If you're a left wing activist lurker amazed at the density of the right, I'm now making myself available to you.
I'm a professional economist with nearly 20 years experience working in statistics, and have devoted my entire career to determining the cause and effect on non linear systems like the stock market or weather patters. If you point me at the data, I'm going to spend the time and analyze it with a completely open mind.
If it's as clear cut as you all (continually) say, then it should be apparent to someone with my training and experience, and I will say so loudly and often here on FreeRepublic, and by doing so, help to silence some of your most vocal critics.
Even if I am convinced that global warming is occurring and that it's cause is human industrial output, I will probably continue to disagree about what to do about it. But at least you will have engaged the hard right in some small way and made it a discussion of policy instead of theology.
Mind you, I'm not interested in the analysis of some expert, I want access to the data upon which they base their conclusions. In our view on FR (the consensus view of the right) the "experts" advocating a government led global warming solution have lost all credibility because of past hyperbolic statements about the coming ice age, and the 30 million women and children they killed by irresponsibly banning DDT.
I'm not interested in their analysis, but I'll take their data and invest the time and energy necessary to come to understand it. And once I do, regardless of my conclusions, I'll tell everyone on FR what I think.
It's a chance for you to win a small battle in the war of ideas.
Thanks. You could start with the data in post 16 and after determining how the measurements are made and what they really represent, put some error bars around the readings and see if 380ppm (today's reading) is off the charts as they claim it is.
You need to read this to get some perspective:
First, it is abundantly clear that there is a sharp warming trend, since about 1950 or 1970. So, for example, tropical and middle latitude glaciers are melting rapidly (the familiar example of Mt. Kilimanjaro, where a 12,000-year-old glacier is expected to be gone in 10 years, is only one example).
Second, it is abundantly clear that CO2 has increased substantially (from 280 ppm to 380 ppm in less than a century). I gather that the physics of atmospheric warming have been known since the 19th century, and an increase of CO2 should produce a predictable amount of warming, one that is in agreement with what is now observed. (Of course, the reality is far more complicated, because in the real world, it's not just CO2, it's also cloud cover, particulate matter, and the great complexity of the oceans and their circulation. Etc.)
But there are things that do not make sense to me about this issue, things that I've tried to find out about. One, is the present warm spell really unprecedented in modern times? There were high temperatures and bad droughts in the 1930s, at least in North America. I've tried in vain to get a clear discussion about what was going on in the Arctic in that period. Now, we hear about "drunken trees" that lean at funny angles because the permafrost is melting. Has this ever happened before? What was the Arctic Ocean ice doing in those days? I have the vague impression it was in retreat in those days. The best source of information about global warming (from the point of view supporting human-caused warming) is realclimate.org. They don't seem to say anything about the 1930s. So one thing I would definitely examine is the historical temperature record, what does it really say? Premodern temperature records might be more interesting still. I get the impression that 7500 years ago was warmer than the present. Do they know why?
Another thing that does not make sense to me is the role of the Sun in climate change. We are told that the Sun's output changes very little (0.1%) from decade to decade, and that this can only explain a relatively small portion of climate change. (The scientists also say that the Sun's output has not increased in the last decade or two while global warming is at its greatest.) But I've read for years that the Little Ice Age may have been due to the Maunder Minimum (when the Sun had hardly any sunspots; when the Sun has more sunspots, it puts out more energy). It would be valuable to get a clear story on this.