Tell me about what you mean by unusually rapid. See I is a dumb "denier" so I gets confuzed bout such things.
You mean the 0.5 degree increase from 1910 to 1940?
OR
You mean the 0.5 degree increase from 1975 to 2005?
OR
You mean the 0.8 degree temp rise from 1910 to 2010?
Because while you are right that most all skeptics do not deny SCIENCE, what many have a problem with is the absurd scare-mongering BS crap you all pull with choice phrases like "unusually rapid" and "consensus". It is the difference between science and interpretation.
For example, the earth has been around for 4.5 billion years and the gloabl temp records are for about 100 years. Care to talk about what you use to to find the global temp for the other 4,499,999,900 years, how accruate they are, and how those surrogates compare to current temps?
You are talking about "unusual" temp rises for the 60 years, when the truth is that you have relatively accurate temp records for only 100 years.
And when you bring up the tree ring records, could you say how they figure out warmer years??? More growth on the trees mean warmer, perhaps? So warmer equates to more tree growth, BUT AGW is going to lead to not being able to grow crops???
Life.
Or respiration - the conversion of sugars and oxygen to produce CO2.
Plants love CO2, and grow more rapidly in high concentrations, so as long as we keep population under control the rest will sort itself out.
Less people means less CO2. It won't be pretty, but this will happen naturally due to disease. It always does.
There has been a natural greenhouse effect on earth for billions of years. It is essential for life, because without it the planet would be far too cold. The most important greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (the warming effects of which are enhanced by water vapor); others include methane.
The human-caused, or anthropogenic, INCREASE in that greenhouse effect, commonly known as "global warming," is much more recent development in geological history. Scientists figured out a century ago, and solidly proved half a century ago (NO honest and bonafide scientist doubts this fact, not even the mislabelled "skeptics" of human-caused global warming), that the main source of human-caused climate change is the burning of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal). That started in a noticeable way only after the industrial revolution of the late 1700s, and early 1800s, which was based on heavily using those fuels as energy sources. Carbon dioxide is the main emission resulting from the burning of these fossil fuels.
Top scientists have had consistent conclusions for over twenty years that the unusually rapid global climate change of the past century has been mostly human-caused, and for the past 10 years nearly all indications are that this is likely to have significantly negative long term consequences for the global economy. Fossil Fuel companies have often denied this science and Republican politicians in the U.S. have been adamant lately in espousing such anti-science denial. A range of anti-science con artists, pretending to be the "other side" of a scientific "debate" on whether anthropogenic climate change is a serious long term issue, are prevalent on-line. Yahoo Answers is loaded with deniers-in-training trying to copy-paste such deception. And there is no penalty here for deliberately wrong answers. Here are some reliable links for more info:
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record...
“Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.”
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpine...
“Choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia…Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.”
http://www.physics.fsu.edu/awards/NAS/
“The Academy membership is composed of approximately 2,100 members and 380 foreign associates, of whom nearly 200 have won Nobel Prizes. Members and foreign associates of the Academy are elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research; election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/...
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timel...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warm...
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument...
at the top up
