Global warming (full resolution in debate)

Thanks for a swift reply. I. WHAT IS A GREENHOUSE GAS? This was an observation as my partner points out. Conceded to both sides.II. THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT My partner's claim is that CO2 is very minute scale in the atmosphere and it really doesn't effect us that much. However, let's see how much CO2 can hurt us. This graph is from NASA and it shows the relationship between CO2 and climate change: [1] The current level of CO2 is 380 parter per million. So, my partner brought up a good question: IF carbon dioxide makes up only a minute portion of the atmosphere, how can global warming be traced to it? And how can such a tiny amount of change produce such large effects? Pieter Tans from NOAA's Earth system Research Labratory provides this answer: [2] "The earth's surface absorbs visible radiation from the sun, which causes heating. At the same time the surface and the atmosphere emit infrared radiation back to space, which produces cooling. Our eyes cannot see infrared radiation but we can feel how our skin absorbs it when we are standing next to a hot object without touching it. Over a long period the earth's surface temperature will remain approximately constant because the amount of heat absorbed as visible light is equal to the amount emitted as infrared light. Nitrogen, oxygen and argon together comprise more than 99 percent of the atmosphere. None of these three gases absorb either visible or infrared light; both types penetrate the entire atmosphere. It is as though, when it comes to the absorption and emission of light, the atmosphere's three main components do not exist!" So, what is happening is as the surface of the earth absorbs visible radiation from the sun, it causes heating. Simultaniously, the surface and the atmosphere emit infrared radiation back into space which produces cooling. Although Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Argon together make up 99% of the atmosphere, these gasses do not absorb visible or infrared light thus penetrating the entire atmosphere. Consequently, the greenhosue gasses take their toll. He continues: "The next most abundant gases--water vapor and carbon dioxide--do absorb a portion of the infrared heat radiated by the earth's surface, thereby preventing it from reaching space. Instead of dissipating into space, the infrared radiation that is absorbed by atmospheric water vapor or carbon dioxide produces heating, which in turn makes the earth's surface warmer. This is known as the greenhouse effect and without it our planet's surface would likely be frozen, like Mars. The heat absorbed by water vapor and carbon dioxide is shared with all the nitrogen, oxygen and argon, because the latter molecules are always bumping into water vapor and carbon dioxide as they mix in the atmosphere. This effect makes the atmosphere act somewhat like a blanket that becomes thicker when amounts of water vapor, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, increase. The top of the blanket remains cold and continues to emit about the same amount of infrared to space but below the blanket it gets warmer because it is more difficult for the heat to rise to the top. The heating effect of extra carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and many other minor gases can be calculated with confidence based on the absorption properties that have been measured carefully in the laboratory. Currently, the total heating produced by the increases of all long-lived greenhouse gases (excluding water vapor) since preindustrial times is equal to about 1 percent of all solar radiation absorbed at the surface. The effect would be somewhat similar if the sun had started to shine 1 percent more brightly during the 20th century." Next, 16kadams claims that human CO2 are too tiny to matter; less than 5%. However, this once more is not entirely accurate. From the graph and from ice cores, we see that CO2 in the atmosphere remained stable between 180-300 ppm for the past 500,000 years [3]. In recent centuries since we started contributing to CO2, it has risen vastly to over 380 ppm. What does all this show? it shows that humans do play an important factor in the contribution to CO2. III. PROOF I cited 3 proofs to show that humans are contributing mainly to global warming: (1) Human finger print on CO2; (2) Nature alone cannot account for the changes that we see; and (3) Lower-level atmosphere — which contains the carbon load—is expanding. 1. CO2 does trap heat, but as mentioned:See above as I have refuted what my partner stated above.=======================>REFUTATIONS TO CON'S R1<==================================Natural cycles Noted above.Problems with the GH theory My partner is correct in saying that water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas; however, CO2 still plays the most important role in greenhouse gas. We do not want to look only at the abundance of the greenhosue gas; but also its influence. The Union of Concerned Scientists notes: [4] "CO2 has caused most of the warming and its influence is expected to continue. CO2, more than any other climate driver, has contributed the most to climate change between 1750 and 2005.[1, 2, 3] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a global climate assessment in 2007 that compared the relative influence exerted by key heat-trapping gases, tiny particles known as aerosols, and land use change of human origin on our climate between 1750 and 2005.[3] By measuring the abundance of heat-trapping gases in ice cores, the atmosphere, and other climate drivers along with models, the IPCC calculated the “radiative forcing” (RF) of each climate driver—in other words, the net increase (or decrease) in the amount of energy reaching Earth’s surface attributable to that climate driver. Positive RF values represent average surface warming and negative values represent average surface cooling. CO2 has the highest positive RF (see Figure 1) of all the human-influenced climate drivers compared by the IPCC. Other gases have more potent heat-trapping ability molecule per molecule than CO2 (e.g. methane), but are simply far less abundant in the atmosphere and being added more slowly."Here is a graph from the same source to note the climate influence of the different greenhouse gasses. Out of room/time. Good luck! ________________________________Sources 1. Courtesy of NASA at URL: http://climate.nasa.gov...;2. Scientific American (20060 http://www.scientificamerican.com... 3. http://www.newscientist.com...;4. http://www.ucsusa.org...;