Mankind Is the Main Cause of Global Warming

My opponent begins by stating seven premises of global warming that he claims almost all scientists believe. I will leave 1-5 as is, but I will first attempt to counter premises 6 and 7 because those simply aren't true. I. The Temperature of Earth's Atmosphere Has Been Increasing Slightly, but No Longer Continues to IncreaseLooking at the bare temperature statistics, there has now been no net warming since 1997 - 15 years with CO2 rising with no global temperature increase. Since 2003, the trend has actually been negative. "[1]Then why is it that the 2000s had the warmest years on record? "The “hottest year” claim depends on minute fractions of a degree difference between years. Even NASA's James Hansen, the leading proponent of man-made global warming in the U. S. , conceded the "hottest year" rankings are essentially meaningless. Hansen explained that 2010 differed from 2005 by less than 2 hundredths of a degree F (that's 0.018F). "[2]Here is a graph showing the last 35 years of temperature records, including a trend line: [4] As shown, temperatures are actually beginning to trend downward as the ocean cycles reverse. This trend is actually set to continue for the next two decades: "Because PDO cycles last 25 to 30 years, Easterbrook expects the cooling trend to continue for another 2 decades or so. Easterbrook, in fact, documents 40 such alternating periods of warming and cooling over the past 500 years, with similar data going back 15,000 years. He further expects the flipping of the ADO to add to the current downward trend. "[3]Even though this contradicts both many computer simulations and the IPCC's official claims, it is clear that they have not been so right before: [5]That's a negative 0.1 degree C decrease in the last 10 years, contrary to my opponent's claim. II. The Increase In Global Temperature Does Not Correlate With the Increases of Greenhouse Gases Looking back at history, premise 7 is simply not true: [6]In fact, CO2 seems to lag behind temperature. "In fact, the air's CO2 content did not begin to rise until 400 to 1,000 years after the planet began to warm. Ice cores provide a detailed record of local temperature and CO2 concentrations. A study finds that the CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 +/- 200 years. CO2 does not seem to be following that well. "[5]This can be illustrated in this graph: [7]It is easy to see that CO2 correlates with temperature increases, not the other way around. On a more modern frame, "In the last decade, there has been no clear warming trend. In the last century, much of the warming occurred prior to 1940, when human emissions of CO2 were relatively small compared to today. During the post-war economic boom (when one would have expected the temperature to rise) the world cooled, from the 1940s till the mid-70s (again, this is evident from accepted data used by the IPCC). "[8]This graph shows the non-correlation of temperature and CO2 in the same timeframe: [5]Or to take a hot topic of conversation, the Arctic. This century's Arctic temperatures do not really correlate with CO2 increases: [9]In conclusion, ice core data also shows CO2 count is rising. When examining the temperature and CO2 data, the correlation is striking. CO2 only correlates on a .44 scale (r = .44). This means the correlation rates from “fair” to “poor”, which is bad news for an alarmist. It shows the correlation is not very strong. [10][11]In addition, by the greenhouse theory, both poles should be warming. However, the Antarctic is not (I'll leave the Arctic alone for space reasons): "If the greenhouse thoery were valid, temperatures in the Arctic and the Antarctic would have risen several degrees Celsius since 1940 due to the huge emissions of man-made CO2. .. Recently, a team led by the University of Chicago's Peter Doran published a paper in Nature saying, '. .. our spatial analysis of Antarctic meteorological data demonstrates a net cooling on the Antarctic continent between 1966 and 2000'. The data from 21 Antarctic surface stations show an average continental decline of 0.008 degrees C from 1978 to 1998, and the infrared data from satellites operating since 1979 show a decline of 0.42 degrees C per decade. They report that satellite imaging shows increases in Souther Ocean sea ice parameters from 1978 to 1996 and an increase in the length of the sea-ice season in the 1990s"[12]III. My Opponent's Main Points I will attack each of my opponent's points one by one. III. i. This is irrelevant, because I already showed that CO2 does not correlate with temperature. III. ii. Again, irrelevant. III. iii. Maybe, but, "A short-term correlation does not imply that the CO2 increase caused the temperature increase. Causation can be inferred if there is a correlation over several cycles of CO2 concentration changes, with the CO2 change preceding the temperature change. The actual climate history shows no such correlation, and there is no compelling evidence that the recent rise in temperature was caused by CO2. Temperatures have been variable over time, and do not correlate to CO2 concentration. When CO2 concentrations were 10 times higher than they are now we were in a major ice age. As a greenhouse gas, CO2 is vastly outweighed by (natural) water vapour and clouds, which accounts for over 70% of the greenhouse effect. Human-related CO2 emissions soared after 1940. Yet most of the 20th century's world-wide temperature increase occurred beforehand. "[5] This point isn't really relevant either because it's having no effects on the climate. III. iv. Explain further how this is important. III. v. Actually, this is not happening: ". .. satellite and high-altitude balloon data confirm that the lower atmosphere is not trapping lots of additional heat due to higher CO2 concentrations. It is hard to know how fast the Earth's highly variable surface is warming, but it is warming faster than the lower atmosphere where the CO2 is accumulating. This is strong evidence that CO2 is not the primary climate factor. "[12] Neither has CO2 caused cooling happened in the stratosphere: ". .. stratospheric cooling is predicted to occur due to both greenhouse gasses and ozone depletion. The ozone concentration in the stratosphere has declined from 1970 until 1995, and has not declined at all since then due to the implementation of the Montreal Protocol, which limits the emission of ozone reducing CFCs. .. The lower stratosphere temperature has not declined at all since 1995 (when the ozone levels are stable or slightly increasing), so the data does not indicate any greenhouse gas cooling of the stratosphere. In fact, it appears that there has been a slight warming of the lower stratosphere since 1995, the opposite of what is predicted by computer models of the greenhouse gas effects. The stratosphere cooling indicated by the radiosonde data is caused by the changing ozone concentration, not by greenhouse gases. "[5] In the end, a comparison of the records show that the surface has warmed faster than the troposphere, the opposite of what is predicted by the theory of CO2 warming. Observations agree with the Sun-Cosmic ray warming theory. [5]III. vi. Actually, on wavelengths, "Comparing the CO2 and H2O absorption spectra shows that much of the CO2 spectrum overlaps with that of water. Parts of the CO2 spectrum are already fully saturated. Adding more CO2 will result in ever diminishing effects as more of the available wavelengths become saturated. The temperature effect of increasing CO2 concentration is approximately logarithmic. This means if doubling the CO2 concentration from 300 ppm to 600 ppm, a 300 ppm increase, causes the temperature to rise by 1 degree C it would take another 600 ppm increase to add a further 1 degree C temperature gain. "[5] Meaning that CO2 cannot have a 1-to-1 linear relationship with temperature, even though most correlation graphs show that. Sources . http://www.debate.org...;