APES Argumentative Essay Assignment
February 2013
Climate change has been the center of political and scientific debate. At the center of this debate is the
conflict over the cause of climate change, formerly referred to as global warming. Many argue that the global
climate is changing because of global industrialization, while others argue that climate changes occur in a
cyclical pattern which has happened throughout the history of the planet.
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Write an argumentative essay defending your position on what is the cause of global changes in
climate.
o Provide at least three strong arguments, with at least three pieces of evidence to support each
argument.
o Explain how global climate is measured and what forces are involved in its creation;
atmospheric, oceanographic and solar .
The essay must be 5 paragraphs and include an introduction, body and conclusion.
The essay will be evaluated according to the attached rubric.
Use the following articles, peer presentations and any other personal research as evidence
November 27, 2011
Scientists in Revolt against Global Warming By Karin McQuillan
Global warming became a cause to save life on earth before it had a chance to become good science. The belief
that fossil fuel use is an emergency destroying our planet by CO2 emissions took over the media and political
arena by storm. The issue was politicized so quickly that the normal scientific process was stunted. We have
never had a full, honest national debate on either the science or government policy issues.
Everyone "knows" that global warming is true. The public has no idea of the number of scientists -- precisely
one thousand at last count of a congressional committee -- who believe that global warming is benign and
natural, and that it ended in 1998. We have not been informed of the costs to our economy of discouraging
fossil fuel development and promoting alternatives. The public need to know the choices being made on their
behalf, and to have a say in the matter. We are constantly told that the scientific and policy debate on global
warming is over. It has just begun.
What is never discussed is this: the theory of global warming has catastrophic implications for our economy and
national security. Case in point: Obama's recent decision to block the Keystone pipeline in order to placate
global warming advocates. Key Democrat supporters fear the use of oil more than they care about losing jobs or
our dangerous dependence on the Mideast for oil. The president delayed the pipeline by fiat, and the general
public has had no say. (For the impact on our economy, see my article, "The Whole Country Can Be Rich.")
President Obama has spoken out passionately on the danger of developing oil and gas because of man-made
global warming. "What we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us
to a point of no return. And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new
course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe."
Obama calls for the debate to end. He cites hurricanes as proof: "dangerous weather patterns and devastating
storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not
only is it real -- it's here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the manmade natural disaster."
Happily, our president is wrong. The worst hurricanes were in 1926, the second-worst in 1900. The world's top
hurricane experts say that there is no evidence that global warming affects storms. There is no such thing as a
man-made hurricane. Storm cycles and long patterns of bad weather are entirely natural. Yet this good news is
suppressed by our politicized media. We hear only one side.
More and more scientists are revolting against the global warming consensus enforced by government funding,
the academic establishment, and media misrepresentation. They are saying that solar cycles and the complex
systems of cloud formation have much more influence on our climate, and account for historical periods of
warming and cooling much more accurately that a straight line graph of industrialization, CO2, and rising
temperatures. They also point out that the rising temperatures that set off the global warming panic ended in
1998.
It takes a lot of courage. Scientists who report findings that contradict man-made global warming find their
sources of funding cut, their jobs terminated, their careers stunted, and their reports blocked from important
journals, and they are victimized by personal attacks. This is a consensus one associates with a Stalinist system,
not science in the free world.
Here is how it has worked. The theory that entirely natural sun cycles best explain warming patterns emerged
years ago, but the Danish scientists "soon found themselves vilified, marginalized and starved of funding,
despite their impeccable scientific credentials." Physicists at Europe's most prestigious CERN laboratory tried
to test the solar theory in 1996, and they, too, found their project blocked. This fall, the top scientific journal
Nature published the first experimental proof -- by a team of 63 scientists at CERN -- that the largest factor in
global warming is the sun, not humans. But the director of CERN forbade the implications of the experiment to
be explained to the public: "I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them.
That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate."
As more and more scientific evidence is published that debunks global warming, the enforced consensus is
ending. The Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific institution -- whose previous president declared that "the
debate on climate change is over" -- "is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion
by members who question mankind's contribution to rising temperatures. ... The society has been accused by 43
of its Fellows of refusing to accept dissenting views on climate change and exaggerating the degree of certainty
that man-made emissions are the main cause." Most of the rebels were retired, as one of them explained, "One
of the reasons people like myself are willing to put our heads above the parapet is that our careers are not at risk
from being labeled a denier or flat-Earther because we say the science is not settled. The bullying of people into
silence has unfortunately been effective."
In America, Dr. Ivar Giaever, a Nobel Prize-winner in physics, resigned in protest from the American Physical
Society this fall because of the Society's policy statement: "The evidence is incontrovertible: global warming is
occurring." Dr. Giaver:
Incontrovertible is not a scientific word. Nothing is incontrovertible in science.
In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe
behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?
The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the
temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me
is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely
improved in this "warming" period.
In 2008, Prof. Giaever endorsed Barack Obama's candidacy, but he has since joined 100 scientists who wrote an
open letter to Obama, declaring: "We maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly
overstated."
Do a Google search: you will find this letter reported in Britain and even India, but not in America.
Fifty-one thousand Canadian engineers, geologists, and geophysicists were recently polled by their professional
organization. Sixty-eight percent of them disagree with the statement that "the debate on the scientific causes of
recent climate change is settled." Only 26% attributed global warming to "human activity like burning fossil
fuels." APEGGA's executive director Neil Windsor said, "We're not surprised at all. There is no clear consensus
of scientists that we know of."
Dr. Joanne Simpson, one of the world's top weather scientists, expressed relief upon her retirement that she was
finally free to speak "frankly" on global warming and announce that "as a scientist I remain skeptical." She says
she remained silent for fear of personal attacks. Dr. Simpson was a pioneer in computer modeling and points out
the obvious: computer models are not yet good enough to predict weather -- we cannot scientifically predict
global climate trends.
Dr. Fred Singer, first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, and physicist Dr. Seitz, past president of the
APS, of Rockefeller University and of the National Academy of Science, argue that the computer models are
fed questionable data and assumptions that determine the answers on global warming that the scientists expect
to see.
Recently we've had a perfect example of the enforced global warming consensus falling apart. Berkeley
Professor Muller did a media blitz with the findings of the latest analysis of all land temperature data, the BEST
study, that he claimed once and for all proved that the planet is warming. Predictably, the Washington Post
proclaimed that the BEST study had "settled the climate change debate" and showed that anyone who remained
a skeptic was committing a "cynical fraud."
But within a week, Muller's lead co-author, Professor Curry, was interviewed in the British press (not reported
in America), saying that the BEST data did the opposite: the global "temperature trend of the last decade is
absolutely flat, with no increase at all - though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on
rising relentlessly."
This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting," Prof Curry said. "Whatever it is that's going on
here, it doesn't look like it's being dominated by CO2." In fact, she added, in the wake of the unexpected global
warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected sceptics' arguments were now taking
them much more seriously. They were finally addressing questions such as the influence of clouds, natural
temperature cycles and solar radiation - as they should have done, she said, a long time ago.
Other scientists jumped in, calling Muller's false claims to the media that BEST proved global warming "highly
unethical." Professor Muller, confronted with dissent, caved and admitted that indeed, both ocean and land
measurements show that global warming stopped increasing in 1998.
Media coverage on global warming has been criminally one-sided. The public doesn't know where the global
warming theory came from in the first place. Answer: the U.N., not a scientific body. The threat of catastrophic
warming was launched by the U.N. to promote international climate treaties that would transfer wealth from
rich countries to developing countries. It was political from the beginning, with the conclusion assumed: the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (U.N. IPCC) was funded to report on how man was changing
climate. Its scientific reports have been repeatedly corrected for misrepresentation and outright fraud.
This is important. Global warming theory did not come from a breakthrough in scientific research that enabled
us to understand our climate. We still don't understand global climate any more than we understand the human
brain or how to cure cancer. The science of global climate is in its infancy.
Yet the U.N. IPCC reports drive American policy. The EPA broke federal law requiring independent analysis
and used the U.N. IPCC reports in its "endangerment" finding that justifies extreme regulatory actions. Senator
Inhofe is apoplectic:
Global warming regulations imposed by the Obama-EPA under the Clean Air Act will cost American
consumers $300 to $400 billion a year, significantly raise energy prices, and destroy hundreds of thousands of
jobs. This is not to mention the 'absurd result' that EPA will need to hire 230,000 additional employees and
spend an additional $21 billion to implement its [greenhouse gas] regime.
Former top scientists at the U.N. IPCC are protesting publicly against falsification of global warming data and
misleading media reports. Dr. John Everett, for example, was the lead researcher on Fisheries, Polar Regions,
Oceans and Coastal Zones at the IPCC and a former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) senior manager, and he received an award while at NOAA for "accomplishments in assessing the
impacts of climate change on global oceans and fisheries." Here is what he has to say on global warming:
It is time for a reality check. Warming is not a big deal and is not a bad thing. The oceans and coastal zones
have been far warmer and colder than is projected in the present scenarios ... I would much rather have the
present warm climate, and even further warming...No one knows whether the Earth is going to keep warming,
or since reaching a peak in 1998, we are at the start of a cooling cycle that will last several decades or more.
That is why we must hear from all the best scientists, not only those who say fossil fuel use is dangerous. It is
very important that we honestly discuss whether this theory is true and, if so, what reasonable steps we can
afford to take to mitigate warming. If the theory is not based on solid science, we are free to develop our fossil
fuel wealth responsibly and swiftly.
Instead, federal policies are based on global warming fears. Obama has adopted the California model. The
Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 has shed a million jobs in that state. California now has almost 12%
unemployment, ranking 50th in the nation.
The country could be following North Dakota, where oil development has led to a 3.5% unemployment rate, or
Texas, which has created 40% of the jobs nationwide since the 2009 economic crash thanks to its robust energy
sector. These are good jobs. An entry-level job on an oil rig pays $70,000 a year. A roughneck with a high
school diploma earns $100,000 a year in Wyoming's Jonah Fields. Brazil's new offshore oil discoveries are
predicted to create 2 million jobs there. We have almost three times more oil than Brazil.
When we treat oil and gas companies like pariahs, we threaten America's economic viability. For global
warming alarmists who believe that man-made CO2 threatens life on earth, no cost is too high to fight it. They
avert their eyes from the human suffering of people without jobs, with diminished life savings, limited future
prospects, and looming national bankruptcy.
This is not all about idealism. There are crasser reasons of money and power for wanting to close the debate.
Billions of dollars in federal grants and subsidies are spent to fight global warming. The cover of fighting to
save the planet gives the government unlimited powers to intrude into private business and our individual
homes. The government can reach its long arm right into your shower and control how much hot water you are
allowed to use. In the words of MIT atmospheric scientist Dr. Lindzen, "[c]ontrolling carbon is kind of a
bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life."
Warming advocates persistently argue that we cannot afford to pause for a reality check; we must not ignore the
possibility that global warming theory might be true. Limiting fossil fuels and promoting green energy are
presented as a benign, a "why not be on the safe side," commonsense approach.
There is a lot of emotion and little common sense in this argument. If a diagnosis is based on a shaky and partly
fraudulent theory, ignores much more convincing evidence, and has terrible negative side effects, you don't
perform major surgery. We do not have to run around like Chicken Little on the off-chance that the sky may be
falling.
There has been a high economic cost to limiting our oil and gas wealth, with much human anguish because of
government-imposed economic contraction. Responsible government policy requires honest media coverage,
unfettered scientific inquiry, and robust political debate. Our country cannot afford the costs of foolish energy
policy based on politicized science and fear.
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Global Warming Fast Facts
Updated June 14, 2007
Global warming, or climate change, is a subject that shows no sign of cooling down.
Here's the lowdown on why it's happening, what's causing it, and how it might change the
planet.
Is It Happening?
Yes. Earth is already showing many signs of worldwide climate change.
• Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around
the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies.
• The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest
in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of
climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850.
• The Arctic is feeling the effects the most. Average temperatures in Alaska, western
Canada, and eastern Russia have risen at twice the global average, according to the
multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report compiled between 2000 and 2004.
• Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completely ice-free
summer by 2040 or earlier. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from
the sea-ice loss.
• Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting—for example, Montana's Glacier
National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. In the Northern Hemisphere,
thaws also come a week earlier in spring and freezes begin a week later.
• Coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to small changes in water temperature, suffered
the worst bleaching—or die-off in response to stress—ever recorded in 1998, with some
areas seeing bleach rates of 70 percent. Experts expect these sorts of events to increase
in frequency and intensity in the next 50 years as sea temperatures rise.
• An upsurge in the amount of extreme weather events, such as wildfires, heat waves, and
strong tropical storms, is also attributed in part to climate change by some experts.
Are Humans Causing It?
• "Very likely," the IPCC said in a February 2007 report.
The report, based on the work of some 2,500 scientists in more than 130 countries,
concluded that humans have caused all or most of the current planetary warming. Humancaused global warming is often called anthropogenic climate change.
• Industrialization, deforestation, and pollution have greatly increased atmospheric
concentrations of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, all greenhouse
gases that help trap heat near Earth's surface. (See an interactive feature on how global
warming works.)
• Humans are pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than plants and
oceans can absorb it.
• These gases persist in the atmosphere for years, meaning that even if such emissions
were eliminated today, it would not immediately stop global warming.
• Some experts point out that natural cycles in Earth's orbit can alter the planet's exposure
to sunlight, which may explain the current trend. Earth has indeed experienced warming
and cooling cycles roughly every hundred thousand years due to these orbital shifts, but
such changes have occurred over the span of several centuries. Today's changes have
taken place over the past hundred years or less.
• Other recent research has suggested that the effects of variations in the sun's output are
"negligible" as a factor in warming, but other, more complicated solar mechanisms could
possibly play a role.
What's Going to Happen?
A follow-up report by the IPCC released in April 2007 warned that global warming could
lead to large-scale food and water shortages and have catastrophic effects on wildlife.
• Sea level could rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 to 59 centimeters) by century's end, the
IPCC's February 2007 report projects. Rises of just 4 inches (10 centimeters) could flood
many South Seas islands and swamp large parts of Southeast Asia.
• Some hundred million people live within 3 feet (1 meter) of mean sea level, and much of
the world's population is concentrated in vulnerable coastal cities. In the U.S., Louisiana
and Florida are especially at risk.
• Glaciers around the world could melt, causing sea levels to rise while creating water
shortages in regions dependent on runoff for fresh water.
• Strong hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and other natural disasters may
become commonplace in many parts of the world. The growth of deserts may also cause
food shortages in many places.
• More than a million species face extinction from disappearing habitat, changing
ecosystems, and acidifying oceans.
• The ocean's circulation system, known as the ocean conveyor belt, could be permanently
altered, causing a mini-ice age in Western Europe and other rapid changes.
• At some point in the future, warming could become uncontrollable by creating a so-called
positive feedback effect. Rising temperatures could release additional greenhouse gases
by unlocking methane in permafrost and undersea deposits, freeing carbon trapped in sea
ice, and causing increased evaporation of water.
What is Climategate?
In late November 2009, hackers unearthed hundreds of emails at the U.K.'s University of
East Anglia that exposed private conversations among top-level British and U.S. climate
scientists discussing whether certain data should be released to the public. [Do we know
who the hackers were? Were they skeptics? Might be worth noting]
The email exchanges also refer to statistical tricks used to illustrate climate change?
trends, and call climate skeptics idiots, according to the New York Times.
One such trick was used to create the well-known hockey-stick graph, which shows a
sharp uptick in temperature increases during the 20th century. Former U.S vice president
Al Gore relied heavily on the graph as evidence of human-caused climate change in the
documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
The data used for this graph come from two sources: thermostat readings and tree-ring
samples.
While thermostat readings have consistently shown a temperature rise over the past
hundred years, tree-ring samples show temperature increases stalling around 1960.
On the hockey-stick graph, thermostat-only data is grafted onto data that incorporates both
thermostat and tree-ring readings, essentially presenting a seamless picture of two
different data sets, the hacked emails revealed.
But scientists argue that dropping the tree-ring data was no secret and has been written
about in the scientific literature for years.
Climate change skeptics have heralded the emails as an attempt to fool the public,
according to the Times.
Yet climate scientists maintain that these controversial points are small blips that are
inevitable in scientific research, and that the evidence for human-induced climate change
is much broader and still widely accepted.
Fast facts about Global Warming by Victor Miguel Ponce
1. The Earth was formed about 4,540,000,000 years ago.
2. In the beginning, the Earth's atmosphere contained very little oxygen (less
than 1% oxygen pressure).
3. Early plants started to develop more than 2 billion years ago, probably
about 2,700,000,000.
4. Through photosynthesis, plants uptake carbon dioxide into the biosphere
as organic matter, and release oxygen as a byproduct.
5. Through geologic time, oxygen accumulated gradually in the atmosphere,
reaching a value of about 21% of atmospheric gases at the present time.
6. Through geologic time, surplus organic matter has been sequestered in the
lithosphere as fossil organic materials (coal, petroleum, and natural gas).
7. Early animals (the first organisms with external shells) started to develop
around 600,000,000 years ago.
8. Animals operate in the opposite way than plants: they take up oxygen, burn
organic matter (food), and release carbon dioxide as a byproduct.
9. Early humans (Australopithecus anamensis) began to develop about
4,100,000 years ago.
10.
Cool climatic conditions have prevailed during the past 1,000,000
years. The species Homo sapiens evolved under these climatic conditions.
11.
Homo sapiens dates back to more than 400,000 years.
12.
Estimates for the variety Homo sapiens sapiens, to which all humans
belong, range from 130,000 to 195,000 years old.
13.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was as low
as 190 ppm during the last Ice Age, about 21,000 years ago.
14.
The last Ice Age began to recede about 20,000 years ago.
15.
The agricultural revolution, where humans converted forests and
rangelands into farms, began to develop about 10,000 years ago.
16.
The agricultural revolution caused a reduction in standing biomass in
the biosphere and reduced the uptake of carbon dioxide in midlatitudinal
regions, indirectly contributing, however so slightly, to global warming.
17.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased
gradually from a low of 190 ppm 21,000 year ago, to about 290 ppm in the
year 1900, i.e., at an average rate of 0.00478 ppm per year.
18.
The industrial revolution, where humans developed machines
(artificial animals, since they consume fuels, which are mostly organic
matter), began in England about 240 years ago (1767).
19.
In October 1999, the world's population reached 6,000,000,000,
which is double that of the year 1959 (the doubling occurred in 40 years).
20.
The world's population is currently increasing at the rate of about
80,000,000 per year (about 1.2 %).
21.
The current world population is 6,964,568,359 (September 26, 2011).
22.
The global fleet of motor vehicles is estimated at 850,000,000
(2010).
23.
The global fleet of motor vehicles has been recently growing at the
rate of 16,000,000 per year.
24.
Motor vehicles (cars, trucks, buses, and scooters) account for 80% of
all transport-related energy use.
25.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which was at
290 ppm in the year 1900, rose to 316 ppm in 1959, or at an average 0.44
ppm per year.
26.
Measurements of the concentration of carbon dioxide since 1959
(316 ppm) have revealed an increase to 392 ppm in 2011, or at an average
1.46 ppm per year.
27.
The concentration of carbon dioxide has increased an average of
about 1.8 ppm per year over the past two decades.
28.
The concentration of carbon dioxide increased 2.87 ppm in 1997-98,
more than in any other year of record.
29.
The year 1998 was the warmest of record. The year 2002 was the
second warmest (to that date). The year 2003 was the third warmest (to
that date). The year 2004 was the fourth warmest (to that date). The year
2005 equaled 1998 as the warmest of record. The year 2007 equaled 1998
as the second warmest of record. The ten warmest years have occurred in
the twelve-year period 1997-2008.
30.
About 75% of the annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is
due to the burning of fossil fuels.
31.
LAB: Tropospheric Ozone(Pt 1) The remaining 25% is attributed to
anthropogenic changes in land use, which have the effect of reducing the
net uptake of carbon dioxide.
32.
Anthropogenic changes in land use occur when forests are
converted to rangelands, rangelands to agriculture, and agriculture to
urban areas.
33.
Other patterns of land degradation--deforestation, overgrazing,
overcultivation, urban sprawl, desertification, and salinization--reduce the
net uptake of carbon dioxide, indirectly contributing, however slightly, to
global warming.
Victor Miguel Ponce is professor of civil and environmental engineering at San Diego State University.