Anyone?

I think as a rational individual I'm most able to counter, even if I dont believe in the counter.


anyway:


Against.

The contrarians claim there is a 'debate' and it has not been decided yet. There is a lack of contrarian views in peer reviewed literature. The excuse to this, is pro-kyoto conspiracy. Well not exactly conspiracy but insitutional bias. Peer Reviewed science has historically suppressed counter views to being published. and also more research gets done that will likely get published - because funding comes to those that do get published.

a circular situation. Contrarianism is suppressed.

Right so, well, let's see how far we can take this. I was kind of hoping that someone with a genuine distrust towards the "environmentalists" would have taken the bate but after 6 days of no-show I'm ready to try anything.

Your argument is valid but also subject to relativism and scepticism towards all science. The problem is that we can argue from any standpoint (and many people often do) without any concrete evidence by introducing the "conspiracy" theory. What was before a quirk of any community competing for external funds now becomes the most important contributer to the scientific process, surpassing the hard data, methodology, consistency with our world view and peer reviewal. In other words this is an ad Hominem argument that is extremely distorted and amplified from its original role which is that even though there may be bias within the scientific community and that to be able to compete for media time you must surpass the previous "dooms day scenarios" we still have a functioning peer reviewed science and that the misinterpretation usually happens in the minds of overly idealistic politicians and ignorant laymans.

I do not contest the fact that there exists great disagreement within the scientists about the scale, pace and contributing factors of GW. Nevertheless the most gross mistakes have been peer reviewed and corrected (such as the "Hockey stick" temperature curve by Mann).

My theses are these:

1) the climate is warming
2) its atleast partly result of human activities
3) we know that methane and CO2 are greenhouse gases and that their amount is rising in the atmospheric composition
4) we need to curb the amount of greenhouse gases to slow down the warming
5) first step in that process is the implementation of Kyoto agreement
6) if we do not curb the warming it will lead to mass extinction of species in certain ecosystems, increased costs as the weather becomes more extreme and increased difficulty of living in the tropic where majority of mankind lives. This will in turn lead to increased amount of immigrants, refugees, political unrest and shortage of food and water
7) we also need to prepare for the eventuality that living conditions in the equatorial regions will become increasingly hostile even if we manage to do something about the warming and therefore we must take additional steps to plan for the aiding and relocating people in the most barren regions

The arguments behind this logic are
- the indisputable findings that the global temperatures are rising, measured from ocean temperatures which are not subject to urban heating
- in addition, the North Atlantic Oscillation is weakening, Arctic glaciers are retreating and the volume of water in the Arctic rivers has increased which means the Arctic temperatures are rising
- certain lenghts of microwaves in the satellite measurements confirm these findings (although other lenghts show no significant rise in temp's)
- the amount of CO2 has doubled since the 1800's and is projected to double during this century which is likely to further contribute to the rising of temperatures
- the forest coverage is fast being depleted in the tropic further contributing to the rise of carbon in the atmosphere

These findings are not disputed even among the sceptics. It is easy to conclude that although the worst doomsday scenarios are not likely to happen, even a gradual and moderate rise in the temperatures will lead to difficult times in the already restless tropic as well as to the destruction of irreplaceable Arctic wild life.