near the surface to be about 33 °C (59 °F) warmer than it would be in
their absence. Without the Earth's atmosphere, the Earth's average temperature
would be well below the freezing temperature of water. The major greenhouse gases
are water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect; carbon
dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26%; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9%; and
ozone (O3), which causes 3–7%. Clouds also affect the radiation balance through
cloud forcings similar to greenhouse gases.

Human activity since the Industrial Revolution has increased the amount of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to increased radiative forcing from
CO2, methane, tropospheric ozone, CFCs and nitrous oxide. According to work
published in 2007, the concentrations of CO2 and methane have increased by 36%
and 148% respectively since 1750. These levels are much higher than at any time
during the last 800,000 years, the period for which reliable data has been extracted
from ice cores. Less direct geological evidence indicates that CO2 values higher
than this were last seen about 20 million years ago.

Fossil fuel burning has produced about three-quarters of the increase in CO2
from human activity over the past 20 years. The rest of this increase is caused mostly
by changes in land-use, particularly deforestation. Another significant non-fuel
source of anthropogenic CO2 emissions is the calcination of limestone for clinker
production, a chemical process which releases CO2. Estimates of global CO2
emissions in 2011 from fossil fuel combustion, including cement production and gas
flaring, was 34.8 billion tonnes (9.5 ± 0.5 PgC), an increase of 54% above emissions
in 1990. Coal burning was responsible for 43% of the total emissions, oil 34%, gas
18%, cement 4.9% and gas flaring 0.7%.

Atmospheric CO2 concentration from 650,000 years ago to near present,

using ice core proxy data and direct measurements.

In May 2013, it was reported that readings for CO2 taken at the world's
primary benchmark site in Mauna Loa surpassed 400 ppm. According to professor
Brian Hoskins, this is likely the first time CO2 levels have been this high for about
4.5 million years. Monthly global CO2 concentrations exceeded 400 ppm in March
2015, probably for the first time in several million years. On 12 November 2015,
NASA scientists reported that human-made carbon dioxide continues to increase
above levels not seen in hundreds of thousands of years: currently, about half of the
carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels is not absorbed by vegetation
and the oceans and remains in the atmosphere.
 Over the last three decades of the twentieth century, gross domestic product
per capita and population growth were the main drivers of increases in greenhouse
gas emissions. CO2 emissions are continuing to rise due to the burning of fossil fuels
and land-use change. Emissions can be attributed to different regions. Attributions
of emissions due to land-use change are subject to considerable uncertainty.

Emissions scenarios, estimates of changes in future emission levels of

greenhouse gases, have been projected that depend upon uncertain economic,
sociological, technological, and natural developments. In most scenarios, emissions
continue to rise over the century, while in a few, emissions are reduced. Fossil fuel
reserves are abundant, and will not limit carbon emissions in the 21st century.
Emission scenarios, combined with modelling of the carbon cycle, have been used
to produce estimates of how atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases might
change in the future. Using the six IPCC SRES "marker" scenarios, models suggest
that by the year 2100, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 could range between
541 and 970 ppm. This is 90–250% above the concentration in the year 1750.

The popular media and the public often confuse global warming with ozone
depletion, i.e., the destruction of stratospheric ozone (e.g., the ozone layer) by
chlorofluorocarbons. Although there are a few areas of linkage, the relationship
between the two is not strong. Reduced stratospheric ozone has had a slight cooling
influence on surface temperatures, while increased tropospheric ozone has had a
somewhat larger warming effect.
Top Ten Reasons Climate Change is a Hoax

1. Record Ice

In 2014 there was record sea ice in Antarctica in fact a global warming
expedition got stuck in it. Arctic sea ice has also made a nice comeback in 2014.
The Great lakes had record ice Lake Superior only had 3 ice free months in 2014.
You’d think that in the hottest year ever that ice would be melting like Al Gore said.

2. Record Snow

2014 saw record snowfall in many areas, remember when they said that
global warming would cause snow to disappear and children won’t know what snow
is.

3. Record Cold

In 2014 we saw all kinds of cold records remember the Polar Vortex? You’d
think that we’d be breaking all kinds of heat records in “the hottest year ever”

4. Oceans Are Rising Much Less Than Predicted

Al Gore predicted that oceans would rise 20 feet by 2100, it looks like were
on track for about a foot. 80% of the tide gauges show less rise than the official
“global average”. Many tide gauges show no rise in sea level, and almost none show
any acceleration over the past 20 years.
5. Polar Bears Are Thriving

You’d think that Polar Bears would really be in trouble in 2014 “the hottest
year ever” but they are thriving.

6. Moose Are Making A Comeback

A few years ago the moose population in Minnesota dropped rapidly and they
immediately blamed global warming, then they did a study and found out it was
actually wolves that were killing the moose. Wolves have been taken off the
endangered species list and are now endangering other species so they opened a
wolf hunting season in Minnesota and the moose are coming back. It turns out it had
nothing to do with global warming in fact the years when the moose population
declined were some very cold ones.

7. 99% of Scientists don’t believe in Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming

You’ve probably heard over and over that 99% of scientist believe in global
warming well the opposite is true. That talking point came from a study where only
75 scientists said they believe in global warming on the other hand over 31,000
scientists have signed a petition saying they don’t believe in Catastrophic Man-Made
Global Warming.

8. Nature produces much more CO2 than man

In 2014 NASA finally launched a satellite that measures CO2 levels around
the globe. They assumed that most of the CO2 would be coming from the
industrialized northern hemisphere but much to their surprise it was coming from the
rainforests in South America, Africa and China.

9. It Isn’t Actually the Warmest Year.

If you look at the satellite data 2014 was not the warmest year ever in fact
there has been no global warming for over 18 years. The Reason they can say it’s
the warmest year is because they are using the ground weather station data which
is heavily influenced by the Urban Heat Island effect, many of which are near
pavement. Even still they had to cherry pick that data to get at the warmest year ever
and it is only the warmest by only two-100ths of a degree within a dataset that has
a variability of a half of a degree. The fact they they had to ignore accurate data and
fudge sketchy data to push their agenda proves (IMHO) that climate change is a
hoax.

10. The Hypocrisy of the Main Players

One of the main reasons you can tell that global warming is a hoax is that the
main purveyors of global warming live lifestyles opposite of what they preach, they
all own multiple large homes and yachts and they fly around the world in private jets
pushing their propaganda. Not to mention some people such as Al Gore actually
profit from Carbon Taxes and other green energy laws. If they actually believed what
they preached they would be leading quite different lives.