See theres your problem, calling it a political issue. Its almost like you don't give a shit about the planet at all. Let's say your wrong, bcoz its happened before (iraq, vietnam, cold war), and the world suffers irreversable climate change, are you going to take responsibility for encouraging inaction because that is what you are saying.

Its no wonder the only reasoning Obama can use is the security gained from not sending money to potentially threatening middle eastern oil producers. There are actually alot of benefits that are better for the environment, for the US economy, for the job market and for your health.

Ok, now lets say you're wrong and tens of thousands of people in developing nations have died because they were told they cannot develope their country with the cheap sources of energy that the major nations of the world exploited in lifting their people up from the same conditions.  Are you going to take responsibility for encouraging inaction in helping those people with the cheap and available energy sources like coal? Because that is what you are saying.

You know what the difference is?  These people dying as a result of not having access to cheap power isn't based on a model or a theory.  It's reality and it is happening already. 

PS - This has nothing to do with the survival of the planet.  The planet will be here no matter how much C02 we pump into its atmosphere. 

How is it not a political issue?

It is one thing to argue that the socio-economic, security and environmental (including the possibility that man has some influence on global warming) indicates a need to move away from fossil fuels to other viable energy sources until we have a better alternative; and if people were reasonable and looking at things from a rational and/or scientific way this is what we would be talking about.

To put it another way, if "Global Warming" (or "Climate Change" being that the warming abruptly stopped) was nearly as big of a risk as it is made out to be than we would see people suggesting the rational trade off of moving to nuclear power; because modern nuclear power plants are safe and we have the ability to manage the waste in a way that there are very few long term risks associated with it.

None of us are scientists therefore we don't know how to judge the research and evidence.

It works both ways but only one of these options will almost certainly cause irreversable environmental damage. If you have children why would you risk it?

Anyway im sick of arguing this. European political leaders, right and left, are supporting the ETS and emissions cuts. There is proof that IT IS NOT a political issue.

And don't tell me about the benefits of taxes reaped from the ETS, a prime motivator for governments, when the rest of the world "can't afford the costs" involved in taking this very same action.

That is bullshit last minute double speak.

Since politican's are supporting something it makes it not a political issue?

I hold two bachelor's of science degrees and I have done research and helped other people complete research, and I have a pretty decent understanding of how to judge other people's work. In most fields when contradictory evidence is produce, flaws have been demonstrated in the collection of the data, or viable alternative explanations are created a hypothesis has to be corrected or validated in order still be considered viable ... In climate science contradictory evidence is ignored, people make unscientific modifications to datasets to correct for flawed methodologies, and viable alternative explanations are suppressed and their creaters are silenced in order to preserve the "Consensus".

Basically, climate science has earned the reputation for being far closer to a religion than to being a hard science.

Edit: To put it another way, if every cat in the world started giving birth to miniture bears without any explaination that was based on the current model of genetic evolution Darwin's theories about evolution would immediately become invalid. This is not how climate science works ...

Here the actual link: http://pubs.acs.org/cen/letters/87/8730letters.html

You don't really help yourself by posting the link to some kooky pseudo science blog instead of the actual source.

Yet more unsubstantiated ad hominem. I wish I could say I am surprised. 

Thanks for the second link.

For the record Anthony Watts is someone who publishes peer reviewed and original research.  When he does so he releases his data and methodology so that others may reproduce it.  This is more than can be said for folks like Mr. Hansen et al...

edited - Removed some bite, tired atm and it was a bit unecessary.

@First bit: Absolute rubbish.  Science is science.  Anyone who takes the time to comprehend it will be able to, that is the basis of science.  The "people are too dumb to get it" routine is hardly new and time and again throughout the history of science this rhetoric has been, to borrow a line, discredited as the refuge of weak science.

@the rest of it,

Your use of the precautionary principle is predictable but the "why risk it?" bit is a question I can answer.  How about because the historical evidence says that warmer climates are a good thing?  One of the persistent thorns in the side of AGW proponents has been the Medieval warm period.  But what is associated with this time of significantly warmer temperatures?  You guessed it! - Growth, prosperity, bumper crops, exploration, discovery, etc...

We have far more to fear from an ice-age (both in likely-hood and substantiated impact).

kowenicki said: This is like this recent story.... its an inconvenient truth that the inconvenient truth is a lie. Polar bear expert barred by global warmists Mitchell Taylor, who has studied the animals for 30 years, was told his views 'are extremely unhelpful’ , reveals Christopher Booker.   Christopher Booker Published: 5:20PM BST 27 Jun 2009 Comments 196 | Comment on this article According to the world?s leading expert on polar bears, their numbers are higher than they were 30 years ago Photo: AP Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming. This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world's leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week's meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.  Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined. Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea. He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists' agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image. Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week's meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor's, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: "it was the position you've taken on global warming that brought opposition". Dr Taylor was told that his views running "counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful". His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG". So, as the great Copenhagen bandwagon rolls on, stand by this week for reports along the lines of "scientists say polar bears are threatened with extinction by vanishing Arctic ice". But also check out Anthony Watt's Watts Up With That website for the latest news of what is actually happening in the Arctic. The average temperature at midsummer is still below zero, the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping. After last year's recovery from its September 2007 low, this year's ice melt is likely to be substantially less than for some time. The bears are doing fine. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5664069/Polar-bear-expert-barred-by-global-warmists.html

I was just about to bring this up, but you beat beat me to the punch. If you don't agree with them, you are out.