Connection: Rejecting and Global Warming

I was perusing other blogs and one of them reminded me that at the beginning of the year, Mr. Allen asked us to ask ourselves "To what degree do I understand that which I am about to reject?"

Now I, like most of you, assuredly, had completely forgotten about this question.  I also had a project in chemistry with a few other people where we had to prove that the United States should continue to use fossil fuels, as opposed to renewable energies such as solar, wind, nuclear, and geothermal.  A large part of the project was debating and clashing with other team's arguments, which meant we had to answer the main arguments against fossil fuels.

Obviously, one of the biggest arguments against fossil fuels is that they lead to global warming.  I tasked myself with coming up with answers to this argument.  The best response to it, in my opinion, was that global warming doesn't exist.  Without any further thought, I went found an abundance of articles, people, and journals that disproved global warming.  I had no conception of what the other teams arguments would be.

And that is about to run is into real trouble.  We presented fossil fuels yesterday.  Today, our main opponents, solar and wind power, will be presenting.  If they have a strong, well-researched argument for global warming, there is a strong possibility that we will lose.  Why?  Because I did not understand the argument I was rejecting.  I did not understand all of the nuances and caveats that come with the global warming argument.  For example, it's not really global warming, it's climate change, and they have ways of measuring global warming that take into account the urban heat island effect.

I know that Mr. Allen meant the question in more of a "don't be so quick to reject it" sense, but it definitely applies here.  Knowing the other sides arguments, particularly in a head-to-head debate, can only help.  And if you know their arguments better than they do, people will notice it, when you embarrass them.