I believe global warming is a serious threat for humanity and that we bring it upon ourselves unless we alter our activities to be less harmful for the environment by lowering the production of greenhouse gases.

Global warming is in this debate defined as continuous rise of the average temperature of Earth's atmosphere since the early industrialization in the early 19th century that will alter many ecosystems all over the world negatively by affecting weather, sea-levels and other crucial systems.

Furthermore we shall debate the effect of increased concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere on global warming and if human activities can be blamed.

This debate is going to be a scientific one. Political views will be irrelevant to winning the debate.

Everyone will concur with one observable fact,the earth's surface and environment is changing . Common sense is leading us to one utterly true fact. Humans have become very destructible towards nature since the industrialization.
We can often see the evidence in our daily live as well most of the catastrophic keywords like disease, pollution, waste etc have come from the media . We have learned to preserve a very ecologically protective mindset while dealing with pollution in general. We are confronted with a scale of large catastrophes like deep water horizon and other maybe even bigger problems, like pollution of our oceans, endangering so many species, wasting so many commodities, sickening ourselves through so many substances. People on this planet are definitely aware of the whole problem. If you tell someone there's no extinction of whales or there is no danger in transportation of oil, they will declare you a maniac. Nobody will disagree to this point I hope. But everyone of those catastrophes has one thing in common. They are not doubtful. You can't doubt something, people have reported all over the world, almost proving it only with that fact.
People are reporting a climate change all over the planet, this is a true and the main issue of this whole debate.
Therefore our headline can be a little bit misinterpretable due to me agreeing to that point.
As i have read ego's opening he stated we should restrain to scientific argumens, first i could not realy agree with that. As both of us hardly are scientists,we can only rely on a few hours up to days of research mostly over the internet. My second issue deals with the common belief or attitude towards this very difficult topic. My motive is not to disprove a man made global warming, just because i don't see myself fit to achieve such a goal, but i want put out my thoughts and be able to resolve or clearify a common hardened belief : Man made global warming.
I hopefully will adress either a few political views , some of their irresponsible strategies wasting efforts and funds.
I will also try to explain a few factors of global warming. As our planet being constantly changing on a scale, where thousands of years don't count at all . I will also look from an astronomical viewpoint on global warming. Whether there is a large cosmic influence on the earth's temperature or not. There are also large efforts until that day to be rated, such as a global warming stock exchange. And a bigger question what has led to such an institute. What role does the media have at all.
Those are subtopics of my con argument, even though i see large benefits from a misbelief like that. We have to try not to defend only ur beliefs, but we have to start thinking about it on a global matter. Weighing it. Does it feed a new way of treating the world, making the increase of western energy efficiency management conclusive to fighting global warming. Do all of these regulations and costly investments interfere with our productivity and slow down our economic growth? Aren't we destroing our economies by challenging our competitors, who rely on the old and cheap way, eventally losing our way of life. We have to clearify that .

I believe there is an easy way out of it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter

None of us have any control over the environment. Obviously we don't want to destroy it, but at the same time, it's not like we can just get up and fix it.

http://www.stfc.ac.uk/RALSpace/Areas...ews/18852.aspx

I think that photo of the UK covered top to bottom in snow was taken just a few weeks after a climate change conference, where they always discuss how they're going to stop global warming.

Ice age>us>ice melts>hotasfk>ice age

The debate is well defined and involving politics and economical issues will mess things up. The headline is just an eye catcher, read the description and you are set.
You do not need to be a scientist to make scientific claims if you can support them with sources. You probably are no politician or economist, so how could you argue from those perspectives if you follow that logic?

The evidence for a man-made global warming is overwhelming.
Firstly I would like to point out that the general consensus of scientists approve of my position as expressed by this synthesis report (systematic review): http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_.../mains2-4.html
"It is very likely that the response to anthropogenic forcing contributed to sea level rise during the latter half of the 20th century"
"Temperatures of the most extreme hot nights, cold nights and cold days are likely to have increased due to anthropogenic forcing."
It gives a good relative insight into the results of many studies that support my view that global warming is caused by man.

A prosperous future of mankind relies highly on the investments we put into technologies that will alter our activities to more green ones. While I agree that certain investments can be redundant or prove to be mistakes afterwards, a variety of options needs to be considered in order to find the best possible solutions for the problems we face.
The solution certainly is not to cut spending but to direct the investments into a most promising direction.
We do not spend enough by far and some of the main producers of CO2, such as the USA, still refuse to face the truth about global warming and reject to join the Kyoto Protocol as they fear economical disadvantages more than ecological disasters.
The Kyoto Protocol, while it gets a lot of press, did do some good and was successful in some ways. See: Chart
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...rbon-emissions
The production of CO2 through human activities, however, is still increasing yearly.
That's the problem. The few miscalculations and mistaken investments are rather insignificant in comparison to the amount of investments and calculations that aren't done at all. A focus on problems of the green thinking ways is misplaced.

The concentration of CO2 in earth's atmosphere is an important factor.
I realize that the production of CO2, as well as its absorption, is always happening naturally but it is very evident that the harsh raise of the concentration in the atmosphere since the industrialization is due to human activities.
http://www.bgc.mpg.de/service/iso_ga...PG_WB_IJMS.pdf

The only reason why global warming is a serious threat is yes it will start killing us and our food, but for the Planet? I think Earth would be fine and will eventually rebuild its ecosystem, with or with out us, preferably with out us.

Unless the planet already passed half life, then were destined to a dry, dry, windy planet.

What's your base for this claim?

Anyways, I think the thread title is sort of misleading.

Yes, I think there's pretty good evidence that a climate change is occurring. Places that would otherwise not have wildfires (like Denver) have had them because the climates are becoming drier. CO2 levels (whether or not that's affected by humans) have been rising. The last ten years are the warmest on record.

With all this occurring, how can one say that climate change (global warming seems like a narrow, antiquated term to use for me) is fake?

I think the real argument lies in whether or not human activity is to blame for climate change, or if climate change occurs naturally and cyclically on earth.

Life is pretty much impossible to destroy completely. With a silly global warming anyway, considering how much shit it went through in the past. Two major volcano erruptions and one huge meteor let all living species at that time go extinct if I recall correctly.

We need the planet earth to fit our natural urges and if the climate alters harshly we will get problems.

Lol, someone failed natural geography and history. The major volcano eruptions didn't wipe out all species at that time. It wiped out most of the ones who couldn't adapt to the rapidly changing environment. In the first one, most trilobites were killed, as well as many amphibians. Giant insects went extinct at this time as well. During the second one, all trilobites were killed, as well as many sea creatures, since it spewed ash and carbon dioxide/monoxide into the air and water. As for the meteor, the impact itself didn't have much effect. The crash would kill anything close to it, but the major effects would've been the dust thrown up by the impact into the atmosphere. That would block out sunlight, effectively killing plant life, killing herbivores, thus killing the entire food chain. Dinosaurs couldn't live through that, however mammals did seeing as how they adapted to the environment. Scientists believe that it was either a meteor or volcanic eruption did that.
"Planet Earth" isn't going to change for any god-damn humans. It's a giant rock covered with water and dirt orbiting a giant ball of gas that's creating nuclear fusion every second. Did I forget to say that it's also a giant rock weighing some sextillion tons that doesn't give 2 giant shits about what we're doing or what we care? It's the atmosphere we're talking about. Global warming has one effect, and it's not even complicated. The carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere allow sunlight and heat to pass through, but once they get in, very little gets out. Pretty much heating up the planet. If people want to live in conditions where you can breath outside without burning to death, metaphorically, then the government should stop giving 9 million shits about what's going on in Afghanistan, and start working on improving the way we use stuff. Instead of pouring millions of dollars into helping Afghanistan fight the Taliban, I kinda feel like that won't help a bit. They'll go away, and come back. Got off-topic, sorry. If the government wanted the planet to not heat up insanely fast, then maybe they ought to stop sending drone, planes and millions of trucks, tanks and shit around everywhere. All of what that does, besides cause destruction and death, is send more carbon dioxide. If you've ever been to New York, it's a disgrace, honestly. In some ways it's a disgrace, in some ways it's not. Times Square uses massive amounts of energy, which come from plants, which add to the greenhouse effect. On the other hand, everything you could ever need is usually within 2 blocks of you. It cuts back since everything is within walking distance. That would be, it would help cut down on greenhouse gases if half the people in the city actually walked 1 block to get some bread, instead of driving there.
Pretty much if anyone wants to save the environment and manage to get rid of all greenhouse gases, go kill every person you see. Wait around 20,000 years. By then most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be gone. Chemistry, half-life of carbon is around 20,000 years. Win.

I actually meant to type most of all species at that time. Nice ad hominem, I guess? ;o