Tom says:
If global warming is ever proven, the arugment will just move on to "and is that a bad thing?"'
Actually the science poster child types on the right so beloved by The Economist and The Wall Street Journal and other publications moved to that argument some years ago, having given up on the earlier "it ain't happening" line.
That's one reason why I'm suprised by comments such as those made by Andrew and Patrick. The sources of scientific skepticism I would assume they draw upon have already given up the "it's a crock" argument.
Fred Singer's a good example (he's funded by the petroleum industry and is not a professional, working climatologist, but gets a lot of ink). His spin for the past three-four years has been that global warming is indeed real, but that it will be in the lower range predicted by models and that it will be good for us. He puts forth all sorts of hand-waving arguments as to why this is true.
John Christy takes a similar stand, saying we should just ignore the issue because it might well be good for us. Unlike Singer, though, he doesn't claim that science backs up his position. I have a lot of respect for Christy because he very openly admits that he bases his opinion as to what we should do on his fundamentalist Christian beliefs - he believes in the apocaplypse, etc - and his conservative political principles. In other words, in interviews I've read at least, he's made a clear distinction between his views as a scientist (global warming is real, anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gases do contribute) and the views he holds based on his personal beliefs. He is, as far as I can tell, a man of integrity even if I disagree with his political and religious views.
Do the naysayers here have any idea as to the scope of change being seen by biologists over the last three decades? Changes in migration timing? Timing in breeding seasons? Timing in flowering, in the sprouting of seed? This, to me, is one of the great ironies. While there are people who still claim that "global warming is a crock" biologists just shrug their shoulders and research issues like "is the decline in reproductive success of a certain insectivorous species of bird due to the fact that their insect prey have shifted their breeding season by a month while the bird species in question has shifted only by a week as a response to climate change?" (sorry, I forget the species in question).
To some degree the debate's a bit like the debate over evolution. While some still insist that evolution doesn't happen, over the past several decades the entire field of biology has been reconstructed with evolution as the very foundation on which it rests.
