What questions would you ask the pro global warming in a debate if you were the con global warming?

Question

I have yo do this for a school project what would you say. I am the con the other person is the pro.

Answer 1

If I were to be both pro and con.  Here is just a sample of the questions I would ask:

Pro global warming - Some data suggests a trend towards global warming, when do you think we'll have enough data to definitively say, yes, global warming is real?  

Con global warming - What is the basis temperature for the earth that says that global warming is real.  Who made up that basis temperature?  Where is the data for that basis temperature and for how long and how many data points was the 'average' taken from?

Just a sample...  I'm hoping you get others to help you!

Good luck!

Answer 2

Why does Al Gore have such a big house?

Isn't this all a Communist plot?

How can little old us affect big old Earth?

Aren't scientists saying this just to get grant money?

Don't people like to be warm?

Doesn't it still snow in Alaska?

In other words, whatever you do, make it political or emotional.  Do not discuss science, or you're toast.

Answer 3

The question is always what is the optimum temperature of the earth?

Knowing this will tell us whether we're in a warming period or a cooling one.  It's very cyclic, so these variations can be objective.

Some say we've been coming out of an ice age for some time now, so the warming trend in the 1930's, the cooling trend up the 1980's followed by the warming trend we now experience are just very small fluctuations, but that the over all trend has been warming ever since the last ice age.

Of course, if the debate is about whether humans or animals cause climate change, it's easy to be on the con side.  All you have to do is ask them to prove humans cause global warming.  So far no scientist on earth has done so in the last 50 years since people have tried to blame climate changes on human activity.

The ones who believe humans are definitely causing climate change demand that those who don't believe them must prove that humans don't cause it.  It's impossible to prove a negative.  If they can't prove humans cause it then that's all you need to know.  Any belief that humans cause such a thing to happen lies in faith and thus religion.

Answer 4

What will the climate be this summer, and next winter with a steady increase in co2?

And show how you came to your conclusion.

Answer 5

I would ask "will you please forfeit right now?  Because otherwise I'm going to lose."

You can hope that the other side doesn't know their stuff and ask things like

"What caused previous climate changes?"

"How do you know that's not causing the current global warming?"

"How do we even know the planet is warming?"

"How do we know it's a problem?"

Scientists know all these things (as does anyone who's done any research), but maybe your opposition will have slacked off.

Answer 6

I would start out with this one:

"If man-caused greenhouse gases are such a serious issue, why was it that THOUSANDS of the World's climate experts decided it was environmentally responsible to jump on pollution-spewing jet planes to resort locations in Bali to discuss how WE (not they) should be more responsible in our use of non-renewable energy...... shouldn't those so-called 'sincere' experts have met via 'Video-Conference'???

Answer 7

Scientifically relevant con question: "It is clear that current physical climate models based on couple atmos.-ocean circulation models do not do a good job modeling formation of clouds and deep convection.  Based on the importance of these processes in determining the radiative balance of the planet and that reasonable estimates of the negative feedbacks (i.e., cooling) of some of these processes (e.g., deep convection), how can you be sure that the radiative forcing by CO2 will result in global warming?"

Pro response:  "It is true that clouds and convection are two of the more poorly parameterized processes in AOGCMs and it is true that the radiative forcing from these can be negative, but it is not true that even if these two processes directly cancel the radiative forcing from CO2 there will be no effect on climate.  Here's why.  Climate is mainly due to the redistribution of heat around the globe.  Solar radiation heats the low latitudes, and that heat moves polewards through advection in the atmosphere and the oceans.  The transfer of heat, or its long-term averages, are what we come to know as "climate" more or less.  The radiative forcing from CO2 is a fact, and it is more or less evenly distributed globally (see link).  That heat from the CO2 radiative forcing does not follow the same pattern of solar insolation.  Furthermore, the cooling mechanisms of deep convection and clouds are going to be restricted to a very narrow latitude range in the tropics, which is where most of the deep convection occurs (see link).  So if deep convection is removing most of the heat retained by CO2, that is going to cause a change in how heat redistributes around the globe, since a lot of the heat must now move opposite the natural flow towards the poles.  This redistribution of heat in variance with the natural flow is the same thing as saying climate will change.  (Hopefully your opponent won't know this argument or you will get fileted.)

Now you may think I have set up a strawman argument, asking a dumb question and then tearing it down.  But I didn't.  The cloud question is a good question, by con standards.  The point is that *all* con arguments, even the most credible of them, fail to support the idea that CO2 is not affecting climate.  If CO2 has no effect, something is very wrong with out understanding of radiative transfer and atmosphere-ocean dynamics.  If we were misunderstanding things on such a core level, there would be huge problems in other areas such as numerical weather prediction and hurricane track forecasting.  It is logical chains like this that make scientists who know their stuff so damned certain CO2 is a problem.  Those who don't understand the physics tend to disbelieve some very basic science.

Answer 8

Why can I never find the other matching sock?