Global Warming

the whole climate change and the warming of the earth's surface, do you think its real? or is it just another politcal scam? I think it is apparent that the earth is getting warmer, however the earth has naturally heated up over the years. Also, if we were to change our lifestyles, and set limitations on
CO2 emissions from factories how would this affect society and our economy? Is Global warming our primary concern? or should we be focussing on other problems such as terrorism?

its the last thing on anyones head, politicians or whoever. Come a few thousand years from now, or whatever they say, people gon look back and be like "damn we should of listened to Al gore."

Castor said:

the whole climate change and the warming of the earth's surface, do you think its real? or is it just another politcal scam? I think it is apparent that the earth is getting warmer, however the earth has naturally heated up over the years. Also, if we were to change our lifestyles, and set limitations on
CO2 emissions from factories how would this affect society and our economy? Is Global warming our primary concern? or should we be focussing on other problems such as terrorism?

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98% if the scientific community agrees that the current pace and level of warming is directly the result of human activites. That's good enough for me. Of the other 2%, well, I work in the petroleum industry, and it's no secret that we bankroll our own studies and research on the matter. But, the fact is, even us megolithic corporations are owning up to the problem publicly.

So far changing levels of consumption and such, it's not really going to hurt anything. America is a rich country - we'll consume heavily no matter what, we'll just do it in different ways. So far as industry, look up some studies on pollution regulation and inovation, particularly one from MIT of which the name currently escapes me. In almost any case, when industry is forced to oblige new regulations they develop new technology and ultimately become more efficient and profitable. Regulation drives improvement and advancement in otherwise stagnant industries, coal being a prime example.

Besides all that, is this something we really want to take a chance on? If 98% of climate scientists are correct, then we have a very small window to make serious changes, or the world is literally fucked. Severe weather, crop death, population displacement, all kind of horrible things are going to happen if we don't start changing our impact level on the planet. This isn't stuff to gamble with. A long range view shows that global warming is a vastly more pressing threat than all the terrorism in the world combined. Just because it's not in your face right now doesn't mean we won't be irrepairably fucked up a little ways down the line.

ok, true, I think we can all agree that it is occuring and something should be done. However, is it a PRIMARY concern right now? I dont know what the projected deaths of global warming will be, however i do know that millions of people are dying each year from the flu and other pandemics. Is it not possible that global warming is being exploited for some sort of politcial or economical reason. We cant cure global warming, but we can cure disease, and also war. Therefore, should more focus be put into these areas?
Also, isnt it possible that global warming isnt completely due to human cause. Temperatures have fulctuated greatly over the years, there hasnt been a real prominent increase. We did go through a couple ice ages and that clearly cant be blamed on humans. Is it not true that the earth will eventually get so close to the sun that it will cause such problems parallel to global warming? or is that a myth?
Ultiamtely, should global warming be a primary concern at this moment, or should we be detering or funding and focus into other aspects?

Castor said:

ok, true, I think we can all agree that it is occuring and something should be done. However, is it a PRIMARY concern right now? I dont know what the projected deaths of global warming will be, however i do know that millions of people are dying each year from the flu and other pandemics. Is it not possible that global warming is being exploited for some sort of politcial or economical reason. We cant cure global warming, but we can cure disease, and also war. Therefore, should more focus be put into these areas?
Also, isnt it possible that global warming isnt completely due to human cause. Temperatures have fulctuated greatly over the years, there hasnt been a real prominent increase. We did go through a couple ice ages and that clearly cant be blamed on humans. Is it not true that the earth will eventually get so close to the sun that it will cause such problems parallel to global warming? or is that a myth?
Ultiamtely, should global warming be a primary concern at this moment, or should we be detering or funding and focus into other aspects?

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Well, as I said - 98% of the scientists that study climate and climate change believe that humans are directly causing an accelerated, dangerous, and previously unseen warming effect. That's a pretty solid statement. Temerpatures have changed in the past, yeah, but never, ever like what we are experiencing now. The evidence is extremely conclusive. 98% agreement across the board is about as good as its going to get with the scientific community.

So far as being a primary concern? Hell yes it should be - the effects after a certain point are irreversable. We have a limited window of time to slow carbon emission before the enviornmental effects are something that we no longer have any ability to curb. Projected death tolls? Huge! Mostly the poor and displaced int he world as well, as they'll be hit the hardest by the problems climate change will create. And since you seem concerned about the economy, there will be terrible effects on the markets stemming from the numerous problems created.

I'm not sure why you think it's some kind of political ruse. Even the Bush administration, once staunch critics of the problem, have been forced to admit the problem exists and needs immediate attention.

It's very possible for the world to work on curing disease and global warming at once. The nature of the modern world is that we deal with more than one problem at a time. You seem to be digging for reasons to ignore the problem of climate change, why? And also, why do you believe that such a thing would be falsified by all these world leaders and scientists? What's the point?

As I said before, there's no reason to gamble on the future of the planet, and there aren't any negative consequences for curbing carbon emissions and learning to make less of an impact on the planet.

And, the earth won't move closer to the sun. In a few billion years the sun will have swollen up due to the changing nature of nuclear reactions in the core and will eventually swallow the earth and most everything else in the solar system. I wouldn't stake the planet's more immediate future on something that won't happen for a billions years - we'll have been wiped out by an asteroid or some disease pandemic way before then - but the least we can do is not destroy the planet beyond salvage for the generations directly following us.

I can't think of any other way to state it - just about every credible scientist that studies these things has idetnfied it as a very real and enormous threat. We have a limited amount of time to change the way we do things before the problem becomes something we can no longer curb with reduced usage and emisssions. The eventual consequences range from fairly severe to flat out catastrophic. Ask the people that live in hurricane zones about that. The increase in major storms, in both frequency and severity, could be as much as ten fold once the effects begin to accelerate.

well first off, im actually doing a debate in class soon on this subject and i have been chosen prove that global warming is not a primary concern. So basically Im looking for alternatives that are more important than global warming.
CO2 is not the only gas causing the problem, though it is the major one. However, methane is the runner up and it has been proven that a large amount of methane is being released from plants and trees. The Kyoto protocol rules that countries can put out more emissions as long as they plant more forrests to rid of the CO2. Nonetheless, this increase in forests are releasing more methane proving to be redundant.
Industries arent the only producers of greenhouse gases. Society in general realeses it everytime we turn on a light, the tv, or the car. So sure we can slow this process down but we ultimately cannot prevent it, unless of course we go back to the stone age.
Lastly, you say the earth hasnt seen changes like this... well what about the ice age? The Earth will go through natural changes regardless of who inhabits it.

are we important enough to even worry about a such big thing,nooooooooooo,so lets get big penises and take over the world

Is man changing the environment? try researching the 150 year heat output cycle of our sun, cow farts, earths changing orbit, volcanic eruptions.
Now about gore his modest house has 28 rooms plus bathrooms uses more gas to heat than any 3 houses I could afford. Makes his chauffeur leave the limo running with the a/c on so he can get to his next speech on his privet jet. I'd bet he makes more pollution than any 10 of us pe'rs.
well off my soap box thanks for letting me vent.

The Earth, Sun, and Moon

This could be used as a pretty good reason for your debate. The center of mass of the earth and moon rotate around the sun in an eliptical orbit, and the orbit of the moon around the earth is eliptical. I guess the sun and earth also rotate around their center of mass. The orbits are also thrown off a bit by the spinning causing bulge's in the bodies, torques are produced by this I guess. The ocean's also store energy, so if we were close enough to the sun for a little while, the ocean's could store a bit of heat energy and mess with climates.

From what I've heard that is the problem with global warming, it has never been produce to the public conclusively, which is weird (proably some regreted polical sceams). An example would be how cigarettes are seen as definately causing lunge cancer, but besides the video by Gore, I've never seen a commercial. Monroe's Motivated Sequence-
Attention- get attention
Need- problem
Satisfaction- plan
Visualization- how plan will change things
Action- audience's move
What I've had to do when I do these types of speeches, follows the pattern of thought to influence people to action after a problem is seen- possibly the reason global warming hasn't been realized. I do believe in global warming though, because I do research on my own. Wouldn't expect soccer moms to be doing that though, they're too busy sucking dick .

Castor said:

well first off, im actually doing a debate in class soon on this subject and i have been chosen prove that global warming is not a primary concern. So basically Im looking for alternatives that are more important than global warming.
CO2 is not the only gas causing the problem, though it is the major one. However, methane is the runner up and it has been proven that a large amount of methane is being released from plants and trees. The Kyoto protocol rules that countries can put out more emissions as long as they plant more forrests to rid of the CO2. Nonetheless, this increase in forests are releasing more methane proving to be redundant.
Industries arent the only producers of greenhouse gases. Society in general realeses it everytime we turn on a light, the tv, or the car. So sure we can slow this process down but we ultimately cannot prevent it, unless of course we go back to the stone age.
Lastly, you say the earth hasnt seen changes like this... well what about the ice age? The Earth will go through natural changes regardless of who inhabits it.

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Ah, well, if you're going to be debating then I strongly suggest you broaden your angles of approach and anticipate your opponents answers a little more thoroughly , because you have certainly been lumped with the more difficult position of the two.

Firstly, I am aware that plants have been shown to release quantaties of methane, a gas that can cause damage when over-abundant. Think about this realistically though - should deforestation of the world be viewed as a solution to warming? Of course not - the ozone composition on the planet would be destroyed without plant life. Natural methane content in the atmosphere has always been around and is probably part of the natural warming and cooling cycles which have been mentioned. By bringing up this point you really do nothing to strengthen your argument - it more or less distracts from it. They're going to tear down your point about the kyoto protocol, because it assumes that methane production automatically outpaces CO2 scrubbing from the atmosphere - if you have no data to show a cost benefit ratio here, you haven't proved anything. There are also many other facets to Kyoto than just reforestation efforts, so I wouldn't use this as a general argument against the entire treaty.

I believe the original big story on plant methane was broken by some researchers at Pomona and published in Scientific American or one of those types of magazines. SA isn't an academically sourcable publication, but you may be able to find the original study published in a journal database if you have your heart set on bringing it up.

So far as industy not being the only culprit - I think everybody will all be aware of that. The idea is to slow consumption and change our methods of energy production. Your argument that we'd have to go back to the stone ages is a false exageration (mountain of of a molehill tactic), and I promise your opponents will probably also be able to debunk this pretty quickly. Cutting back emissions and chaning production and consumption patterns does not necessarily equal abandoning all technology. All the research shows that the earth's atmosphere can handle a certain level of emissions - which is just less than what we're currently paced for. BY making changes in energy production and consumption on a broad scale we can maintain exactly the same living standards (perhaps improved) and still cut back on CO2 emissions. There's a ton of data on this stuff - I would also suggest having a look at what the other side of the debate will be studying to get an idea of what they're going to say. You when these things by anticipating their points.

And again, the natural cycles of change argument isn't going to work either. We are all aware that the earth naturally cools and heats up. Scientists are also quite sure that the pace of heating and levels of carbon content that we are currently experiencing are completely unique and there is very little doubt in teh scientific community that this is man-made happening. This point won't get you very far.

Frankly, I don't have a lot of good advice as to how you should approach this as most of the arguments against global warming and its urgency are fairly easily debunked. When the Bush administration comes around on something like this, the days of opposition are numbered. If I were you I'd try searching for some power points online discussing global warming and see if you can find some wishy-washy data to contradict.

sawyer said:

are we important enough to even worry about a such big thing,nooooooooooo,so lets get big penises and take over the world

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What's wrong with us discussing the topic? It's actually good for everybody to get interested in this, as the only way there's going to be a decent turnaround is mass involvement.

stelth said:

Is man changing the environment? try researching the 150 year heat output cycle of our sun, cow farts, earths changing orbit, volcanic eruptions.
Now about gore his modest house has 28 rooms plus bathrooms uses more gas to heat than any 3 houses I could afford. Makes his chauffeur leave the limo running with the a/c on so he can get to his next speech on his privet jet. I'd bet he makes more pollution than any 10 of us pe'rs.
well off my soap box thanks for letting me vent.

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Ice core data shows a history of climate change - nobody has ever denied that. What the vast majority of climate scientists agree on is that we're getting hotter at a faster rate than ever before, and they can link it directly to the increase in carbon emissions in the atmosphere, which are directly related to human output. Natural factors that induce climate change cycle in and out - human production levels are at a constant rate of escalation.

So far as Gore, that's just a red herring. Even if he's a hypocrite and uses a lot of energy, that doesn't mean he's wrong. That's just a BS talking point for Hannity and Limbaugh to drool over (Rush mostly only drools when he's high on painkillers - speaking of hypocrisy he usually advocates extreme jailtime for drug users but begged for leniency when he was caught with hundreds of unprescribed pills).

Ok so there is not much I can say to debunk the fact that global warming is real. However, is there anything I could use to debunk the fact that it is a primary concern. Such things may include, pandemics, the war in Iraq, terrorism, poverty.. etc. anything else that may prove credible and may be included as a primary concern?

Castor said:

Ok so there is not much I can say to debunk the fact that global warming is real. However, is there anything I could use to debunk the fact that it is a primary concern. Such things may include, pandemics, the war in Iraq, terrorism, poverty.. etc. anything else that may prove credible and may be included as a primary concern?

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A good place to start would be to look for scientific arguments that state the effects of climate change are ambiguous or at least not as dire as many scientists believe. Quoting from legit reseach sources will lend a lot of weight to your point. Try doing some searches for policy papers at the Heritage institute or get on the journal databases at your school's library and start browsing through material.

If you can establish that the threat isn't as dire as your opponents will say it is, then you can start bringing in statistics about death tolls from diseas and poverty, as you previously mentioned. Take the approach of "what's the point of considering this as our number one threat at the expense of other lives?"

There's a good chance they'll simply respond with my argument, which is taht we're more than capable of addressing more than one problem at once, but in all honesty it's probably your strongest approach.

Don't be dismissive that global warming exists - that will play right into their likely strategy. Instead, neutralize the threat in the audience's eyes, and then harp on other things that can be portrayed as extremely pressing. As I said before, there are scientific papers from fringe scientists that argue against the threat of climate change. Get some statistics and scientific data from these, but I'd warn against repeating the sentiments directly. Chances are the class is going to be generally already be of the opinion that warming exists, so make yourself more sympathetic by not denying the point, but rather refuting its urgency.

Another approach might be discussing how many NPOs and environmental groups like the Sierra Club have a self-sustaining interest in trumping up the dangers of warming, as without environmental concern they lose membership and donation streams and have to fire their handsomely compensated directors and executives.

That's really all I've got; as I said, you got saddled with a pretty shitty topic to prosecute.

Sorry, I meant Heritage Foundation.

Try browsing through some stuff here: http://www.heritage.org/research/energyandenvironment/

Heritage is a conservative think tank with a libertarian slant to some of their research - they generally have been contrary to most mainstream climate change research.

Another thing I just remembered is that some have argued against things like the Kyoto treaty because it puts undeveloped countries at an increased economic disadvantage.

Carbon permit trading allows wealthy countries that already have developed industry to buy their way into regular levels of emissions, but leaves smaller countries in the difficult position of sacrificing permit space for long term industrial development. Former colonial areas in the third world with poor industry and infrastructure will have a harder time becoming legit economic players without the sort of unrestricted development that the US and most first world countries enjoyed during their industrial booms.

The argument isn't rock solid, but it's another thing to have in your corner if they start praching the unlimited widsom of permit trading schemes. It may allow you to portray the idea of climate change regulation enforcement as a highbrow issue that doesn't fully account for the interests of all population segments. I don't personally agree with this, obviously, but the goal is to win (or at least get a good grade by defending the point thoroughly - it will be difficult to really come out on top with your position).

well as long as we can agree that both gore and rush are mostly asses most of the time I wont ignore you, just don't get all your news or facts from one source you will go far in life.

stelth said:

well as long as we can agree that both gore and rush are mostly asses most of the time I wont ignore you, just don't get all your news or facts from one source you will go far in life.

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Believe me, I don't take anybody's word based on a partisan association. I've worked for the government and now I work for a global corporation; I consider myself to me fairly moderate politically but I went to one of the msot conservative colleges in the country - I've seen both sides of the street. Gore's whole kick is as much about self-promotion as it is raising awareness. He seems to really be enjoying his new celebrity status. The guy used to be known as an insufferable bore and then even worse, the candidate who got squeezed out by a president who is not one of the most unpopular leaders in history. He'd probably try to melt the ice caps with a hair dryer if it meant he could maintain his revival in public popularity. There's some fairly entertaining video on youtube of Sean Hannity, who I generally think is a complete ass but not on this occassion, attempting to get Gore to fess up to his usage of private jets.

On the flip side, Rush and all his immitators are raging idiots. Those guys masquerade as legitimate pundits, but their blatant disregard for facts and honesty display a real lack of respect for anybody that listens to them. I'm always astounded when I check a website that tracks the numerous distoritions, errors, and outright fabrications those guys let loose with on a daily basis. Similar to Gore, they're in the business of promoting themselves and scoring lucrative broadcasting contracts, not proliferating sensible politics. I get sick when I consider the fact that some people actually let these guys make their minds up for them.

The last stats I have shows that 70% of Americans just hear the liberal side, of the news. Most of those don't even know there is a conservative side that they don't hear about.
It's sad but truly annoying:s

Interesting read.......so what's the plan on changing this world for the better?......action is better than talk!!!!!!