Issue

As a prefatory statement, by global warming not being real, I mean of course unnatural, man made warming. I believe that this period of warming is by no means anomalous, as shown by the note on the issue I have. My argument is as follows: My first point is that temperature increase is not as dramatic as environmental groups would like you to think. For example, according to the Goddard Institute of Space Studies, global temperatures have only risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit since the end of the Little Ice Age, in 1880. That means we are only one degree warmer than a little Ice Age. Unfortunately, GISS data outside the US is not as accurate as GISS data in the States, and the GISS data from the US alone shows only a third of a degree increase. If the most accurate temperature collection system shows only a third of a degree increase from an ice age, is that really a cause for alarm? Moving on, if we look at Vostok ice core samples from Antarctica, we see that the temperature cycles, and that the current temperature rise started about 25000 years ago, before any industrial pollution occurred. Also, today's temperatures are significantly lower than those that we have seen in other warm periods. Today's temperatures fit perfectly with temperature trends, and are not anomalous or unusual in any way. My third point is that CO2 does not cause global temperatures to rise significantly. The Vostok ice core samples which I mentioned earlier also allow scientists to measure CO2 changes in the atmosphere. What we often see, is that CO2 will not correspond with temperature changes, sometimes it goes up while the temperature goes down, and vice versa. Other times, temperature goes up, but CO2 doesn't rise for another thousand years or so. More recently, the GISS data shows a thirty year decrease in temperature in between 1940 and 1970, yet CO2 was rising at the same rate as today. Fourth, according the SYR Appendix Glossary, the greenhouse effect works when the greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation emitted by the earth's surface, the atmosphere, and clouds, which they then send out from all sides, including towards the earth's surface. According to NASA climatologists, this means that the upper atmosphere should warm first. NASA has had satellites measuring the upper atmosphere since 1979. NASA satellites however, have shown that the upper atmosphere has maintained a fairly constant temperature since 1979, with a change of about .03 degrees Celsius. My final point is that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is nowhere near enough to significantly change the earth's temperature. The Mauna Loa Observatory has measured the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to be about 380 ppm. To put this in perspective, if the atmosphere was a football field, nitrogen would take up 76 yards. Another 20 yards or so would be filled by oxygen. 3.9 of the remaining yards would be filled by various other gases, mostly water vapor, not including CO2 or methane, methane would take up all of the remaining space, except for a pencil line thick space reserved for CO2. This analogy was from Michael Crichton's novel, State of Fear. A pencil thick line in a football field is virtually nothing. In fact, scientists Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and Dr. Roy Spencer of NASA/Marshall published an article in Nature showing that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere could change earth's cooling processes by less than 1%. So, pretty much, the basic premise of global warming, that CO2 causes global temperatures to increase significantly is completely unsupported by scientific fact. The fact is, CO2 will not change temperatures, so we cannot be causing the current warming. "1. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature. Recently the IPCC reported that a vast majority of scientists in fields that study Climate change are in concensus that not only is Global Warming a reality, but that is effected by human means." The IPCC is not perfect, scientists are not perfect, and there is no consensus. Many scientists may support the idea of man made climate change, but they are incorrect. Also, a scientific consensus, especially about a very political issue such as global warming is not necessarily trustworthy. Back in the early 1900's, there was a scientific consensus on eugenics, and yet, the Holocaust has shown us the fallacy of that view. "Not being meteriorolgists I propose that it is reasonable and responsible for my opponent and I to conceed expertise to those who have spent years in school studying the earth and the climate." I agree, and I have backed up my data with pure science. I look forward to my opponent's response with bated breath. (Not exactly).