Man-Made Global Warming is a Hoax

While I'll make some general comments as to the trend of the debate, I will refrain from posting actual rebuttals until the subsequent round, as per the Instigator's rules. I am actually astounded at the position presented. I was expecting graphs, tables and data. Instead, we have been presented a point of view, which is axiomatic of the anti-climate change position. We have been presented an opinion. To open my case, let me make something robustly clear. Science does not function on the basis of opinion, and to present opinion is to concede evidence. Science is apolitical. As it stands, I agree with Pro on one point: don't follow the crowd. Instead, follow the peer-reviewed scientific literature. I take substantial grievance with the sources provided by Pro but unfortunately am constrained by the rules not to explain their absurdity until the following round. Rest assured that they will be thoroughly scrutinised and I intend to tear them apart. Onto the evidence. ___________________________It's not two-sidedThe popular Western narrative is to provide "unbiased coverage" of stories. In most cases, this is important. However, on science topics, opinion has nothing to do with anything. Facts are facts. Something is either true, or not true, and the only thing that we can use to determine whether something is true is evidence. To have two people on a talk-show, one a climate scientist and one an ostensible nobody claiming that climate scientists are the devil's children and work for multinationals is patently absurd because it misrepresents the scientific consensus (discussed below). It is not a 50/50 split. Evidence favours anthropogenic climate change, and stuffing our fingers in our ears will not refute this. If you want to disprove climate change, you must use evidence. ConsensusOf course, it would be an argument from popularity to stipulate that purely because the majority thinks something, it is true. It amounts to a special form of anecdotal evidence. However, it's a good place to start looking at why the independent scientific community agrees. As it happens, 97% of peer-reviewed papers published on the topic have found that humans are causing substantial changes to climate (1). The scientific community is clear. There is no "teaching the controversy" because there is no controversy (2). Stop making science political because agendas don't change facts. Yeah, but, like, the climate has changed before and stuff. .. or whateverTrue. But not like this (3). It appears that there have been around 5 ice ages in earth's past (4). There have also been other variations in climate not related to ice ages. However, let's talk about anthropogenic climate change. The hypothesis is that as CO2 increases, we should see a general increase in global temperatures. Is this the case? Well, it would appear so. But have statistical controls accounted for extraneous variables and clarified that this is anthropogenic? Well, yeah, they kinda have. Despite attempts at finding plausible natural explanations for the climate variation, no natural fluctuations account for the observed trends (5). Rounding offThe scientific illiteracy of climate conspiracy theorists is a fundamental contributor to their perpetuation of the disinformation agenda of the corporate elite. While I obviously have substantially more evidence and could potentially just post hundreds of links to peer-reviewed journals, I prefer the argumentation. Perhaps this is sufficient for my introduction, and we'll clash next round with increased vigour when I can rebut your arguments. Best of luck in your following round. __________________________(1) [. http://www.theguardian.com...](2) [. http://leisureguy.wordpress.com...](3) [. https://www.science.org.au...](4) [. http://en.wikipedia.org...] (5) [. http://www.nature.com...]