we needn't make big changes in our life style to stop global warming

He is a strong debater, but his case is based off of my lack of detail. His arguments can be summarized as follows: 1. my quotes don't prove that global warming isn't man made. 2. the fact that other factors contribute to global warming doesn't mean that humans don't contribute to global warming. 3. it's costly to harvest methane. 4. I have provided no evidence against the assertion that global warming is man made. 5. the changes that we have to make to prevent global warming are not major. I will start with his first 2 arguments: Global warming is caused by a lot of factors. According to Chad Myers and Dr. Lehr, the temperature in the 13th century was 7 degrees warmer than it is now. 300 years ago, it was very cold. As any Clevelander could tell you, last year there was a record high of snow. Not something you would expect from a warming world. The weather shows a lot of inconsistency. My opponent provided graphs showing increasing levels of greenhouse gases. It's true that greenhouse gas levels have risen since the Industrial Revolution, but how great a factor is it in global warming? For the last decade, temperatures have been climbing while greenhouse gas levels climbed. Some scientists would look at the graph and automatically assume that the rising greenhouse gas levels were causing the rising temperatures. They are wrong. They have not considered the other factors, such as fluctuations in the climate system (e. g. cloudiness, wind currents, ocean currents). These fluctuations affect climate change more than greenhouse gases ever will. These fluctuations transformed the lush forest where dinosaurs called home into the present day Sahara desert. These fluctuations changed America from a land once covered by glaciers into one with tall mountains, large lakes, and a handsome variety of plants and animals. We are only human. Are we powerful enough to change the climate? Are we omnipotent enough to know what causes climate change? Science has only been around for a few hundred years. It's still in its early stages. There are a lot of things we still don't know about our own world. My opponent may argue that supercomputers predict that greenhouse gases will make temperatures skyrocket, but he must remember that supercomputers are man made and the simulation it produces is affected by the factors that are programmed into it. Adding all the factors in the real world to a supercomputer simulation is impossible with today's technology. I stated 3 things in Round 2 about my first argument: that the weather changed a lot over the last few centuries, that we are moving away from an ice age, and that there are a lot of fluctuations in the climate system. All this evidence can only mean one thing: we do not produce much climate change. This makes whether humans contribute to it irrelevant, because we are not changing the course of nature. My opponent also states that methane is costly to harvest. He says that clean energy is in high demand, and that anything profitable would be in the private sector. I would like to question these assumptions. If clean energy was in such a high demand, why haven't we all installed solar panels on our roofs? Why haven't we all built wind turbines in our yards? Why haven't we made ethanol our fuel of choice for vehicles instead of petroleum? The answer is that these are all relatively very expensive, not to mention that wind turbines are noisy and solar panels only work on sunny days. Everyone wants to feel like they're protecting the environment, but not everyone wants to have their spending money reduced for that feeling. My opponent also states that anything profitable would be in the private sector. Methane is not in the private sector, so it must not be profitable. There are organic farms that run on methane. They get all the electricity they need from cow manure. If methane wasn't profitable, why would they use methane for electricity? Not every farm collects and stores cow manure, but if they did, think about how much electricity they could produce. Con also states that I provided no evidence against the assertion that global warming is man-made. I have given him evidence, now where is his evidence that global warming is man made? The fact that Con says that most of the changes I listed actually helps my case. The resolution was that we needn't make major changes to prevent global warming. Con agrees that we needn't make major changes. Some of the changes I listed are relatively minor, I agree, but others can be counted as major changes. Becoming a vegetarian is something that I and all others who love meat would never tolerate. We like to have a variety of flavors. Becoming a vegetarian restricts our menus severely. Having people evicted from their homes so that someone can build a wind farm is an abomination. Al Gore says that global warming will create millions of refugees in the world. His wind farms will create millions of refugees in America. Other changes simply downgrade society. We humans chose to live in a society so that we can have better lives. For thousands of years, the goal of society was to improve the quality of life for each and every individual. We did not develop all this technology just so we can abandon it all out of fear that the world will end. Henry Ford made a car that ran on gas so that everyone could afford a car. Are we about to go back to expensive, tedious electric cars just because some scientists say that we must? Man can adapt to any environment, but that doesn't mean that man should adapt to any environment. Man can adapt to being forced to set his thermostat below 72 degrees, but does that mean he should? Throughout history, great people have struggled and fought to make society better. Now that we are faced with a 'potential apocalypse', are we going to cower down and send society to pre-Industrial times, or are we going to rise to the challenge and find a solution that improves the quality of life for everyone?