A Good Overview of the Climate Change Debate

Warren Meyer has a great explanation of the global warming debate in Forbes.  Meyer is what is sometimes referred to as a "lukewarmer" - he acknowledges that greenhouse gases can, and likely have, contributed to some degree of global warming in the past half century.  The real issue is not whether there is some warming attributable to the presence of greenhouse gases, but whether the GHGs contribute significantly to warming, and whether that warming represents a coming climatic Armageddon.

So let’s come back to our original question — what is it exactly that skeptics “deny.”  As we have seen, most don’t deny the greenhouse gas theory, or that the Earth has warmed some amount over the last several year[s].  They don’t even deny that some of that warming has likely been via man-made CO2.  What they deny is the catastrophe — they argue that the theory of strong climate positive feedback is flawed, and is greatly exaggerating the amount of warming we will see from man-made CO2.  And, they are simultaneously denying that most or all of past warming is man-made, and arguing instead that the amount that is natural and cyclic is being under-estimated.

The same point is being made time and again, even in places like Germany where concerns about global warming had been extremely high, but are now being challenged in major news outlets.

For more from scientists, this op ed from the Wall Street Journal is good reading.  The rebuttal to that op ed is found here.