The global warming debate finds those who believe there is a greenhouse effect that will lead to global warming and those who do not believe that this is taking place viewing the evidence and drawing different conclusions about what is relevant and what is not and about what evidence is valid and what is not. Often the same evidence produces different conclusions when examined by different scientists. Mark B. Bush notes that a single statistic for a hot or cold season is not enough to assume that global warming is taking place, but he also notes that in 10 of the 16 years between 1980 and 1995, record high temperatures were recorded (Bush 320). It is this sort of data that suggests to some that global warming is taking place, or the warming of the planet because of human use of fossil fuels in the industrialized countries of the world. The issue is whether the predictions some make have any validity.
James G. Titus states that over the past decade, most climatologists have agreed that a doubling of CO2 would eventually raise global temperatures 1.5 to 4.5o Centigrade, which Titus says is expected to occur by the middle of next century. He also cites some studies that believe the warming could be even greater than this and finds that methane, chlorofluorocarbons, nitrous oxide, carbon tetrachloride, and other gases released into the atmosphere by various human activities also have a greenhouse effect and so might increase the overall effect (Titus 311-312).
Bush also addresses the issue of the greenhouse effect and explains how it works. He says that based on the distance of the Earth from the Sun, we would expect that the planet would have a temperature about 33 degrees Centigrade cooler than it really is, though such a temperature would leave the planet no more than a block of ice. In the early formation of the Earth, the planet radiated heat, and by the time the planet had cooled enough for water to assume liquid for...