You could argue that it is the agenda of politicians in general. Regardless of their political affiliation, politicians’ solution to all problems seems to be more government; and this increase in government requires greater tax revenues, and a "Crisis" like Global Warming gives governments an excellent reason to create new (very large) taxes.

You could.  The Bush administration was pretty anti doing anything though even so much as reversing some stuff do to a claim of lack of data. (which at this point might seem actually true.)

Not sure how other politicians are handling it.

Actually I still don't get, why people would see a conspiracy behind global warming. Just read an article some days ago, that while the global temperature difference in the last 10 years was 0,0 %. If you read this you would say: "Wow, global warming must be a hoax". And then you think about it.

A.) Not as many stations in the arctica and antarctica and therefore flaws in the calculation methods of the measurement, while the ice is definitely shrinking.
B.) Imagine the gulf stream disappearing - I'll bet Ireland and England won't have palm-trees on the shores anymore - therfore there no higher temperatures.

By the way the Copenhagen Diagnosis is out
http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.com/
And this says, that the warming could happen faster, than we think.

I'm not an expert and leave this to them, but undeniable facts are:
1. mankind boosts out more Co2 and the alike then ever before in history (of mankind)
2. Co2-killers like primary forests (=natural eco systems) have never been less in history (of mankind)
3. over short or long oil, gas and uranium (therefore nuclear power planting is not alternate) will run out
4. icebergs in the arctica/ antarctica and glaciers are melting (compared to the time, when we started to take scientifical notice of them)

Wether this leads to dangerous global warming or not - I frankly don't know, but if this leads to it, we or at least some billion humans are more or less fu***d.

Actually global tempeture is now measured by sattelites... and has been coincidentally for the last 10 years or so. Well more like 15.  Since the early 90's.

Tempeture stations were a giant problem though.  For example they had next to zero stations on 2/3rds of our planet.  AKA Water.

As for why people think this... go to the link and read to the emails where they talk about very unscientific ways of doing things to prove stuff they couldn't prove and that the data seemed to show otherwise.

Politically there is an immense amount of gain to be had by politicians if they can convince people to give them power over carbon emissions.  Most of your modern life can be controlled through regulations on carbon...thats just a fact.  So anyone with interest in government nanny state type policies could find something to gain in it regardless of validity.

The avoidance of real action is due, almost entirely, to the fact that analysis continually shows that carbon trading schemes produce one of two results.  Either it is so ineffective as to be worthless, or it demolishes economic production.  Even children won't reach their hand through a meatgrinder to get their favorite treat...as much as they might want it.  But they would probably let their little brother do it for them... 

But interestingly, if you want to get at the root of the political motivations what you will find is that the cap'n'trade scheme itself owes its origins to Enron.  That is one of the reasons I get a good ole hearty chuckle every time someone says "they're just the mouthpiece of big energy companies" or the millions of variations of that statement.  Aside from the fact that pro-AGW spending outwieghs the opposition by probably well over 100 to 1, the AGW movement owes a tremendous debt to Enron who pushed it in the mid to late 80s and throughout the 90s as a potentially massive revenue source after having luck with other similar credit trading schemes.  When you additionally consider the trillions that stand to be made from the proposed "solutions".  I find it beyond hysterical that anyone could say skeptics are in it for the money...particularly skeptical scientists who are more likely to be denied grants because of their position on the issue (this has even been true of those Scientist outside of the climate science field).

But on the political front, I would say a great deal of individuals are buying into AGW legitimately..I don't think there are many (if any) prominent figures who believe it is false but push it anyways.  I think they want to believe it is true and like any specious argument in that environment it has some pretty long legs.  Antiprocess is simply a large part of the AGW debate in general, and I have always found that to be true of both sides of the debate.  The underlying difference is that skeptics base their conclusions largely real world data and field results....AGW proponents base their conclusions largely on models, predictions, and proxies of questionable reliability.  That isn't meant as a shot at AGW proponents either..it is just a cold hard fact that there is an over-reliance on high-uncertainty methodologies on that side of the debate (making their claims of certainty fairly absurd). That wouldn't be quite as bad as it is if they were more willing to be open and share the data and model code they are using to reach their conclusions, at least then critical eyes would get their chance to pick at the theories and we would know if they could withstand the basic levels of scrutiny (honestly if they are correct the scrutiny will only make their argument stronger).

PS - Keep in mind that anything that is not falsifiable is not science and if you will not present your data/models to others there is no way it can be falsified...what you have done is, by definition, not science.

And lets not forget there is a lot of money and power to be had in fear. Look at the Patriot Act.

Some notes:

Point A - You are correct that the arctic ice is down over 30 year mean values, however the Antartic is a differenty story.  Antartica is above 30 year mean values and trending upwards not down.  NSIDC keeps these figures.

Point 2- This one is a bit tricky.  There are two factors involved here, forest density and forest area.  By raw greenery we are actually near an all-time high thanks to the CO2 we have added to the environment for these plants (they love it obviously).  But due to land management issues the area which plant-life covers is lower.  The data supports this by showing that forest density is on the rise while forest area is on the decline.  img

Point 4 - We are currently in the midst of an interglacial period.  In short, glaciers are supposed to be melting right now, these glaciers formed during the last ice age and now are in the midst of what has been a very very long melt (which is normal).  The rate of melt is naturally subject to change with temperature which is why the rise in temps during the latter half of the last century produced increased melting and why the slight cooling trend as produced a stablizaiton effect in the same manner.  None of this actually goes to proving what caused the warming of course.

I actually agree with you quite a bit on points 1 and 3.  I think point 1 is actually a good thing as evidenced by increased plant growth, and I think point 3 is one of the reasons why we absolutely do need to work on energy conservation while we find a way to get fusion power up and operating (there are 3 facilities already able to produce the reaction, but not for sustained periods due to insane temperatures, this is the clean and unlimited energy of our dreams and it gets very little funding at present).

But while I'm all for energy conservation, working towards renewable energy (and reliable energy partners), etc...I am in no way for any carbon regulation or forced participation in energy conservation practices (if saving money isn't good enough let them pay for it literally). 

Its funny that based on everything I have seen the only bad results seem to come from global cooling. Whenever in history the temperatures have risen, the world seems to thrive!

Whether or not the climate is changing is one thing, proving that warmer temperatures are bad is another. The only 'bad' I have seen come from stories that an 'estimated x # of people' will die due to the effects of warming but these are generally poor people and sticking them on a life of public welfare from the rich nations to the poor nations would probably be cheaper than a massive switch away from carbon emissions.

So I guess whether its welfare from emissions trading or welfare from warming alleviation, its probably a better solution to just call it welfare and get over it.

Your correct. Global warming really isn't a bad thing, as the opposite is global cooling, which is a very bad thing. What would we be saying if the opposite were happening, and we were entering a phase of global cooling? Would we have alarmists then if (lets say) the temperature drops 3C globally in the next 10 years?

Personally, I don't feel comfortable with one entity (the government) controlling the climate. We need a system of checks and balances - people working to conserve and innovate, businesess investing in better research and producing what we need for survival, and government ensuring fair competition. If we hand it all over to the government (mandating conservation and restricting innovations in key markets, reducing business' role in solving the issue, and government ensuring unfair competition through specific regulations) I don't predict the best thing will happen for the earth, nor the humanity that lives here.

Im especially uncomfortable with your public entity (government) being in charge of anything important! But Global cooling seems to be the killer rather than Global warming. IIRC the world entered a phase of great prosperity during the MWP (medieval warm period) and that prosperity dwindlied once that period ended.

But I agree that essentially once the entity gets big enough and surround it with little competition you find that it can do more harm than good. Whether that entity is a government or a corporation, it doesn't matter as they can both be equally corrupt internally and they can both equally act against the best interests of the people. Case in point: Microsoft is pretty retarded, Sony is brain dead and GM is comatose and the U.S government makes them all look about 100% smarter than they actually are.