The notion that people who are unpersuaded "must be stopped" pretty much defines "anti-science." Scientists persuade. They convince. They demonstrate. Once in a while, they prove. They do not command the behavior of others in any other way. To attempt to "stop" the thought of others is abhorrent to the scientist.

I doubt anybody on this board has actually risked their life to protect the environment from man's pollution, but I have. I walked the walk and still I am unconvinced that the planet is heating up and that CO2 is responsible due to man's use of fossil fuels. For many reasons I am supportive of the idea of weaning ourselves from oil just because of the cost to the environment, the cost to my pocketbook and the every increasing dependency on our friends in the ME.

I would like to know exactly when the earth was in balance? Give me a date somebody.... I would like to know why at one time Greenland was green and that was o.k, but if it gets that way again it isn't o.k.? I live in a state that was once nothing but a glacier. Now it is farmland, thick forests, and rolling hills. Was it better when it was just a glacier? If we had been alive then would we have gotten out panties in a bunch about the ice sheet melting then? It melted without man's interference and folks things are just fine here.

Stop linking conservatives with science. I imagine there are lots of scientists that are in fact conservatives on some issues.

I think this author can't figure out a way to plead his case with facts and thus has resorted to name calling which is often the tactic used when somebody is losing a debate.

Re: "If this is true, then at least one Global Warming event occurred without human intervention, and given that there is a warming event going on now, what is unique about this event that makes it possible to conclude it is caused exclusively by human activity?"

In terms of global warming and cooling trends, there is nothing that unique about it. The Earth has warmed and cooled many times in the past 3 billion years. this time humans are causing contributing the greatest amount to the warming, but it has happened from other causes as well. And each time the climate changed in the past many species went extinct.

The "uniqueness" about this time is that Humans may be the ones to go extinct this time.

The Earth will go on just fine without us, of course. Other species will evolve to fit the niches left open, producing many wonderous and unique living beings. Just humans won't be around to appreciate them.

Nothing unique at all.

isn't it, that liberals need to use sociologists as their source of scientific data on global warming. these articles are very catchy but if they were based on science the writer would not have been able to stay awake long enough to start his research.

Science informs us that petroleum comes from once-floating ocean life that has accumulated undersea and been transformed under heat and pressure for thousands of years.

Science informs us that some of the largest oil reserves in the world are in what are now the deserts of the Middle East. Those deserts had to be bodies of water at some point in order to support floating ocean life.

Science tells us that before the Middle East became a desert it was a lush forest-even in the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs. What did man do to change the climate sufficient to convert the Middle East from a lush forest to a desert?

So, according to Science, before the Middle East was a lush forest, it was a large body of water. How many cars, coal-fired electric generating plants, flatulent cows, etc. were in the world 60,000 years ago, sufficient to change the climate enough to change the Middle East from a body of water to a lush forest?

There is no credible scientific data to support that man is responsible for the scientifically verified 1500 year heating and cooling cycles that the Earth has (demonstrably) experienced since the beginning of time. There is no credible scientific data to support that man even contributes to these natural cycles.

Yet, in spite of the absence of any scientifically verifiable data to support the hypothesis that man is causing climate change, we are expected to dramatically, if not fatally, alter our entire economic system in pursuit of some climate changing behavior that no one can prove exists.

It is especially interesting that it is primarily the United States that is expected to alter our activities sufficiently to reverse natural temperature cycles; even though China and India each put far more of these alleged climate-changing "pollutants" into the atmosphere than does the US. Aren't there any Scientists who find this unusual, or at least counter-productive?

I don't think that it is the Anti-science conservatives that must be stopped. I think rather that it is common sense that needs to be empowered.

I take issue with the almost blind acceptance that global warming can somehow be laid at the feet of mankind and the debate is over. The science of climate change is not about consensus as to its causes. Skepticism is the well-spring of scientific thinking. When the outcomes from a field of scientific research are deemed by its supporters to be of such certainty that further debate or research is pointless, then it ceases to be science and enters the realm of propaganda.

Is our climate warming? As Professor Carter, at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, so ably points out; “It depends”. If the measure is the trend from the beginning of the last Ice Age to the present day, based on sampling of ice cores taken from Greenland, then yes, the climate is warming. If the measure is the temperature trend from the beginning of the Holocene period (10,000 years ago) until the present day, then the climate is cooling. If the measure is the temperature trend from say, 2000 years ago until the present day the cooling is even more dramatic. If the measure is the earth’s temperature over the last 700 years from the beginning of the "Little Ice Age" the temperature trend is stable. Over the last 100 years the climate shows a warming trend and over the last 10 years the temperature has been demonstrated to be stable.

Of course, advocates for anthropogenic warming in countering any questioning of their pet theory will point to climate models that show rising levels of man–made CO2 are indeed the cause. What they do not point to is that these same models, when applied to historic climate data, are unable to recreate past known conditions (also known as ‘hindsight forecasting’).

What we need is an honest assessment of the situation by scientists, politicians and the media, not sycophantic agreement with those who have a scientific, political or financial axe to grind, such as Al Gore, who now as a partner at venture capital giant, Kleiner Perkins, stands to make millions from his involvement with the science of climate change.

I do not have a problem with a concerted effort to encourage and establish new clean sustainable energy sources. I do have a problem with the effort being based on a theory that is now being slowly disproved and the spending of billions unnecessarily on carbon credits and other such nonsense. So before we go tilting at windmills, let’s pause and focus on the things that do matter, like bringing clean water to the billions of people who don't have it.