Debate Against Global Warming Is Tomorrow...?

[Mackenzie S]

Any last minute thoughts, websites, advice?
I was hoping some people could answer a few questions is have about 'global warming'.
1. Is the globe really warming?
2. Is it true that we have had the hottest past 7 years in history?
3. What are green house gasses?
4. Something about a hockey stick?
5. Is the sea level really rising and the ice caps melting?
6. Is global warming to blame for natural disasters?

I'm researching the internet for possible things the other team, who is for global warming, could possibly say.

Anyone with any ideas, or facts, or questions you think they could ask, and I could give an answer back to, would be great.

Also, any websites are great.

It's crunch time for me, and as I said, I'm surfing the web right now, like no other.

Thanks for all of your help in the past and to come.

Mackenzie.

 

[Michael L]

1. Is the globe really warming?

Yes... It's been warming for thousands of years.

2. Is it true that we have had the hottest past 7 years in history?

Absolutely not. It was incredibly hot in the time of the dinosaurs, for example.

3. What are green house gasses?

These are emissions that create an envelope around the earth that don't allow some heat to escape the atmosphere. It works like a greenhouse.

4. Something about a hockey stick?

That's the shape of the temperature graph in Al Gore's theory about the global temperatures rising significantly in the recent past.

5. Is the sea level really rising and the ice caps melting?

Yes, that would cause the sea level to rise.

6. Is global warming to blame for natural disasters?

Well, no... That's a good scapegoat that politicians use to promote themselves. Natural disasters have *always* occurred. I believe hurricanes were actually much worse in the '60s than they were this decade ... even though one of them had a really unfortunate destination.

 

[donfletcheryh]

For global warming and against global warming could be a terminological problem.

Is the other team proposing to increase global warming while you are proposing to halt it?

That might be the meaning of for and against global warming.

The hockey stick analogy comes from 'Inconvenient truth'. The graphical evidence is presented that with minor ups and downs, global average temperatures have turned a corner, like the bend in a hockey stick.

There have been other periods when temperatures have risen with only slightly less abrupt angle. Since the mini-ice age there has been none that has been as consistently upward.

Sea levels may have risen slightly, or land masses may have settled into the magma just a bit. We would see the same result. But are the ice caps melting? Antarctica is maintaining its ice mass. Some parts of Antarctica, in particular the peninsula that points to South America, has lost a lot of ice. The rest of the continent has been receiving extra snowfall, resulting in more movement of glaciers toward the oceans.

Be careful of this line of reasoning. While the ice level has been maintained, it has been maintained by larger snow falls. Larger snow fall is predicted as oceans warm and are covered with more water vapor. It is an evidence of warming.

The single most significant Greenhouse gas is water vapor. This gas increases as air temperature increases. So, global warming causes global warming. It is the main reason previous warming periods have continued.

Carbon dioxide is a significant GHG. And in previous warming periods we have seen an increase in CO2 levels, as evidenced in ice core samples (reported in inconvenient truth).
CO2 rises as temperature rises, whether it is because of man's actions or not.

Failure of plants to absorb CO2 is consistent with drought and desertification. It takes water for plants to absorb CO2. Global warming creates drought and desertification, so global warming creates more CO2 in the air. Little question that CO2 and temperature might be correlated.

Oceans get rid of a lot of CO2. As temperatures rise, oceans will get rid of less CO2, even return some CO2 to the air. Again rising temperatures drive up CO2.

Rising temperatures cause more rapid breakdown of soil carbon stores, into CO2. So we again get warming causes more CO2.

Now all of this does not imply that more CO2 does not cause global warming, even though global warming does cause more CO2. What it says is that global warming does cause global warming by adding CO2 and water vapor to the air.
A greenhouse gas is one which bends long wavelength radiation, and by repeated bending keeps it from escaping into space.

Note that water vapor and cloud are not the same. Cloud is not a greenhouse gas. When clouds are warmed up, they become water vapor, and do trap heat. As cloud, they reflect more heat than they trap in daylight.

This is significant. Global warming causes global warming by allowing more sunlight to reach earth by evaporating the clouds, reducing reflectivity, and trapping heat with water vapor.


Global warming and cooling are real and very significant. We may not be able to stop global warming by removing our contribution to global warming. Once it gets going it has a life of its own.


Is global warming the cause of m=natural disasters?

Perhaps some, certainly not others to any extent.
Droughts and torrential rains, often with major winds will be more common as there is more water vapor in the air, and that is a characteristic of GW.

Tsunami? no. earthquakes, volcanoes, epidemics... generally no.

Tornadoes are an in-between situation. They can occur without GW. More water vapor does suggest more volcanoes. GW does tend to increase the temperature difference from lower air to upper air, so we should expect more, and more intense tornado activity.

Be careful... GHG does not absorb sunlight and reemit it as infra-red. The light comes down to solid or liquid matter, the earth, is absorbed by that matter, and re emitted as infra-red, long wave length light from the solid or liquid. Then greenhouse gas reflects it.

If GHG were to absorb and reemit incoming sunlight, we would have no greenhouse effect.