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The US needs to do much more to combat climate change

I like your point. However I think the Government should encourage wind and solar and invest in wind and solar when possible. I am not advocating for the government to get as involved as they are in oil or other forms of energy. But think about how much gov't is involved at the local levels with regards to our power. Their hands are all in it. The reforms cannot take place without the gov't getting out and letting the renewable take its course. Perhaps I was a bit wrong when i said they were already cheaper, i think my point is that if gov't was involved and invested in them the same way as oil they would be much cheaper and we would be economically stronger without having to pollute our enviroment to harness the energy. Any thoughts sir?

The US needs to do much more to combat climate change

Thanks to my opponent for his response. The united states needs to move toward renewables and not try to revert back toward reliance on fossil fuels. The current administration has been very vocal on doing this. Solar and Wind are already cheaper, its just their not getting there a ss wiped by the governments like the oil companies do. Right now if another energy crisis happened the US consumer would be hurt and our economy would grind to a halt. If we invest in renewables now and get off dependenct we can better look after ourselves without relying on the saudis to wipe our as ses. I look forward to my opponents response.

Obama should declair a state of emergency because of climate change

The president has the power in a state of emergency. If it has to be a war, OK let's declare war on god. 2. I guess you missed the part about having a solar panel on every roof. 3. I never mentioned wind. The cost of solar will go down, once it's in mainstream use. Who cares about a "tab", when the whole world is at stake? When we go to war, does anybody ask "who will pick up the tab"? 4. Leaf is a toy. I'm talking about technology used my Tesla Motors (I guess you didn't click on my link). 0-60 in 4 seconds, 300 miles per charge, swappable batteries in case of emergency, etc. We have the technology to stop global warming. It's crazy not to do it because of a "tab" or denial of the technology. That's like saying it costs too much to join a gym. I'd rather risk getting a heart attack. What you pay now to prevent a catastrophe, will be worth 1 million times its weight when it comes to paying for the catastrophe after it happens!

Resolved: Countries ought work to end climate change/global warming.

Methodology of surface station experiments: I'm not saying that my opponent's evidence is inherently faulty. He certainly brings up a good point. However, the conclusion that he comes up to doesn't make sense at all. The methodology of the United States is flawed, so every single piece of evidence is invalidated when it comes to proving that human-caused global warming is existant. Yes, this is a study that is presented to the entire world, but this doesn't mean that every single study in the world about global warming is inherently wrong because this evidence is only speaking about the United States and how it conducts its studies rather than how England, France, Sweden, or other countries would conduct experiments. Heck, my opponent doesn't even give the specific organization from the United States that conducted this study. Global warming is tested by the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, countless universities in the United States, etc. Why should a specific study from a specific organization in a specific country account for all the global warming studies in the world? That makes no sense. Furthermore, I explained already that global surface stations are adjusted for possible lurking variables for air conditioners anyway by the scientists conducting the study, meaning that the data is not unreliable. Fraud: So because different studies with different methodologies reach the same conclusion as a supposedly fraudulent one, that automatically means that my sources are faulty. That's completely unfair because it's a complete generalization of all evidence on global warming on the basis of a couple of studies that my opponent tries to prove were fraudulent. CO2 and N2O: My opponent obviously doesn't understand the chemistry here. I explained already that CO2 isn't even the strongest greenhouse gas. It's the greenhouse gas that is put most abundantly into the atmosphere from emissions. This is not to say, however, that CO2 has absolutely no impact on rising global temperatures. Furthermore, we must understand the following: what we can do currently is reduce emissions and reduce the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases entering into the atmosphere, but once it has entered the atmosphere, how do we get it out? What my opponent also doesn't understand about CO2 is that not all of it enters into the atmosphere. Portions of it enter into the ocean and become dissolved in it, contributing to its acidification, which harms the biodiversity of the aquatic environment and causes negative impacts to communities living close to these aquatic regions. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere doesn't speak entirely about how much of it is being emitted. Therefore, no, CO2 isn't out of the picture. I guess I can talk a bit about N2O as well here, even though that all I was saying was the N2O and methane are more potent greenhouse gases than CO2, most particularly 300 times more potent than CO2. There's a reason why my opponent's evidence seems to be showing these ideas and facts about how CO2 increases and temperature increases were so small or insignificant, but it isn't even analyzing all of the greenhouse gases. Global warming=Increase in global average temperature: What my opponent continues to misunderstand is that we are looking at the mean global temperatures and not specific regions. He claims that I ignore the basic rules of statistics, but then he gives only a few examples of countries that are seemingly not increasing in temperature according to the evidence. He provides no proof that these countries are significant deviations, and even when they are not increasing in their temperatures as the evidence seemingly presents, the global temperature mean still is increasing. Greenland: I never concede the point anywhere that one example is representative of the whole. I wonder where I said that because there could possibly be a misunderstanding that my opponent made. "Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lost a combined mass of 475 gigatonnes a year on average. That’s enough to raise global sea level by an average of 1.3 millimeters (.05 inches) a year. (A gigatonne is one billion metric tons, or more than 2.2 trillion pounds.) Ice sheets are defined as being larger than 50,000 square kilometers, or 20,000 square miles, and only exist in Greenland and Antarctica while ice caps are areas smaller than 50,000 square km. The pace at which the polar ice sheets are losing mass was found to be accelerating rapidly. Each year over the course of the study, the two ice sheets lost a combined average of 36.3 gigatonnes more than they did the year before. In comparison, the 2006 study of mountain glaciers and ice caps estimated their loss at 402 gigatonnes a year on average, with a year-over-year acceleration rate three times smaller than that of the ice sheets." Global cooling: The global cooling arguments seem to include La Nina, which could be a skew in the general graph since it normally brings cold weather. Works Cited "The Causes of Global Warming: A Global Warming FAQ." Union of Concerned Scientists. Web. <http://www.ucsusa.org...;. "Melting Ice Sheets Now Largest Contributor to Sea Level Rise." Science Daily. Web. <http://www.sciencedaily.com...;. "Nitrious Oxide." EPA. Environmental Protection Agency. Web. 02 May 2012. <http://www.epa.gov...;. "Nitrous Oxide: Definitely No Laughing Matter When It Comes To Global Warming." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 18 Feb. 2008. Web. 02 May 2012. <http://www.sciencedaily.com...

Resolved: Countries ought work to end climate change/global warming.

This is the final round of the debate, so I'm just going to go over some overarching themes and arguments as well as give my reasons for voting for me in this debate. Frauds and Poor methodology: Even with the provision of new evidence about China and South Korea in his rebuttal, the logic that he tries to make is still faulty. He's making the general idea that because specific organizations in specific countries have their flaws in methodology, this means that every single piece of evidence relating to the proof of global warming is inherently faulty and wrong. My opponent brings up a lot of things in his rebuttal that haven't already been addressed in my own arguments or evidence (which has been fully cited in case if the links are not functional), and I explained already about the urban heating studies that the scientists behind this project have corrected their models in order to eliminate the influence of lurking variables in order to provide more credible data. My opponent tries to go against my NASA data, even though this wasn't the only source I listed, and while he talks about how the IPCC has been found for frauds and whatnot, he doesn't prove that my piece of evidence in particular is the one that is subject to such frauds, meaning that he's making another generalization. CO2 and N2O: He essentially talked all statistics in this portion, even though it was evident that he didn't seem to have a great understanding about global warming as an average of all temperatures instead of individual locations, and while my opponent says that there has not been any historical correlation, my evidence has shown otherwise. There are still natural cycles, as I explained, by overall, temperatures at a global scale are increasing. This is not to mention that CO2 isn't even the strongest offender and N2O isn't the only greenhouse gas. My opponent doesn't even make the slightest mention about methane or other greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere. He emphasizes on N2O and thinks he has proven beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that there is no global warming. Ice Sheets: While I argued about ice sheets in general, my opponent just took up one ice sheet and claimed this is some overall evidence that there is no sort of global warming whatsoever, and I provided opposing evidence on this subject about Greenland explaining that the ice sheets are indeed decreasing in their size.

Resolved: Countries ought work to end climate change/global warming.

Logistics of the debate: Based on the current case my opponent has posted, my burden for this debate is the following: (1) I must prove that the evidence for global warming is sound and that it is a serious problem for the world population. (2) I must also prove that the benefits of stopping global warming outweigh the harms. Truth of Global warming: The debate really seems to come down to the evidence portion when analyzing the reality of global warming, and while my opponent posts heavy amounts of evidence in order to prove his point, when we look at the evidence itself, it can all be turned. The first piece we should look at it evidence [2], where he talks about how air conditioners skew the data, but the problem with this piece of evidence is that it only looks at the United States. The United States isn't the only country testing for global warming, and his evidence is mute about what organization specifically was doing this study, implying that there could be more organizations also studying global warming in different fashions. Second, his evidence [1] and [2] seriously underestimates the capabilities of the scientists conducting these studies. The scientists are aware of the urban heat island effect, which is why they correct the data in correlation to the setting of control variables, and in the end, the evidence of global warming is still represented in the trends. His evidence [3] is only speaking in the terms of the larger studies rather than on every study, meaning that this is underscoped as well, and when it speaks about the exaggeration of heating data in correlation with increases to CO2, it is important to note that while CO2 is the most abudant greenhouse gas being emitted into the atmosphere, CO2 is not the strongest, in comparison to the much more potent methane or N2O. When you look at the graphs at the bottom of this point, it is also important to note that my opponent's evidence is looking at every single place in the world individually. It is important to note that global warming is an average of the global temperatures, meaning that what every single individual region of the world experiences is immaterial. Greenland: What's happening to a particular part of the global ice caps doesn't mean this is what is happening to all polar ice caps. My evidence talked about the polar ice cap in Antartica shrinking, and the new evidence I was able to research on speaks about the shrinking ice caps around the Arctic Sea, close to the region of Greenland. While I speak about ice caps in general, my opponent only speaks about a particular ice cap. Global cooling: My opponent requires me to once again to explain that global warming is an average temperature of the globe, nothing too specific to any region in particular. Regions individually may experience fluctuations in their temperatures from highs to lows. Fluctuations: My opponent is right. Temperatures DO fluctuate as time goes on, but when you look at the overall graphs of global temperature, we realize that while there are fluctuations, the overall trend is increasing. My opponent talks about ages where there were very hot times, even though this was an earth from a very early time period where the atmosphere we know today was non-existent. We know that CO2 and other emissions we put in our atmosphere are greenhouse gases, and because we can reduce emissions, we can reduce the impact of global warming, hence meaning the government CAN do something about it. Benefits/Harms: When we look at the benefits against the harms, we realize that not only have I proven that global warming can actually hurt the economy, but I have also shown you that trying to solve for global warming leads to many more benefits as well in addition to that, meaning that I'm currently showing that benefits are outweighing harms. I urge a PRO vote.