Debate: So..., you still believe in global warming, huh?
Side: Nope, never did

Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation, but it can give you a clue. If your water tastes funny and you get sick the next day, the best guess would be that the water made you sick. But you wouldn't know for sure until you got the water tested.What you described has nothing to do with correlation. You can test the water and prove definitely that it was the cause of the sickness.Correlation goes a bit like this (example): "When hot chocolate sales go up, crime goes down". So there is a correlation between hot chocolate and crime. But is the hot chocolate the cause of the reduction in crime? No. It's more likely that the sales of hot chocolate increase during cold weather, and because of the cold weather more people stay at home, and therefore there is less crime outside. So the real cause to the reduction of crime is not the hot chocolate, but the cold weather.That's why you can't use correlation to substantiate a claim. Especially one as grand as global warming. In the case of global warming, we have causation through the well understood greenhouse effect. The other correlative evidence only makes the case more likely.The only thing we know is the cause of the greenhouse effect. But you can't prove that humans are responsible for the supposed increase in those gases because the oceans produce a lot more CO2 than we do. The only way the supporters can get to that conclusion is by purposeful causal reduction (i.e. ignore the oceans) and by pretending that correlation is enough to support causation. The tragedy is that average Joe doesn't understand the difference.I'm afraid, "likely", isn't a good enough reason to be taxing people further than they already pay. We can never definitively prove global warming because we can't test the entire planet in a laboratory. We have to do a rough cost/benefit analysis based on imperfect data.Ditto! Thank you. Thank you so very much for standing up and admitting to it. You have no idea how much more I respect you now. I am tiered of people telling me that Global Warming has been definitely proven when it obviously hasn't. On one hand we have the cost of passing legislation that has a small chance of being unnecessary. On the other hand we have highly probable crop failure on a massive scale among other potential consequences. Do you honestly think the risk of the former outweighs the latter?That's the definition of scare tactics, i.e. we have no proof, but let's proceed anyway, just in case... The chance of the legislation being unnecessary is not small. It's at least 50/50. Also think about this. If the Global Warming theory is wrong, then those crops are still doomed because we will have focused on just one thing, when in fact the cause could be something completely different.And if you think that the money raised by these new taxes is going to be used on anything remotely related to the environment you are being blind by choice.Got a citation for this? And can you explain why it's important?http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html It's important because if there is a greater source of CO2 on the planet then that changes the whole argument presented by the supporters. How do we know that the oceans are not producing more CO2 than they used to? How do we know this is not a natural long term cycle they go through? Can you prove that they are incapable of absorbing this extra CO2?Also... please note a very very important part of that paragraph sited. First the site tells us that CO2 concentration on the atmosphere used to be 280ppm and now it is 370ppm. On first look this sounds shocking. But then they continue by explaining that CO2 concentration measures change according to seasons. In the summer there is more vegetation and more CO2 converted to oxygen by plants. But in the winter all those plants release more CO2 in the atmosphere.Why does the site not tell us which season was the first measure of 280ppm taken, and which season was the second one of 370ppm taken? Would it make a difference if the first measure was taken in the summer and the second in the winter? Of course it would!See, little things like that, and you can have the public blinded at the snap of a finger...