Counter arguments to global warming?

Question

I am on a debating team and thought it would be a challenge to convince people Global Warming is not real. Any suggestions on arguments i can make.

(btw i have not made up my mind on whether i believe global warming is real or not)

Answer 1

Here are 26 reasons that have been used to try to show that global warming isn't real - and the scientific reasons that they're wrong.

Answers won't post the link. Google "26 myths" it's the first entry, from newscientist.

Your opponents will be reading this, or something much like it. And it addresses most of the arguments raised below.

Answer 2

Here are a few facts. First, the argument is not whether or not the global temperature is warming or not. It does this in a regular cycle. The argument is whether or not it is being cause by man, specifically by Carbon Dioxide levels that are creating what is called a Green House effect. Simply put, the Green House effect is a claim that increased CO2 levels are capturing heat radiated from the earth back to space and causing the temperature increase.

Here is the dirty little secret they are not telling us. The Sun does not warm the atmosphere. It passes right through it without warming it. That is why the temperatures aloft are so much colder than the surface air temperatures. This is scientific fact not speculation and it is very important.

Right now there is an increase in surface temperatures of a half to one degree over 150 years. However, the temperature of the atmosphere aloft has not risen at all. Hot air rises. It is less dense than colder air. So the only way to restrict the much lighter warm air from rising would be to have the air above be warm, too. If indeed, Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere were warming the air aloft, then that would be true. The problem is, the air aloft is not any warmer than it has been since we started measuring it.

The sun does not warm the atmosphere but it does warm the surface both land and sea. The land and sea radiating the heat back up (remember, warm air rises) that warms the air near the surface.

That proves that the increase in temperature near the surface is being caused by Solar radiation. Not by anything man is doing. In fact in order for CO2 in the atmosphere to cause warming it would have to be thousands of times the concentration we find today.

If anyone displays that ridiculous chart (see link below)that makes the temperatures look like they are going off the chart, point out that what you are actually looking at is the last small segment of a much longer chart. In fact if you were able to get the rest of the chart you would see a steady wave of increase and decrease over the centuries. This is part of the Global Warming deception. They refuse to show the chart in the proper context so you can properly interpret it. They would not do that if Global Warming were a fact.

Also point out something else significant about this chart. From the lowest point to the highest point on the chart shows a variation of almost one degree. Another way to view this is a constant temperature plus or minus a half a degree. So what?

The highest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica is 58 degrees F. (14.6 C) that was in 1974. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica or anywhere else on earth was -128 degrees F (-89.2 C) but that was 9 years LATER 1983. How could the coldest temperature ever recorded have happened only 24 years ago if the Globe has been steadily warming? The COLDEST temperature ever?

The second link is for reference.

Merry Christmas!

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Answer 3

First the earth is believed to have been warmer in human history (medieval warming period). This issue has been carefully sidesteped by the IPCC with a carefully worded satement about warming trends for the last 1300 years which corresponds to the time after the medieval warming period. The climate around 1300 is something the IPCC would rather not talk about because there is scientific evidence that it was quite warm then.

Recent warming trends don't follow CO2 concentrations very well.
The climate was warming at a similar rate prior to 1998 between 1910 and 1940 with much less human made CO2 in the atmosphere.
Climate was cooling between 1940 and 1970 despite increasing CO2.
The warmest year on record is 1998 there is some indication that we are heading into a cooling period (again despite increasing CO2).

Recent research indicates that the earths atmosphere is warming from the ground up instead from the upper atmosphere down (as if an increase in solar radiation was responsible not an increase in atmospheric warming). This goes against the current version of computer models which predict warming from the top down.

Answer 4

http://scholarsandrogues.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/anti-global-heating-claims-a-reasonably-thorough-debunking/

Anti-global heating claims

Myth #1: All the CO2 in the air at present comes from the mantle.
Myth #2: Increasing CO2 in the air is due to gases coming out of solution as the ocean heats up.
Myth #3: Humans are not the source of the recent increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
Myth #4: CO2 is rising at 0.38% per year, not 1% per year as the IPCC Third Assessment Report claimed.
Myth #5: CO2 is such a weak greenhouse gas that it cannot be the cause of the observed warming.
Myth #6: CO2 concentrations are not correlated with global temperature due to periods in the geologic history when CO2 was higher and the planet was in an ice age.
Myth #7: Temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period were warmer than modern temperatures.
Myth #8: The existence of the Medieval Warm Period has been ignored in order to support anthropogenic global heating.
Myth #9: Modern temperature increases are a direct result of the Earth’s climate exiting the Little Ice Age.
Myth #10: Global cooling between 1940 and 1970 happened even though anthropogenic CO2 was rising at
Myth #11: Cosmic rays hitting the earth are behind global heating.
Myth #12: The Stefan-Boltzman law breaks the equations of global heating.
Myth #13: Computer models are too inaccurate to accurately predict a system as complex as the Earth’s climate.
Myth #14: The oceanic storage of heat is required to account for the differences between data and early models. But the updated models still require an unrealistically large oceanic depth of water to make them work right.
Myth #15: The oceans have already begun to cool in response to natural variations, so global heating is wrong.
Myth #16: Satellite measurements of tropical air don’t correspond to directly measured temperatures, so global heating isn’t actually happening.
Myth #17: Global heating will be good for the planet, not bad.
Myth #18: Water vapor is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, and since humans have almost no direct impact on the amount of water vapor in the air, humans can’t be the cause of global heating.
Myth #19: We don’t have enough climate data to make valid predictions of any kind.
Myth #20: Volcanoes spew more CO2 into the air in a single eruption than humanity has emitted in its history.

For the counterargument to each:

http://scholarsandrogues.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/anti-global-heating-claims-a-reasonably-thorough-debunking/

Answer 5

Read this:
U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007

Senate Report Debunks "Consensus"

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f80a6386-802a-23ad-40c8-3c63dc2d02cb

Answer 6

Trying to convince people that Global Warming is a fraud will not work. Why? We came out of an ice age, global warming is a very real occurrence. Try instead to argue against the idea of MAN-MADE global warming. Arm yourself with facts, go research. Actually read the IPCC's Fourth assessment report (although it is a lot of reading, you will find that they bring forth a lot of evidence against the Man-Made global warming THEORY.) I found out from the IPCC report that the most significant greenhouse gas is water vapor and not C02(first link at sources). Go to NOAA's website, search for hurricane (link below) you'll find that Al Gore's argument for increased large catagory hurricanes as a symptom of GW to be rather weak. You'll need to do a lot more research of course, you can't learn all there is to know about the climate in a day or week or even years. Best hunting.

Answer 7

Well let's see
1. Back b4 the Ice Age WHEN DINOSAURS ROAMED THE EARTH Greenland (yes Greenland) was a meditaranean climated place with olive trees and all. How do you know its not an earth cycle.
2. Um we just came out of a mini Ice Age technically (from 1400s-1800s) that scientists speculate was caused by volcanoes
3. Venus the worst case scenario greenhouse effect planet doesn't have ppl on it. All issues caused by VOLCANOES.
4. Global warming used to support liberal enviromenal laws (go on Conservapedia for the lulz)
5. in the '60s "scientists" were predicting a massive ice age about now

Answer 8

You may want to look at this web page - it contains 19 logical points:
http://www.nov55.com/gbwm.html
Eg.: "16. Ice is melting faster than expected over oceans, particularly the Arctic. This is because oceans are heating, not the atmosphere. Increased precipitation also shows oceans are heating. A hot spot in the earth's core is the most likely cause."

Sea Ice is 90% Underwater = Warmer Air temperature will have almost no effect compared to water temperature.

False Reflectivity Theory: "A Fake Mechanism in the Stratosphere which Supposedly Creates Global Warming"
http://www.nov55.com/str.html

Now look at NOAA satellite picture:
http://coralreefwatch.noaa.gov/satellite/current/key_sst_50km_field.html
Do you see the Western Pacific Ocean being 8+ degree centigrade (about 15 degree F) warmer than oceans at the same Lattitude? This sure looks like undersea Volcanoes!!!

Did you know they have tied solar flairs to volcanic activity by tweaking the earth's relatively very thin crust?

Answer 9

Global Warming is going to happen whether we want it to or not. And the excess carbon dioxide in the air will make plants do photosynthesis faster and will create more oxygen, but then the plants will turn that oxygen right back around and use it for respiration. The only living things that will survive on this earth are the things that do p.s and respiration.. plants and protazoans. So fighting about it is all just a waste of our time.

Answer 10

The question is not whether global temps have risen in the late 20th century because they have. The question has more to do with (1) how much they have risen, (2) whether or not this is caused by CO2 (man's burning of fossil fuels) or by natural climate variation and (3) whether or not global warming will be catastrophic in the future.

(1) On the issue of how much temps have risen - Anthony Watts is leading an effort to photograph and document the quality of surface stations. He started in the US and has photographed 1/3 of stations in the USHCN. 85% of them had a warm bias due to poor siting. Up to half of the observed warming may be an artifact of poorly sited stations around the world.
http://surfacestations.org

(2) On the question of whether the rise is caused by CO2 or natural climate variation - There is really no robust method of determining how much of the recent warming is manmade and how much is natural. It appears certain scientists may have underestimated the amount of natural climate variability. The rate of warming from 1910 to 1940 is about the same as the rate of warming from 1976 to 2006. In the first period, CO2 played almost no role. Natural climate variation is certainly capable of explaining the recent warming.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/

(3) Recently published peer-reviewed research indicates global warming will not be catastrophic. An article by Stephen Scwartz from Brookhaven National Lab shows climate sensitivity to rising CO2 is much less than previously thought.
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf

Also, a recent paper by Petr Chylek shows that the impact of aerosols has been overstated which also indicates the climate sensitivity to CO2 is much less than previously thought.
http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/SFgate/SFgate?language=English&verbose=0&listenv=table&application=fm07&convert=&converthl=&refinequery=&formintern=&formextern=&transquery=chylek%20aerosols&_lines=&multiple=0&descriptor=%2fdata%2fepubs%2fwais%2findexes%2ffm07%2ffm07%7c385%7c3367%7cAerosol%20Optical%20Depth%2c%20Climate%20Sensitivity%20and%20Global%20Warming%7cHTML%7clocalhost:0%7c%2fdata%2fepubs%2fwais%2findexes%2ffm07%2ffm07%7c1439594%201442961%20%2fdata2%2fepubs%2fwais%2fdata%2ffm07%2ffm07.txt