Alrighty. Let the games begin.
What does the theory of Global Warming claim? Fossil fuel emissions are trapping more solar radiation which increases global temperature which endangers our modern lifestyle, so we need to act to stop this global temperature increase. That's the general idea, right?
This includes many specific assumptions:
1) the temperature of the Earth is increasing.
2) #1 is dangerous to humanity and/or the environment.
3) #1 is caused by human action (especially air pollution from fossil fuels).
4) #1 is reversible by human action (especially gov't regulation of fossil fuel emissions).
#1 is the most important to the claim.
Is global temperature rising? Plenty of people seem to think so, but what people think and what is real aren't necessarily related in any way. As evidence of this, Paris Hilton has fans. That's just crazy.
So what scientific measurements of global temperature are out there?
The UN recognizes a study known popularly as the "hockey stick" for it's dramatic up-curve of global temperature since the year 1900 after centuries of gradual cooling (
1). However, this same study was later revealed to be biased toward the hokey stick shape it produced and, once the bias was removed, fails to show anything scientifically relevant.
their method looks through the data for hockey stick shapes and then promotes those to the dominant pattern [. . .] when they took this into account, the results in the 1998 paper did not achieve statistical significance.
So the study's authors have retracted the study, and neither it nor the UN IPCC's advice on global warming are trustworthy global warming sources.
Other measurements of global temperature, such as those from NASA (
3 4) and The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (
5), also show about 1°C increase in global temperature in the past 100 years. This is curious. Did a methodologically flawed study just happen reflect the real situation by coincidence, or are these other climate studies similarly flawed? Until this is explained, I remain skeptical of their analysis.
A global warming skeptic I find entertaining hosts a shorter-term graph of global temperature increase (
6) which shows a pretty linear global temperature increase of about 0.12°C over 28 years, or about 0.004°C per year. It only covers global temperatures measured at the time, rejecting all attempts to estimate past global temperature. I'm willing to concede this rate of global warming.
With that concession made, let's move on to #2.
How dangerous is global warming? If temperatures get hot enough, there'll have to eventually be some ill effects. There are a lot of claims of potential damage due to global temperature increase, but lots of those (especially those based on the hockey stick study) assume much worse global warming than I've conceded.
Here's a specific claim of possible environmental damage:
serious, large-scale disruption could occur around 2050, once average global temperature increase exceeds about 2C, leading to abrupt and irreversible changes. These include the melting of a large proportion of the Greenland ice cap (now already under way), the reconfiguration of the global oceanic circulation, the disappearance of the Amazon forest, the emission of methane from permafrost and undersea methane hydrates, and the release of carbon dioxide from soils.
This is a very nice enumeration of specific damage global warming may cause and gives a standard for when it will occur. Actually, it gives two standards: "by 2050" and "once average global temperate increase exceeds about 2C". The obvious problem I see is that these standards conflict.
If they mean 2°C up from the 1905 low point, that would take until 2105 at the 0.01°C warming rate claimed by NASA, and until the year 2405 at the rate I conceded. They seem to be assuming a higher warming rate (1/3rd faster than NASA claims) or they're assuming the warming is accelerating. I'm not sure either assumption is true. And if they mean 2°C up from some temperature other than the lowest global temperature in the past thousand years (by the UN IPCC's questionable reckoning), it can only lengthen the time-frame.
(Actually, being reporters rather than scientists, they probably heard 2050 from a source and accepted it unquestioningly. But my point still stands.)
Despite their time-frame fallacies, the list of dangers they give would be plenty dangerous if triggered. I'm not willing to concede their specifics, but I'll concede that enough temperature increase will cause enough climate change to screw with human civilization. #2 is true, assuming a large enough temperature increase.
So on to #3:
Are we causing global warming? Humans aren't the only major source of CO2 (
8), but since the industrial revolution we're certainly one of them. Global temperature and human CO2 emissions are both up since the onset of the industrial revolution of the early 1900s. That's an obvious correlation. The 'greenhouse gases' analogy suggests the pollution is causing the warming, but an analogy is not proof. To demonstrate CO2
causes global warming, one needs to either A) set up a near-global scale experiment (which is impossible) or B) make a strong logical case. The latter requires demonstrating that, in addition to the correlation, carbon levels precede temperature change (as cause precedes effect) and demonstrate that the ups and downs of both consistently match. Previous to 1900, do CO2 levels correlate with global temperatures?
CO2 Science.com (
9) wrote:
In thus considering the seven greatest temperature transitions of the past half-million years - three glacial terminations and four glacial inceptions - we note that increases and decreases in atmospheric CO2 concentration not only did not precede the changes in air temperature, they followed them, and by hundreds to thousands of years!
Of course, I have no way of knowing if CO2 Science.com is a reliable source, but their claim should be examined. If CO2 and global temperature do not correlate over the past half-million years, we have to consider other causes of global temperature change.
What (apart from billions of humans) is powerful enough to change global temperature? The sun, that 1.4 million km wide nuclear fireball, certainly is. "
If the past is any indication of things to come, solar cycles may play a role in future global warming." (
10). Also, a global increase in geothermal and tectonic activity could presumably heat the oceans and atmosphere enough to increase global temperature. (I swear I heard about some maverick scientist claiming undersea volcanic activity was contributing to global warming, but I can't find anything on it.)
Human CO2 caused global warming is one of several reasonable explanations, possibly even one of several contributing factors. But the idea that our "
cumulative impact on the global environment is posing a mortal threat to the security of every nation that is more deadly than that of any military enemy are ever again likely to confront" (from Al Gore's book
Earth in the Balance, p.325) is quite the leap of faith.
And finally, #4.
It is possible to reverse global warming? Unless CO2 causes global warming, the answer is 'No.' So the rest of this section requires the assumption that CO2 is the sole or primary cause of global warming. So the question becomes "How much carbon emission can we reasonably expect to stop?"
The ideal is a total end to carbon emissions. Kyoto, it is said, is costing "in the range of $265 to $295 per metric ton of carbon" prevented from entering the atmosphere (
11). If that cost applied equally to the 5 billion tons (4.5 billion metric tons) of carbon globally annually emitted (
12), we're looking at US$1.2 and $1.3 trillion dollars annually (slightly more than Canada's GDP). Obviously not viable. Even if we pulled it off, would global warming reverse, stop, or merely slow down?
On the more practical side, the actual total cost Kyoto so far is more like $300 billion (
13), and it's only attempting to cut a few select nations' carbon output by 5.2%. Kyoto is the largest attempted carbon-cutting program I know of, yet most of it's signatory nations are paying through the nose and failing to reach their quotas. With a 5.2% reduction, it might already be more ambitious than is actually possible to achieve.
This suggests that humanity cannot fight global warming through government actions, not in the current state of the world.
In summary, global warming is real, but more gradual than most believe. We have at least a century, probably centuries, we start seeing tangible damage rather than just subjective warning signs. And there is likely not anything we can do to intentionally change global temperature.
I look forward to your rebuttal. Take your time, I know this post is ridiculously long.
CKA Elite 
