The United States needs to set a concrete goal to cut CO2 emissions

great response! There is, however, one thing which I believe will swing this debate in my favor, and that is the quality of support. **To everyone who will be voting on this round, this paragraph will provide an overview as to why I believe I should win this round. With a topic as controversial as global warming there is bound to be conflicting evidence on both sides, and that can easily be seen in the last two posts. The question at this point is which side has the BEST support. I will maintain that the CON has the best support--although it is not a popular view. When I show below that the information he cites is faulty, you have to err on the side of the CON who will have the best statistical support. I will also continue to star the paragraphs which I believe most influential to my argument. Now let's get started First you comment that we should join the Kyoto Protocol, and the main reason behind this is, because "almost every other country in the world has". My response is that there is no inherent reason in this statement as to why we should ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Just because everyone else has, why should we? Refer to the bridge jumping cliche. My point about global cooling is simply that as recently as 20 years ago there was not a consensus as to what the result of CO2 in the atmosphere could be, but now that the earth has been warming they are all suddenly convinced that this is the cause. I intended to draw into question the true cause of global warming, and whether it was really manmade. **You do get to address this point when you cite the American Museum of Natural History. So tree rings show us that the temperature has been rising ever since the industrial revolution. Most scientists have plugged this to CO2 in the atmosphere, but I believe that there is a mere coincidence. Ironically, the industrial revolution began at around 1850, which is the SAME TIME THAT THE LITTLE ICE AGE ENDED. You provided no response, despite my bringing this point up in the last round. "Part of the reason why today's temperatures are seem so extreme in light of the past 400 years is that up until the late 1880s we were in the middle of "The Little Ice Age!" (Round 1) I'll concede the point that temperatures increased over the last 20 years--it really won't matter because I'll still prove that historically the increase is insignificant. This is where you address the issue of the medieval warming--I will address this question at the bottom of my post as that is where it best fits with the rest of my argumentation At this point you go on to talk about better relations with other countries, but first, it has little to no relevance with global warming; second you offer no reason other than your own opinion as to why better relations would occur; and third any relation increase will be offset by the horrible reputation of Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. Besides, America doesn't want to get dragged into any conflict right now, even those worth fighting for. (Sudan) **Next you start talking about how humans don't take any CO2 out of the atmosphere which is why their input is so much worse. But this will be true post kyoto too. Unless we invent a CO2 vaccuum we won't be able to decrease the amount in the atmosphere, and as nature, as you put it, creates an equilibrium, it won't do it either. Basically, if your argument is true than warming will occur REGARDLESS of what humanity does, because we can't reverse past actions. In the end, this doesn't matter however because human influence DOESN"T AFFECT GLOBAL WARMING. You create a rapid extinction scenario at the end of this block but this is disproven by the fact that species go extinct every day and we don't see this happen. Face it, mass extinction won't occur because we lose the Tse-Tse Fly. Next you go off onto a tangent (this time on oil) with no clear relation to the root cause of global warming, but you have no evidence that Iran and Venezuela are "influencing" our foreign policy through their oil reserves. **Finally you keep trying to answer the economy point, now by discussing the benefits of alternative fuels. There is, however, no reason why we cannot both develop alternative fuels and not agree to the Kyoto Protocol. In a world where we both develop alternative fuels and DON'T sign the Kyoto Protocol we would gain all of the same advantages except those directly related to global warming which is WHERE THIS DEBATE SHOULD OCCUR. I believe this is the last of the tangents, now lets return what this debate is actually about. You cite a couple sources about how temperature and CO2 have a distinct relationship, but there are a couple things I notice here. First, is that you have yet to learn the simple phrase "correlation is not causation". Just because there is a correlation, does not mean that CO2 causes a temperature increase. It could, infact, be the other way around. Second, you still have not provided any reason as to why global warming MUST BE MANMADE RATHER THAN NATURAL. **Third, lets look at the second source. I would like to draw your attention to the timeline in which it states that it is measured in THOUSANDS OF YEARS! I have a couple observations. First, the temperature change has had a very stable pattern for the last 450 thousand years, increasing greatly approximately every 100 thousand years only to fall again shortly thereafter. Ironically we are right in line with this increase, meaning that we are simply observing the effects of mother natures great pattern. Second, you state in response to my temperature for medieval warming that the only records were "observation", and that those weren't accurate. Do you defend "observation records" from 450,000 years ago? I don't have to prove the point any longer, there are more methods than just "observations" to estimate temperature ranges. **You maintain that the medieval temperature increase was only limited and did not reach the highest temperatures. First, it was not limited--here is the study I got my information from: http://www.ncasi.org.... They used sources from all over, China, Europe, North America, North Pacific etc. Second, lets talk about your information that the warmest years on record have been in the last 13. All of your sources are based off of a previous study done which showed the famous "hockey stick" shape, but this was due to several errors in the study—namely it was gathered using tree rings rather than more accurate data. In 2006 the National Academy of Science review panel determined that the data was gathered using faulty techniques and could not be used to accurately predict temperature records—especially past 400 years. As the study I cited earlier in this paragraph mentions, many of these flaws tend to create a system where previous centuries seem much more calm then they really were, trivializing previous hotbeds. After the adjustment data you get the information that the medieval warming period had a higher temperature than today's world. This is where you can see that my data clearly rises above and should be considered most accurate. **One other point which I mentioned briefly was that CO2 is not even the primary greenhouse gas. In fact it contributes approximately 3% of greenhouse gases! The biggest contributor is actually water vapor, of which humans produce less than a tenth of a percent. We also contribute only 3% of the 3% of carbon dioxide. So the US really contributes less than 1% of 3% of greenhouse gases. The point is, at most, US Kyoto efforts could lower the temperature by 1/20th of a degree by 2050. All of this at severe risk to our economic well being to attempt and try something which will undoubtedly fail. With that, I wish everyone a Happy New Year, and thank you once again llama for engaging me on such a great debate. PS-snow proves global warming false! ;)