Unsubstantiated remark and ad hominem is the best you, me and anybody else here have to offer short of having a scientist specialised in climate on board, the chance of which I rate as sligthly lower than me finding the Saint Graal in the crack of my couch. I just pointed out the source of the protest without all the unnecessary word in between.

Another thing here, let not kid ourself that it has anything to do with science, none of us are scientist in the field and can jugde the veracity of anybody claim, whatever these guys are published scientist or some guy at the street corner showing his dick to passerby is irrevelant. This is a question of ideology and politic, nothing more nothing less.

I just wanted to add something on the topic of Science ... All science is based on the scientific method which (for the most part) is the rigorous testing of that hypothesis to demonstrate that it can not be false.

Being that the hypothesis surrounding "Climate Changes" is (essentially) that there is an unusually rapid change in the average temperature of the earth, that is being caused by humans, and will lead to negative consequences in the long run what must be demonstrated to validate this hypothesis is:

1. That the climate is not changing at a rate that falls within historic norms. Being that there is evidence to suggest that the Earth has seen much more rapid changes in the climate to much more extreme levels over the past several hundred thousands of years this will be difficult to demonstrate.
2. That this climate change can not be caused by anything except for humans. Being that their is a strong correlation between solar activity and the changes in the average worldwide temperature, and we have had a period of unusually (from our understanding) high solar activity this will be difficult to demonstrate.
3. That the climate change presented can not have a positive or neutral impact on the world. As you have already pointed out, there is evidence that suggests that periods that were as warm if not warmer than we're currently translated into higher crop yields where people were (generally speaking) better off than periods where it was colder than we're currently.

1. That's crap. Show me the peer reviewed evidence of this from 2 sources, not think tanks.

2. Solar crap. Yes it affects it, as does Nino, but we are getting to the end of a solar period and IT IS GETTING HOTTER FASTER.

3. Ok you got Greenland. Where else is getting more productive? What percentage of land is getting less productive? How come the price of imported food has risen. Hoe come there is mass migration right now in Africa? I can keep going because clearly you got very little to substantiate the argument that it is "improving" the earth.

That last point btw pisses me off royal. Someone should force you go to live in an already dry climate, such as south africa, and watch the rainfall percentage dwindle each yr.

It's really sad that the environment is a political issue, and people will go to any means to deny something significant. Let's just say that global warming is false. Should we really continue doing the things that cause it? Is polluting some kind of pro-conservative way of life?

Montana - I agree.

An otherwise valid public issue has been politicized, taxed, and falsified. Wouldn't it be better for the scientists to invent new ways of making devices more efficient, rather than squabble about global warming? I mean, if we want to solve some sort of issue, it should be done through the best means, rather than taxed, or legislated.

Just what I was thinking. There's a lot of arguing over global warming, but there's no question that pollution and harmful chemicals do affect the earth. I believe strongly that global warming is happening, and that it can have dire consequences if not stopped. But that's my opinion, and I'll just wait until we see the effects.

We should be motivated to limit pollution no matter what, not just because of global warming. I'm fine as long as we all agree on that.

I doubt I'll be participating heavily in this thread, but I definitely want to pop in and provide the ACTUAL EDITORIAL everyone is talking about in the OP.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/editor/87/8725editor.html

After reading it, here are my initial thoughts (having little to no familiarity with most cources cited):
1. The overall tone is not something I would expect in such a publication as I imagine the C&EN to be; if I was just looking at the editorial I would assume it was a blog post.
2. He quotes a US gov't report that uses language that does NOT seem to me to indicate a scientific audience but rather seems tailored for (more or less) public consumption.
3. The whole thing is pretty much a polemic, which I would not normally expect of an editorial (regardless of tone). (Rather, I would expect an editorial to argue FOR one side, instead of simply AGAINST the other.)

After thinking on these points, I would guess (guess, mind you) that most of those who wrote in were more outraged that he would put such a thing in their organization's publication than they are outraged that he would believe or say or even publish (elsewhere) the exact same thing. What outrage was left is probably largely due to citing the report I mention in point 2 and expecting the audience of C&EN to respect its scientific value.

On the other hand, he says that the report of the NIPCC, which I believe Sqrl mentioned, can be summed up as claiming "that global warming probably isn’t happening; if it is happening, it’s not due to human activity; and, besides, a “warmer world will be a safer and healthier world for humans and wildlife alike.”" If true, this appears on the surface to be scattershot FUD. And in particular I would say that the third claim is the one I am most skeptical of.

I completely agree. The safe thing to do is to assume global warming is real... even if it's not, good things will come out of it.

Climate change is real.

Man made climate change is not.

We've gone through several warmings and cooling throughout the billions of years Earth has been here, and it has nothing to do with pollution, Co2, etc, that we produce. A lot of it has to do with solar activity.

Solar activity right now is some of the lowest in recorded history, there had been 0 sun spots for several months, and only a few since then that haven't lasted very long.

History shows us that decreased solar activity leads to cooling, the longer the inactivity, the worse it can get. As of right now we are going to see more cooling than warming.

However just because man made global warming is complete bogus lacking any evidence whatsoever, doesn't mean it's bad that many people still believe it's true. The belief of man made climate change has made us way more efficient with fuel, reduced pollution, pushed technology forward, etc, which is absolutely fantastic. So go ahead, let the people think global warming is true, it won't harm anyone and has some great benefits.

1) The Eemian was a recent interglacial period that had as a characteristic large changes in global temperature from warm periods to cold periods which represents much more rapid change than we're seeing today. It's called google, use it and stop believing what people who will make hundreds of millions of dollars if they can convince you we're in a massive crisis tell you.

2) So we should abandon science and just accept the religion of global warming when there is a viable alternative hypothesis that the object that is (directly or indirectly) responsible for the entire climate of the Earth may have an impact on its current state?

3) There has been several published articles which indicate that the majority of the change in temperature in the world at  all periods of time is at the poles; and a 10 degree change in average worldwide temperature represents a 2 or 3 degree change around the equator and a 20 degree change at the poles.

Now, one thing I do wonder about but I have seen no discussion on is that as the temperature of the earth increases we should see greater evaporation of water from lakes and oceans which should translate into greater rainfall throughout most of the world. I could be wrong, and it would be worthwhile for someone to do research into it, but I suspect that you would probably find that the quantity of water brought inland from the oceans would be greater than what we see today and we would see an increase in the quantity of fresh water in most areas.