Also note that while his post might be unsupported by evidence that doesn't make it stick out in this debate.

Stating that 'The two sides of the "debate" are not equal. There is not substantial disagreement ... that humans are directly responsible ' is trying to bully someone into accepting your idea of the world and is what politicians do at TV not what engineers and scientists are supposed to do.

No it isn't. It is an accurate description of the state of knowledge within the scientific community, and I cited my source.

Not saying we aren't affecting the climate but it might be less obvious than some people are trying to present it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland#Norse_settlement

(Contents behind link: The amount of ice on Greenland have seen significant variations over the last few hundred years, even before we started using fossil fuels.)

(Personally I'm all for reducing the use of fossil fuels but my _biggest_ reason is because they are a very finite resource and seem to be running out during our lifetime at the current rate of consumption.)

>The amount of ice on Greenland have seen significant variations over the last few hundred years

Yes, because of well known past climatic variations (some of which were probably localised). There are other drivers of climate than carbon emissions, and these drivers have caused climate to change in the past. That doesn't mean carbon emissions can't drive climate today. We can measure many of these other drivers, and we can see that changing solar output for example can't be driving the current warming.

If I read your argument correctly, it seems you think this argument weakens the case for climate change. I think there's a danger in this method of trying to second guess science. I see a lot of the same form of argument from evolution deniers, too, and I always find it hard to understand. The point seems to be: here is a surprising fact that suddenly makes science less sure than you might have been led to think.

The problem with it is that scientists see the exact same evidence as you do, and of course have already taken it into account. The whole point of science is to rake in as much evidence as possible and include it in the calculations.

Those figures mentioned upthread, for scientist consensus on climate change? That's including facts like this, not ignoring them.

Thanks, enlightened reply.

On the other hand I'm feeling that way too many take this debate to a level where they actively deny any evidence that points towards a different solution.

Try to find where this was considered. I haven't heard a good explanation yet.

Science is not fixed. A long time ago there was a long standing agreement that the sun and other planets were orbiting around the Earth, and they had complex models (Ptolemean ones) to calculate their trajectories, and that was reasonnably working well until humanity was able to get much more precise tools to measure the planets position and found inconsistencies.

The History of Science is full of such "largely admitted theories" that fell flat when new data, new methods were introduced.

What may seem "obvious" to a group of scientists now, even if they constitute 90% of the voices out there, may not be the actual truth.

I am not saying who is right or who is wrong, but even if you had a consensus, it would not mean that they get it right. We are ever learning.

Your point doesn't have a point. If the question is "is there global warming, and are human beings substantially responsible?", the answer is "yes". You're saying "but it could always be no".

The answer is "yes", and some point past that is where the discussion currently exists.

Maybe you did not get what I mean. I am saying there is no such thing as Scientific certitude just on the basis of people agreeing with each other. Scientific certitude is driven by an explanation of what is actually occuring, experimentation and reproduction of experiments. There is no way to "experiment" with Climate Change therefore all your models are just models and cannot be proved by experimentation. They are just theories, like Einstein's theory of relativity, which took a long time to be actually proven by experimental data.

The downer of having only one Earth to work with is that you have only one Earth to work with.

Models, measurements, their comparisons to expected outcomes are all that we've got in this particular scientific department. The "experiment" is comparing your best model with what happened before and what happens next, not with running the same thing a thousand times.

As I mentioned in another post, a "model" only works within its known limits. If the Earth is getting warmer outside of the limits of the established model, your model is not valid anymore. You know the xkcd joke about extrapolation, I guess?

I remember Al Gore showing the level of CO2 increase by jumping on an elevator and saying "imagine how much this increase will bring the temperature up!". But truth is, we don't know, nobody knows how much it will increase. There is no model data for that.