Anthropogenic Global Warming Debate
 

Im starting this thread because I would like to know everyone's opinions on Anthropogenic (Manmade) Global Warming. Do you Believe that man is solely responsible for causing Global Warming? Also, instead of people just Arguing about it senselesly, lets make this a friendly debate. Both sides of this argument should state your point of view, then discuss WHY that POV is accurate. And GO!

There's a global warming thread already.

Man-caused global warming is a hoax. There's little to no evidence to support that our activities have any direct effect on the environment, specifically in regards to changes in temperature. There is evidence that supports that our sun goes through cyclic periods of increased activity, followed by periods of decreased activity. We don't have enough hard data to measure human influence on the climate, since our records for temperature and weather conditions are less than 200 years old, and given the suggested age of the earth, that's not long enough to do a statistical analysis. The climate of the earth is constantly in flux. Look at the desert southwest. New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Nevada are covered with dry lake beds(which make great race tracks and runways), and riverbeds that no longer run with water. These have been this way for the better part of the last 2 centuries at least, and I'm sure that mankind had little to do to change the climate. The same as I do not believe that we have that much power today. If people are so concerned with carbon dioxide they can do one of two things, either stop breathing, or plant a danged tree and leave me alone!!

Oh, is there? :confused1:

Ah well, heres another.

So, all that smog in Beijing and LA is simply a plot by a bunch of wicked scientists to make us drive hybrids? Sneaky, sneaky Princeton alums!

Havent you got Limbaugh's latest memo on it? Its about Chinas attempts to crash the american economy. First strike was convincing americans of bying ecological japanese hybrid cars. Second strike was installing their covert communist agent in the white house... no wait, that new man in the white house was a terrorist... ah, I allways get that stuff mixed up. Sorry. But evolution never happened, thats for sure. We allways have been and allways will be monkeys.

My opinion on manmade climate change? Even if burning fossils does not influence our climate, dependence on it still causes wars, airpollution and ecologic desasters. So our need to develop new technologies remains. Get over it! Its called progress.

Exactly. Fossil fuels are just not sustainable. Anthropogenic Global Warming is a rather moot subject in that light.

Pollution doesn't mean Global warming. It means that China and India don't have to adhere to the Kyoto Accords while every other industrialized nation will be saddled with paying for their rights to continue to pollute unchecked. I'm all for clean air, but if you think about alternative fuels you'll see that they are far more costly that using coal, gas and oil. It takes 3 gallons of fossil fuels to boil down enough corn to make one gallon of ethanol. An electric car is feasible, but what happens when you have 5000 electric cars in the greater metropolitan area of LA. They already have a hard time handling air conditioning, think of the added draw on the grid, and all the environmentalists won't allow anyone to build new power plants in California, and nobody who could will because it will cost so much it would simply be egregious for anyone to build. Good old gasoline and diesel fuel are the fuels of the foreseeable future. They are cheap to produce and can be made to run cleaner than they ever have in the past. In Kuwait gasoline cost $.19/gallon, and most of that is delivery costs, why so cheap? Because they drill their own oil, they don't buy from anyone and they sell to everyone. We could experience the same kinds of prices if we could get to our own resources. But everyone is afraid of the potential hazards and don't want anyone to take risks. But risk is what we do. We Americans would never have reached the moon without accepting risks. We'd have never won WWII without accepting risks.
The thing you want to call progress would hamper our ability to be progressive and prosperous.

The savings from domestic drilling or mining isn't the point. It's not even in question as far as I'm concerned. The problem is it isn't sustainable. We can drill and extract coal and petroleum many many times faster than the formation of new deposits. Doesn't take a math major to figure out what happens when the magnitude of the output is greater than the magnitude of the input. Any savings from domestic drilling would be temporary. And decades down the road we'd find outselves back where we started, or worse.

We also never would have made it to the moon or won WWII without accepting financial costs and risks in developing technologies that we weren't even sure would work to begin with. Alternative fuels could potentially be cost effective as we work to develop better processes in their production. Of course on the flip side, it would be nice if environmental activists would back off a little and let the scientists and engineers work the problem rather than trying to ram things down people's throats.

There is currently more oil in reachable deposits in the western hemisphere than in all of Saudi Arabia. Enough oil for the next 100 years at current growth rates. Plenty of time to worry about alternatives. Necessity is the mother of invention. When it becomes necessary to develop a new fuel source, we will find an answer. Besides as we explore both space and our planet we might find something new that we never knew of before.