Nobody is saying that.

Damn that chorus of 'true believers' - aka, 97% of the worlds scientists:

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/06/scientists-overwhelmingly-believe-in-man-made-climate-change/1 [usatoday.com]

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-01-19/world/eco.globalwarmingsurvey_1_global-warming-climate-science-human-activity?_s=PM:WORLD [cnn.com]

No

We have plenty of proof and independently gathered data. The deniers are the ones having faith that they aren't doing anything wrong. And are just lazy and like the cheap oil status quo.

I mean basic science is teaching that a gas layer can form a greenhouse by absorbing heat. Look at Venus compared to Mercury. Earth compared to Venus.

Now, what will happen if the Earth warms up and the weather gets more energetic is for debating and further research. But the basic Earth sciences are facts until they are disproved.

How is a system that gets 99% of its energy from an external source (the sun) a "closed system"? How the fuck do you think all that petroleum was created? Magic?

As someone working in this field, I would just like to make some clarifications. The term 'Climate Change' is better viewed as two separate questions: is climate change occurring, and if so, is it due to human influence? The first question is effectively settled; temperatures are increasing and extreme weather events are occurring more frequently. The second question is more complex, although the vast scientific consensus is that it is indeed due to human influence. In particular, the greenhouse effect has been conclusively proven. The slightly-informed seem to misinterpret scientific uncertainty (a very specific term referring to statistical probabilities) with a much more general 'scientists aren't sure if this is true or not'.

It is true that there is a long way to go in climate science. However, this is no reason not to teach it in schools. There are many unknowns in the science (as with any field of science); these should not be understated, but neither should they be overstated - it would not be helpful for teachers to spread yet more excessive doubt. Finally, it is of particular importance that climate science is taught in school - the consequences of climate change are likely to be extremely grave for mankind and will impact the next generation much more than this one.

See, this is the problem with this debate.

Your "side" never publishes facts, just conjecture that will support your view [1]. Yet, your "side" is always claiming to be scientific in approach, and claiming that those who accept the evidence at hand it is happening are somehow the ones who are faith based in their outlook.

However, here's a more in depth picture. That 97%: it's climatologists. The other article was incorrect, as the general scientific community at large is only 90%.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/97_of_active_climatologists_ag.php [scienceblogs.com]

[1] Conflating weather with climate doesn't count.

The CATO institute is funded through the Koch brothers who make money by the release of carbon.

Read The Merchants of Doubt -

http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1596916109 [amazon.com]

become an informed citizen- and then come back to us with the "debate that is being stifled" argument.

So, do you doubt the veracity of the poll (did you read the articles to find out who preformed it?) or do you doubt the ability of the news agencies cited to convey the information?

Here's another source, this one with a breakdown of the results in graph form:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/97_of_active_climatologists_ag.php [scienceblogs.com]

Here's the original paper:

http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf [uic.edu]

That's simply not true. The ancient Greeks knew the earth wasn't flat. Hell, Eratosthenes (of Sieve fame) calculated the circumference of the earth to within a few percent, and that was around 200 BC.

However, we do seem to be approaching the point where 97% of people will believe any kind of shit you tell them as long as they agree with your conclusions.

Bull. There has never been a time at which anyone we would call a scientist today believed the Earth was flat. Aristotle is generally viewed as formalizing and promoting the Scientific Method in the West in 300 BC and the spherical Earth was already accepted at that time. Only people who deny the obvious, attack those who disagree and try to rewrite children's textbooks claimed the Earth was flat.

\

And I give a shit just how a student of history misunderstands atmospheric physics because WHY again?

And I give a shit just how a student of history misunderstands atmospheric physics AND statistics because WHY again?

And I give a shit just how a student of history misunderstands the relative importance of isolated "facts" in physics he scrapped off some denier's site online because WHY again?

Anthony Watts is a non-scientist, college drop out full blown, outed fraud: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/07/29/204427/the-video-that-anthony-watts-does-not-want-you-to-see-the-sinclair-climate-denial-crock-of-the-week/ [thinkprogress.org]

It goes on. There are other mechanisms that can explain the late 20th century warming. If you want to seriously talk about skeptics, you really should study them a bit more.

It's easy to poke fun of astrologers and the like, that's not what people take issue with. It's when they decide to go on a Libertarian rant about something that isn't painfully obvious pseudoscience and start quoting the Cato Institute as though it's an authority on anything that people cry foul.

At no point in history did 97% (or any significant amount) of the world's scientists think the world was flat. By the time we invented science as a discipline, the world had been proven round for over 2000 years, and anyone educated enough to be a part of the discipline knew that. (Though there was some disagreement about the exact size. Columbus for instance followed one of the lower estimates, that turns out to be about half the size of reality.)

We can scientifically prove that the Earth's climate is warming, and has been warming on a steady trend since the beginning of the Industrial age. We can prove that the sea levels are rising, and that ice caps and glaciers that have stood for millennium are disappearing. Those we've all seen because we were there. We can prove that CO2 levels (and levels of other greenhouse gases and industrial pollutants) are significantly higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution, and are on a significant rising trend. We can prove that CO2 levels have never risen this fast naturally, and that the last time they rose this much (though over a longer timescale, which would have mitigated the effects) there was one of the largest extinction events in the Earth's history.

If 97% percent of the people who have educated themselves on the issue, and made a living of studying it, agree that the issue has a particular cause, I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt unless presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I defer to their expertise, just as I would hope they defer to mine on the technical subjects I've studied and made a living working on.

If you want to argue what exactly the results will be of the ends of the trends we've proven, fine. There's lots of discussions there. If you want to argue about what the best strategies to mitigate possible adverse effects are, there are even more discussions there. If you want to discuss exactly what percentage of the amount is attributable to man-made causes and what's attributable to natural ones, there's even some discussion there.

But the large preponderance of evidence points to man's CO2 emissions having a significant effect on global climate in the past few hundred years. No other theory is seen as reasonable to explain the measured effects that we have seen.

How do scientists funded by climate deniers fit with your point 3?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/a-skeptical-physicist-ends-up-confirming-climate-data/2011/10/20/gIQA6viC1L_blog.html [washingtonpost.com]

Links, please, to back up where you believe the science is faulty, and to back up your premise that if you disagree with the general consensus of climatologists that it's hard to get funding. I just don't buy that; especially not with the general Republican stance. They love their climate denial scientists [thinkprogress.org] lots. Though, they seem to have a lot of trouble finding any to fund [skepticalscience.com]. And thus, they try to cut funding for ALL climate change research [nytimes.com].

I do know, however, that GWBush tried to silence NASA scientists [guardian.co.uk] from talking about Global Warming, and that House Republicans are still at it [weaselzippers.us] (we all know how biased NASA is, right? /snark)

So, please. If you're going to make assertions, back them up. Otherwise, it's just faith based denial.

Actually they have been shrinking since the LIA, Little Ice Age, but that was well before anthropogentic CO2.

Climate change is in no way a "constant". The rate at which it changes is not constant. The rate at which the rate of change itself changes is also constant.

Your 'easy' test is so easy because it's useless. A very long history of solar observations has established that the sun has a cycle of its own that is approximately 11 years (which exceeds the suggested length of your test) and this cycle is not entirely predictable or consistent. There are also factors like volcanic activity, dust storms, etc. Furthermore, accuracy of models is beside the point. Historical data has illustrated an upward trend for years. Temperatures are generally climbing so the world has in fact gotten generally warmer since accurate records have been kept. This has nothing to do with modeling and is based on observation. Warming is an empirical fact. NASA has some compelling [nasa.gov] graphs [nasa.gov]. I'd wager these are more factual than Glenn Beck or Fox News or whoever brings you your news.

I can appreciate the desire to keep one's head in a hole about it. Denial is a natural impulse. Saying "the models aren't good enough" doesn't disprove anything. It certainly doesn't change the observed facts. If you want to say it's getting warmer because god wants to punish us, that's up to you. If you want to say it's not getting warmer, then you are just plain wrong.

Science isn't about truth. It's about facts.

While I agree with your sentiments, the scientific evidence on the subject is about as solid as it gets. Thanks to chemical isotope analysis, it is clear that humans are the source of the increase in various greenhouse gases, including CO2. The rest of the argument fundamentally boils down to the laws of thermodynamics. The Earth doesn't warm just because it wants to. In order for the Earth to warm up on a global scale, either the sun has to be putting out more energy or the Earth has to be trapping more energy (or a mixture of both). Solar observations have shown that solar output has not exceed normal bounds (we've actually been in a lull), so therefore the Earth must be trapping more heat. And given that this rapid warming has happened over the past 100 years or so (when we started dumping tons of GHGs into the atmosphere) the answer should be pretty obvious.

As to your second point, whether or not it will be a crisis for humanity, again we have plenty of evidence that it will. Historically, whenever the climate has shifted rapidly, whether warming or cooling, it impacts biological diversity negatively. Life needs time to adapt, and rapid change usually spells death for a lot of species. While we are more adaptable than most, our livelihood depends on a relatively stable climate. Warming temperatures will shift weather patterns that can cause droughts, floods, invasive species migrations, so on and so forth (some of which we are seeing now).

And here we see why the "Climate Change" nee "Global Warming" movement is so subversive and dangerous. If someone where to say, "I don't belive in Einstein's theory of relativity", he would be told he is wrong, or ignored. If someone were to say, "I don't believe in the theory of continental drift", she would be told she is wrong, or ignored. But to DOUBT or DENY climate change is sacrilege - you are vile, selfish, practically an evil doer fit to be punished. Scientists who see the data differently are in danger of losing their jobs, and funding. It has happened before. What other science acts that way? What other theory demands such fealty?

U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007 [senate.gov]

Many of the scientists featured in this report consistently stated that numerous colleagues shared their views, but they will not speak out publicly for fear of retribution. Atmospheric scientist Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of almost 70 peer-reviewed studies, explains how many of his fellow scientists have been intimidated.

Scientists Behaving Badly - More nails for the coffin of man-made global warming [nationalreview.com]

The IPCC never argued that the Sun has no influence on the average temperature of the planet. That's just a strawman. Solar output has been captured in detail by satellites since the late 1970's and there is no evidence that is has changed enough to cause the change in temperatures we've seen. Further evidence that the Sun is not the cause of global warming is the fact that while the troposphere has warmed the stratosphere has cooled. That is a signature of greenhouse gas warming. If the Sun was causing the warming the stratosphere would warm right along with the troposphere.