Agriculture and global warming

Question

Hello there! I am currently working on a debate on whether or not humans are causing global warming.

Now I need some help on finding how agriculture is not causing global warming. I know already how it is.

Also if you have time could you please tell me why the Earth's cycle and Sun are not to blame...

But agriculture first please and thanks so much!

Answer 1

Well, the plants growing in the field do absorb Co2...not that its even been proven or able to be shown that co2 is a real culprit in the GW trend..but the academic dummies that refuse to even question that premis can at least academically agree with the idea that more plants is a good thing. However, as plants start to decay...they give off S2H4 which i'm not sure if anyone has actually tied to any specific action.

That's one of the many factors people overlook or know nothing about. So, I too agree that for someone to step forward as Al Gore has and to arrogantly claim man is responsible for GW is nothing short (at best) a well meaning idiot. Problem is, History is full of well meaning idiots..and the end result of it has been more taxes, bad policies, screwy laws, Bigger Government, less freedom. When will humans learn this ?

As for not blaming the sun...wow.... I've looked at the models of the planetary system....Don't know about you, but the sun is the only heating source i can find....to not blame it for heating trends is like testing out a home-made parachute and expecting gravity not to mess with you as you jump off the roof.

Can anyone predict that mass, energy and heat potential of the earth's core ? Can anyone predict what would happen if the sun was simply removed and we had to rely on the planet's core to keep things warm ?

These magnitudes of questions are largely unanswerable and haven't been touched by mankind since they are nearly incalculable. Best we can attain is an 'estimate' or a 'guestimation'.

We can't calculate ever effect that the sun's magnetic flux interacting with the earths might cause. we can't include every detail and factor that cause things to happen the way we do. We are making progress but seems the big GW craze is largely fueled by ignorance of the masses and bad science whom were too presumptive to think the planet is equivalent to thier petri dish.

Answer 2

The true cause of Global Warming is the left and Gore. They want gasoline to go even higher to protect the envirement. They will block anything that might give us some help. If we do not get to drilling soon the Left and there scam winds...

Answer 3

It's common knowlege that the Sun is causing temperature flucations here on Earth.  In fact, Russian Scientist are far ahead of their American counterparts when it comes to climate science.

"Habibullo Abdusamatov, head of the space research laboratory at the St. Petersburg-based Pulkovo Observatory, said global warming stems from an increase in the sun's activity. His view contradicts the international scientific consensus that climate change is attributable to the emission of greenhouse gases generated by industrial activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

"Global warming results not from the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but from an unusually high level of solar radiation and a lengthy - almost throughout the last century - growth in its intensity," Abdusamatov told RIA Novosti in an interview.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070115/590789...

Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.

The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason—solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/9476...

Answer 4

I suppose you could say that agriculture (plants not livestock) may deter global warming due the O2 they give off and CO2 they take in, however, in general it would be organic crops that this case could be made for as traditionallly grown crops require a lot of fertilisers and pesticides which require a great deal of oil to produce..

You could say that the earth and sun are not blame due alarming rise in CO2 which is concurrent with the development of western nations and the rise of eastern nations such as China.

Hope this has been helpful to you

Answer 5

The amount of energy that humans put into the greenhouse system is nothing compared to the amount from natural sources.  If the greenhouse adapts to varying amounts of energy from the sun it will adapt to a tiny addition by humans as well.

You should debate weather a NASA scientist can get funding without mentioning "global warming" in his abstract.

Answer 6

You should go do research where there is not an opinion driven format, but is backed by legitimate sources and not a bunch of wikipedia sites and typical support or deny web sites. I heard they have these thing called libraries that are a great place to do fact based research.

Answer 7

Properly managed grasslands store roughly as much CO2 as forests and do it more securely, stashing it in the soil instead of the plants themselves. When a tree burns, decomposes, or is cut down, the CO2 it stored gets released, so all trees are carbon neutral by definition over their lifetimes. However, as long as you don't plow up your grassland, you're good to go. One way to avoid plowing up your grassland is to use it as pasture for livestock. Avoid overgrazing, and you're likewise good to go on the carbon sequestration front.

This is one of many reasons that exclusively grassfed meat is better for the environment than conventionally raised meat. (Stockyards and other CAFOs sequester very little CO2, as I'm sure you can imagine.)

http://www.eatwild.com/environment.html

Plant crops also absorb CO2 in order to grow, but I'm not sure how much is released at harvesting and it's likely that in most conventional agriculture situations any benefit is mitigated by the fossil fuels used to produce the chemicals, ship and process the finished crop, etc. Likewise for organics, minus the chemicals.

Here's info on why the sun and/or normal fluctuations in climate are NOT to blame for the current changes:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-ac...

http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-...

http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pr...

http://scholarsandrogues.wordpress.com/2...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...

Answer 8

don't have a good answer why agriculture is not to blame.  could be that fields tend to be lighter, and thus reflect more energy back to space.  which would, of course, be countered by "dark woods use that energy to create trees and bushes".  which you could then counter with, "yes, but eventually those bushes will either burn, or die and decompose, and release that energy.

however, i see you have a number of deniers helping you here.

clearly the sun, and to a lesser extent heat being conducted from the center of the earth, cause warming.  that's not in question, although deniers like to try to make it one.  what is at issue is, how much heat is retained by the atmosphere, and the water, CO2, methane, etc in the atmosphere.  with more CO2, it's like putting an extra blanket on your bed.

"Earth's cycle and Sun are not to blame" because they change very slowly.  not quickly, as the recent warning has done.

the 2 links explain the process that is causing warming.