When did global warming start?

[Itoero]

When did it start?

This paper makkes it seem logic that the global warming started when we started to cut trees/plants.https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/01/world/european-colonization-climate-change-trnd/index.html

According to this paper: "Scientists generally regard the later part of the 19th century as the point at which human activity started influencing the climate. But the new study brings that date forward to the 1830s."https://www.carbonbrief.org/scientists-clarify-starting-point-for-human-caused-climate-change

 

 

[QuantumT]

It started with the steam engine (appr. 1800), and ended with coal and gasoline (today). Profit decides what happens next, even if it kills us all.

[Sensei]

Cutting trees for space for agricultural mass production of food was devastation of natural environment. Burning coal, oil and gas is completely different ("skyrocket") level of devastation of natural environment.

[swansont]

There was an article I read about how a reforestation from the population decline in the Americas (as Europeans shared deadly diseases to which the indigenous had no resistance) cause a CO2 drop and contributed to the little ice age (and apparently this is not a new proposal, since I found an article from 2011, too)

https://phys.org/news/2011-10-team-european-ice-age-due.html

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/01/world/european-colonization-climate-change-trnd/index.html

So it can be argued the effects predate even the 19th century. It's a matter of how much of an effect, and how rapid the change is. The more subtle the effect, the harder it would be to nail down a start date.

There might be an inflection point that's easier to define, and that would likely correlate with steam power adoption.

[Ken Fabian]

7 hours ago, Itoero said:

When did it start?

I think an "inflection point" might be a reasonable way to define it - but it may resist definition. I've encountered compelling arguments that CO2 driven global warming became clearly detectable above the natural variation in the 1970's, and that is when modern global warming 'starts'.

[iNow]

The question needs to be better phrased. The global climate has always changed and due to natural forcing agents.

What the OP is asking, however, is about anthropogenic climate change, specifically (since that is the current primary driving forcing agent for the magnitude and rate of change currently being experienced).

[Phi for All]

3 hours ago, kevinlinson1998 said:

The historical backdrop of environmental change science started in the mid-nineteenth century when ice ages and other characteristic changes in paleoclimate were first suspected and the regular nursery impact previously distinguished. In the late nineteenth century, researchers first contended that human discharges of ozone-depleting substances could change the atmosphere.

 

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[lucy brighton]

As a teacher of earth science, I think there is no real way to predict when global warming started but it is safe to say that the overuse of fossil fuels is one big reason for where we are today. Of course, cutting of trees has had a major impact too.  

[Itoero]

8 hours ago, lucy brighton said:

cutting of trees has had a major impact too.  

Maybe shipbuilding had a 'big' impact.

[Ken Fabian]

There have been efforts to quantify emissions from deforestation. I had a quick internet look and it doesn't appear to be simple - and some studies look purely at deforestation without consideration of reforestation and forest growth - or other GHG output like Methane - giving about 10% of global CO2 emissions between 2000-2005. Historical emissions will be more difficult to quantify. Not precise enough maybe, but deforestation has occurred in addition to great increase in fossil fuel burning; I don't see how, given the amount of fossil fuel burning, for which we do have good estimates, that deforestation would be the primary source of raised atmospheric CO2 in the present.

[donnieporko]

thanks for @swansont's reply