Global Warming

[KATE]

So this was coming up a lot in another thread, the End of the World, and I decided it needed its own.

Now a few points were brought up about how the world is in sync and its changing temperatures are normal.

So, as for global warming. Yes I do think it is happening, and yes I do believe that humans are playing a factor. I don't think that it is hapening at a rate that suddenly the rising sea level will cause all coastal cities to flood, but enough right now that keystone species and habitats are beginning to show the signs of a warming temperature.

So if you think you can prove me wrong, go for it. I love debates on the environment.

[thomasmellark]

Again, using my previous, point. How do you explain the Ice Age? The Ice Age is what, no offense(not trying to stereotype anyone), you say is Global Warming. Well, I have to disagree. Because it then went warmer really fast too. Also, in the United States there is a "example" of global warming you guys say. In Texas, we had a lot of rain, snow, whatever you want to say is wet for several years. Then, it went warm really fast and then it all went north. This has been happening for several years, and in awhile Texas will be wet and the north will be dry.

I still disagree with global warming. The earth is the earth. Yes, we should care about it some, but everything will go well. Mother nature as people say will take care of things. Everything has a part, and everything in that part is in sync. That's what I say. ;D

[Aanaleigh]

Yes, global warming is happening. And humans are helping it along.

BUT...

It is suppose to be happening. We've gone though Ice Ages and Global Warming before. This time is no different. We have to continually change to grow.
Do you think the world is the same as it was when the first homosapians inhabited Earth? No. It's changed.

[thomasmellark]

My point. See, before the flood, people lived to be 800 something if you were lucky. If you were 100, you were still considered young. Because before the flood, the atmosphere was kind of like water. It was more moist with a lot of clouds. The sun still came through, but it wasn't like now.

[Rowena]

Thomas - without humans all species remain pretty much in balance. However human beings have so much power in the environment that we're messing up the natural order of things. We've messed up so many animal's habitats through deforestation and urbanization. For example, before the arrival of Europeans, North America used to be 98% forested, which allowed plenty of space for interior species, such as the yellow, black and white, and cerulean warblers to breed, while also allowing plenty of edge forest (up to 200 feet into the forest) for edge species, such as white-tailed deer, who thrive in more open areas. Now, North America is around 35% forested - and that's higher than it was even in 1950! - and there aren't enough substantial forested areas to support all the species that used to inhabit the forests, because many areas we consider forests are really just edge and don't have enough space for many bird species to breed. And that's just the long-term effects. Humans managed to wipe out the passenger pigeon - once the most substantial bird on the continent and possibly the world - in a matter of decades through deforestation of their breeding habitat and over-hunting. Would any other species have had the power to do that? No. We're the ones that upset the balance. Not to mention that pretty much any time a keystone species has been removed from a habitat, the root cause is humans.

It may be true that the Earth's temperature fluctuates naturally over time, and at the moment the temperature is gradually increasing. But humans are definitely accelerating this increase. Already scientists can measure the percentage of the polar ice caps that have melted. So even if you don't think global warming is going to seriously effect the climate during your lifetime, you should be concerned for future generations.

[thomasmellark]

No offense, but I shouldn't. Because (I'm Christian) everything will be okay. I know that for a fact.

[KATE]

First I would like to apologize for my late reply in this, I have been very busy preparing for the party.

Next, I would like everyone to know in advance that I do not disrespect anyone’s opinion, I am stating my own opinion on all that has already been said, and that in putting your own thoughts in this board you have put yourself in any uncomfortable position you may feel.
Now on to my arguments.
I am a Christian as well, Roman Catholic to be specific, the domineering religion that was the FIRST Christian religion that all other modern sections broke off of and also pushed our beliefs across the world using any force seeming necessary. I’ve spent years in catecism where I was taught by my own grandmother, serving as an alter girl, and attending weekly mass.
I am also a scientist though. I have a very good understanding of the biological sphere that we call Earth and about the vastness of all the different functions of the Earth. When it comes to environmental sciences, my credential will speak for them. Through high school I received multiple awards in biological experiments over everything from the different chemical compositions and their affect on flora to the plasticity and litheness changes within the rubber compounds. I graduated with top honors specializing in organic sciences in the top of my class of more than three hundred as well as being considered one of the top scholars in the United States and being considered one of the ‘Silver Scholars’ for the state of Nevada. I went to one of the top universities for medical chemistry in the country, several professors in the biological sciences expressed interest in me as a Lab Assistant. I’ve worked for the State of Nevada identifying and removing as well as preventing invasive plant species and different pollution focus points. I have three Environmental firms who want me as an intern before I have my degrees, as well as on of the world’s biggest mines asking for a meeting with me with their head of reclamation. In the fall I will be acting as free lance teacher of math and sciences grades seven through twelve and will have one of my college degrees this spring.
That, my fellow debaters, is what you call building your credit, giving a reason for people to believe you. When I say I know what I am talking about when it comes to the environment, I literally know what I’m talking about.
Now I am also a firm believer in everything being cross referenced. You will see at the bottom of this I will include a list of most my direct references in this, please excuse the lack of proper format, some this I will not be able to directly site due to it being built up knowledge from years of education. You are welcome to correct me if you can find evidence otherwise, if not I do not believe that I have been refuted properly.
Now, in refutation of what has been stated about the ice age. The global climate change was one that did occur naturally in the world, without the human interaction. The problem with this idea though is that there was a cause to the ice, just because it wasn’t humans doesn’t mean anything, it wasn’t just ‘natural cooling of the Earth’. The Ice age was mostly caused my a volcanic eruption with then filled the atmosphere with chemicals that drastically reduced amount of solar energy, preventing this energy from reaching the Earth. This can be proven through the different source of using carbon dating from air pockets that are found from ice in the polar caps. These air pockets contain matter which is tantamount to what is found in the ash from volcanoes today. This can also be found in modern eruptions such as Mount Pintubo which erupted in1991 and caused a 1 degree drop in the temperature worldwide for an entire year (Nat.Geo August 2009). This may not seem like much but this eruption was not up to the level of catastrophe in which earlier eruptions were. The eruptions in previous times caused mass extinctions reaching up to nearly 80% species extinction and this climate changes took place between 12-48 millions of years, not a months.
Now, yes the world goes through these warming and cooling stages, but they are caused by a force within the Earth and its atmosphere. In reference to the First Law of Thermodynamics, you cannot get something from nothing. The world won’t just magically decide to put its coat on when it decides its cold outside. The energy to heat the Earth comes from a molecular and chemical change in the Environment. An example of this is the measured increase amount of O3, oxygen three, also known as ozone which allows for the Earth to be protected from ultraviolent rays, but increased amounts in layers other than the stratosphere cause damage to organisms on the earth, this is also grouped in with simply, air pollution which has killed more than 2.4 million people prematurely on Earth. (Environmental Science). So in this, yes the Earth warms and cools, like the ice age example, but it’s not something that just happens, something triggers it.
In sync is very vague term to most people because they don’t understand just how ‘in sync’ the world is. I have a grasp on just how little I understand this, when most people assume it just works out. There are hundreds of different diagrams in the world that you are welcome to read and look over to get an idea about just how the nutrient cycling in the world occurs. I will reference the Law of Conservation of Matter here and specify how “matter is neither created nor destroyed but merely changed from one form to another…existing atoms are rearranged into different spatial patterns” (Environmental Sciences). In simple terms, there is no ‘away’. The problem with this is that humans are causing this to happen in the carbon nutrient cycle much more quickly than what the Earth’s other normal nutrient cycling can regulate since we are not having an equal impact across the other cycles. We are changing fossil fuels into a carbon dioxide much faster than what the Earth’s Cycles can break them back down into carbon. We are literally choking the Earth with carbon dioxide which in turn creates more methane, oxygen, sulfates, and other ‘greenhouse gases’. These gases ar not bad gases, in the right proportions. When in the right proportions, they keep the Earth warm but if they rise to levels that are too high the Earth over heats. This also lends a hand to the fluctuations of the Earth’s temperatures, supposedly keeping them ‘in sync’.
My next refutation will not be quite as in depth due to the fact that I do not want to completely insult someone else’s religion and my lack of knowledge about their specific religion or how they interpret their readings. I cannot say anything about a great flood in scientific speaking because there is no geological reference as yet to be found even hinting at a great flood that caused all the Earth to be swept away under water. I believe in Pangaea where the Earth’s continents were once a major continent and through billions of years shifted due to convection cells in the Earth’s mantle which caused movement on the crust including some plates sub-ducting and causing major floods to happen in coastal regions. This is great flooding to me which played a hand at the evolution of the organisms on this planet to adapt and evolve essentially, “natural selection at work molding and modifying individual genes to adapt the organism to its particular circumstances” (Nat. Geo. February 2009) which takes at least hundreds of years. As before these floods there are no geologic records of any point in time that the Earth’s atmosphere being any type of liquid, let alone at a time which human’s existed and lived well beyond their age. The human body could not stand more than 175 years at this time without drastic medical interference with the deformed and failing cells that would essentially be clogging the body.
On a less scientific perspective of this matter I would like to know where this information is interpreted from because right now one of my best refutations against this in the religious view is in my bible, the catholic version, where God states on the third day of creation, “Let waters under heaven be gathered together into one place and let dry land appear.” I don’t see how the air can be that moist if there is dry land.
Lastly I will give you all my reasoning for why global warming is in fact happening. First of all, an example from what is considered “Ground Zero” for Global Warming: Greenland. Glaciers in Greenland are melting at a rate of fifty cubic miles per year. Entire glacial lakes are disappearing as cracks form and the water is drained away. Some of the ice that has melted in Greenland has retreated back into the blue zone, this is a layer of ice that is ancient and has had all the air in it compressed out so that it is literally blue. This is happening so quickly that countries and institutions all over the world have put up time lapse cameras to record these melting glaciers and are taking thousands of pictures of them a year to record the changes. (Nat Geo, June 2010)
This may not seem like the most drastic change, but less than a ten degree difference can impact the glaciers so greatly that the coastline can rise twenty four feet before this is all ‘back in sync’.
This isn’t just the rising temperatures though, remember the nutrient cycling I mentioned, it comes back here. Microscopic debris from coal powered plants, automobiles, and even diesel engines get picked up and blown through the atmosphere. This happens at such high rates that it causes black spots to appear in glacial ice, this is called cryoconite. The cryocinte reduces the albedo of the ice, albedo allows ice to reflect heat off of itself preventing the melting. This reduced albedo caused by the cryconite is causing the ice to take in the solar energy and melting. This is turning the 7% of Earth’s fresh water we have in Greenland into salt water.
This is but one example of the impacts global warming is happening. The other aspects I explained in my refutations are others. Global warming is happening my friends. If it wasn’t, why would scientists around the world be contemplating filling the atmosphere with sulfate particles, similar to those in volcanoes, in order to act as a sunshade for the Earth and saying that “global warming we’d been making would come rushing at us all at once” (Nat. Geo. August 2009). You may or may not be concerned about global warming for yourself, your future generations, but I believe that nothing that comes in the future can be considered a fact until it happens. Global warming is happening as we speak, it is a fact. Many people may not believe in it, or care about doing anything about it, but I do, and I will put forth my best effort to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem that is festering with ignorance. Again, I mean no disrespect to anyone, this is but my opinion that I have referenced to real facts stated in common tools of research.
References
Environmental Sciences by GT Miller and SE Spoolman. 13th Edition, Brookes and Cole Publishing. USA
National Geographic, Volumes June 2010, August 2009, and February 2009
Catholic Bible New Edition
Several Years High School and College Education with various instructors and miscellaneous text books.

[thomasmellark]

Well, I believed almost everything in your opinion. Yes, humans are tampering with the 'database' in earth. And there have been studies and examples of the earth being covered in water. Even proof. Now, this proof I just want to give out, it's not good, but it's not bad in my opinion. But how do you explain a whale in the desert of Nevada(not the recent one)? How do you explain seashells almost everywhere in the sand if you look? And another thing, I'm not trying to disrespect YOUR opinion, Kate. But the earth is not millions of years old. Studies have shown the earth is more of a 11,000 - 14,000 year old range. That's pretty much what I got from your POV on things, Kate. I still have no meaning to disrespect you.

[KATE]

I live in Nevada, I've gone out and found those seashell fossils about 20 mins from where I live. I can explain those in a variety of ways the prominent being that at one point Nevada was covered in water, its also how the Salt Flats of Utah were created. This I touch on above when I spoke about Pangea, at that time the Earth's continents were not the same size or shape due to the changong sea levels. Some other theories on whales being indeserts can be found here: mobile.theweek.com/article/index/221669/the-mysterious-whale-graveyard-discovered-in-a-desert

No its not millions of years old its billions, around 4.5 billion.What study is this? It can't be by any educational or scientific community. Rocks in the Earth have been carbon dated to be older than 3 billion years old. The evolution of everything alive took for than 10,000 years.
You are welcome to look into this for that: earthfusion.org/faqs/dalrymple/scientific_age_earth.html