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Is it possible to separate the warming that's caused by man-made pollution/CO2 from the earth's natural cycles? Obviously, we're getting warmer because of poll

Is it possible to separate the warming that's caused by man-made pollution/CO2 from the earth's natural cycles? Obviously, we're getting warmer because of pollution, but is that on-top of a natural warming cycle? Being partially counteracted by a natural cooling cycle? Could we all be saved by an ice-age?

nitrogen 11y ago
That's exactly what climatology is all about; identifying all contributing factors from all data globally.
xefer 11y ago
It may be just the opposite; i.e, the Earth is actuallly in a cooling cycle so the current warming is even worse than indicated. There was an article in Scientific American back 2005 where the author claims that human activity since the dawn of agriculture may have held off a return to an ice age: https://physics.ucf.edu/~britt/Climate/Reading5-Did%20humans%20alter%20global%20climate.pdf https://physics.ucf.edu/~britt/Climate/Reading5-Did%20humans... This very much does not mean that the current warming is in any way a good thing.
teraflop 11y ago
There's a ton of information about the available science, from high-level overviews all the way down to nitty-gritty technical details, in the periodic reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They're published every several years, and the most recent one is from 2014. A good place to start is the so-called synthesis report, which covers a mixture of physical science, human impact and public policy. Page 6 of the "summary for policymakers" includes a graph showing that although the error bars are still pretty big, the observed warming is consistent with estimates of human-caused effects, and vastly larger than can be explained by the "natural cycles" we know about. https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FI...
acqq 11y ago
Yes, it is possible to look at the different causes separately and Bloomberg made a nice web page definitely worth the visit: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor...

nitrogen 11y ago

That's exactly what climatology is all about; identifying all contributing factors from all data globally.

xefer 11y ago

It may be just the opposite; i.e, the Earth is actuallly in a cooling cycle so the current warming is even worse than indicated. There was an article in Scientific American back 2005 where the author claims that human activity since the dawn of agriculture may have held off a return to an ice age: https://physics.ucf.edu/~britt/Climate/Reading5-Did%20humans%20alter%20global%20climate.pdf https://physics.ucf.edu/~britt/Climate/Reading5-Did%20humans... This very much does not mean that the current warming is in any way a good thing.

teraflop 11y ago

There's a ton of information about the available science, from high-level overviews all the way down to nitty-gritty technical details, in the periodic reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They're published every several years, and the most recent one is from 2014. A good place to start is the so-called synthesis report, which covers a mixture of physical science, human impact and public policy. Page 6 of the "summary for policymakers" includes a graph showing that although the error bars are still pretty big, the observed warming is consistent with estimates of human-caused effects, and vastly larger than can be explained by the "natural cycles" we know about. https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FI...

acqq 11y ago

Yes, it is possible to look at the different causes separately and Bloomberg made a nice web page definitely worth the visit: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor...