Global Temperatures and Human Activity

I recently got into another discussion about global warming, and the person I was talking to said they weren’t convinced that humans were the cause of it. Though it’s just foolish to think that the temperature isn’t rising, there is (admittedly) room for debate on how much our presence and actions are affecting the environment. So, I started compiling information into a chart.

If you have updated information or know where I can get this information, please let me know. I am planning on making the above chart much larger so that people can see the information and decide for themselves.

Feel free to bookmark this page and come back to it later (or reference it). I am going to update it as much as I can, and this will be the permanent home for it.

Things to notice:

  • World War 2 appears to have had a direct influence on the global temperature. This is very likely due to the amount of fuel that was consumed, the number of fires that burned throughout that period, and the massive increase in production from the world’s most industrialized nations.
  • Population growth seems to correlate, but does not seem to be the chief reason the temperature rises. This makes sense because it is the actions of humans that seems to be affecting the temperature, not just our mere presence.
  • Every major war seems to have some sort of effect on the global temperature, except for the Vietnam/American war, which seems to have held off the rising temperature until it was finally over. Notice that as soon as the war was over, the temperature starts to rise significantly and steadily.
  • During the gas crunch of the 1970’s, the US and other nations started recognizing the need to improve gas mileage, and yet the average crept up only slightly. If the number of vehicles does not reflect the improved gas mileage, then it stands to reason that this would increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the air.
Global Temperatures from 1880 to 2007

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