Global warming is real

The first problem with my opponent's response is his failure to address one big concern, which is that the only piece of evidence he has referenced was written in 1998. In the intervening 15 years, not only has scientific consensus moved even more towards acceptance of anthropogenic cglobal warming, but climate and weather patterns have more starkly revealed the ongoing changes. Temperatures have been increasing more rapidly even just over the past 5 or so years, as record heat waves would suggest. This calls into question his authors' outdated assumption that increases in temperature have caused or are simply correlated with levels of carbon dioxide. I did a Google search for "hottest years global warming." The three first results were: http://www.guardian.co.uk... http://www.slate.com... http://www.nytimes.com... All of these respected sources verify that the earth is warming. Of the first 12 relevant results, 11 supported the idea that the earth is growing warmer. It also indicates that NOAA and NASA scientists, whose motivations are far less questionable than scientists who admit they receive funding from oil companies, say that this is independent, empirical verification of a conclusion they had already reached based on modeling theories. Additionally, the ten hottest years since 1880 were all after 1998-the year in which my opponent's only evidence was written. The claim that Ross Gelbspan is the only one accusing the companies of lying is a semantic trick. My implication wasn't that the Idso family is lying, however they have ideological and financial biases here, which is why you should be skeptical of their work given that they are joined by less than 3% of the scientific community. My opponent seems to accuse me of not having sufficient data. Here's another source that explains the study I linked to in the last round: http://www.slate.com... This article also states that most of the people who disagree are not actually climatologists. You should prefer a consensus of people qualified to be writing on the topic. Additionally, it documents some of the relevant information. Carbon dioxide is at the highest levels in 3 million years, which is contributing to the fastest rate of warming in at least 11,000 years. This is no coincidence; only massive human pollution has the potential to create these changes in such a brief timeframe. Here is another method that was used to validate different measurements of temperatures: http://www.scientificamerican.com... Finally, my opponent is far too dismissive of the paper I linked to in the last round. He says the consensus is "a bunch of people who have not looked too deeply into the issue or their (sic) liars and frauds." He says this after accusing me of not providing a reason as to why his authors are biased. The scientists he cites clearly have a vested interest in the matter. He has not provided a reason why my authors must be liars or frauds. In fact, he is actually making the accusation that the meta-analysis I cited, which reviewed 1,000s of papers written on the subject by scientists who have devoted their careers to this field (including many employed by agencies of the government) is invalid, and that you should prefer one family of scientists over these data. He is making the claim that two people are more trustworthy because 97% of the scientific community are frauds or liars. I ask the voters, what is more likely? That two people linked to oil companies are biased/simply mistaken and outdated, or that almost every climate scientist on earth is engaged in a conspiracy? I think it's clear that my opponent's position is absurd.