Mark Twain's observation has never been more apropos than it is now w/r/t "climate change." There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Each side is cooking the books to prove its point.
The climate is warming and has been for quite a long time. Nobody disputes this. Human activity is contributing to the warming. Nobody disputes this.
The three relevant question are:
(1) How much will the climate be affected and over what period of time?
(2) How much of the changes are the result of human activity? and
(3) What is the rational response?
The Left has already been proven hysterically wrong in its initial projections. We are already long-past the time when people like Algore were projecting that Alaska would be a tropical paradise. Whether one finds that there has been (and continues to be) a "pause" in global warming is irrelevant; it is nothing more than statistical masturbation. The warming trend is nowhere as dramatic as we were told a few short decades ago, but it is real and we have to deal with it.
The question that the Left refuses to address rationally is this: What feasible changes in human activity will have a significant enough effect in reducing warming that it makes rational sense to make them? China and India want reliable electricity, air conditioning, and cars. They are going to get them, and those "luxuries" are going to be powered mainly by fossil fuels. NOTHING WE DO in the U.S. or Western Europe will change those facts, and thus NOTHING WE DO in the U.S. or Western Europe will REDUCE the level of global CO2 emissions; we can only slightly reduce the rate of increase.
Bottom Line: If every one in the U.S. became an organic subsistence farmer, if we gave up our SUV's, and adjusted our thermostats, and if we did everything else humanly possible to reduce the increase in atmospheric CO2, IT WOULD HAVE NO MEASURABLE EFFECT ON GLOBAL TEMPERATURES FOR AT LEAST THE NEXT 50 YEARS.
But we can and should, (A) do everything we can to optimize the efficiency of our use of carbon fuels, (B) maximize the exploitation of renewal power sources, and (C) lead the world in developing ENGINEERING solutions to the problems that we reasonably believe are unavoidable.
And calling people "deniers" is nothing but typical liberal ad hominem bullshit.
