It would seem the Desk is not alone in its doubt of man's causality -
11/07 Global Warming Update

http://www.greatglobalwarmingswindle.com/
The UPDATE from Canada, Summer Solstice 07

A look at the DEBATE about Global Warming.

Before we get started, The Conclusion:
      The Desk came into this article with the view that: Yes, the climate is warming. It has been since the end of the last Ice Age. How much of an effect on it does the activities of mankind have? Negligible to minor if any at all. Should Americans turn their entire lifestyle upside down to combat it? No. Should we take reasonable precautions and make some effort to minimize waste and abuse of Nature. Yes, of course.
      During the research and the writing of the article the Desk discovered many things. Most of them not featured on the major TV news shows and the Weather Channel's update.
      Over the month or so this article was in production it became very clear that the major media outlets and several political groups on both sides of the debate are flatly ignoring research and information that does not fit their agenda. Doing so IS NOT SCIENCE, it is propaganda. And it is from BOTH SIDES.

See NOTE, Includes Updates from April/07 at bottom News (including recent developments like Nat'l Geo and the BBC), and Active Links to sources at END of article.
The New York Times must be reading the Desk! "From a rapt audience, a call to cool the hype" 13 March, 07

And now the article.

"Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense."
Carl Sagan
1934 - 1996

Billions and Billions

      Dr. Sagan is perhaps most famous for his line from his COSMOS TV series in which he explained Cosmology and Astronomy and other hard sciences and their pursuit and various theories and discoveries about the Universe in terms those of us who weren't on the staff of the Jet Propulsions Laboratory's team that was investigating Venus and the moons of Saturn could at least partially understand.... and it is something that later he claimed he never said in so many words.... "Billions and Billions..." but nevertheless, he used it as the title for his final book.

      Well, whether he did say it on TV or not is absolutely irrelevant. What is more important is that even though Sagan was one of the first to predict Global Climate Change, first 'global cooling' due to oil well fires in Kuwait, then 'global warming' due to similar factors, he was first and last a scientist and promoted "Skeptical Inquiry".

"A central lesson of science is that to understand complex issues (or even simple ones), we must try to free our minds of dogma and to guarantee the freedom to publish, to contradict, and to experiment. Arguments from authority are unacceptable."
Carl Sagan
Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium
Published in 1997 after Sagan's Death the year before.
Random House

      The science itself is not as cut and dry as most of the activists on both sides of the issue claim it to be. Climatology is a fairly new branch of science. Reliable weather data in most locations barely covers the last hundred years. Some areas are just now being covered by weather tracking satellites. The world wide water cycle as it relates to heat distribution is still being mapped. To claim the science is completely understood and is now able to predict long term trends based on short term information is misguided. Local weather projections for next week are notoriously unpredictable let alone worldwide climate predictions for the next fifty years. And local weather is exactly that, local weather. So when the proponents say "short term local weather changes are a precursor of global..." they are simply lying.
      It is the dogma on both sides of the argument that is doing more to muddy the issue and polarize the public than anything else. Part of the problem is that if the proposition is true, strident proclamations from its adherents make some people skeptical because previous doomsayers have shouted from the rooftops about various forthcoming disasters and nanny-state interventions that have backfired.

Some examples from both sides.

• One against ham-fisted government intervention is the ban on DDT due to a poorly researched book and subsequent hysteria. As it turns out, DDT wasn't the bird-killing demon it had been painted as, nor was it the magic bullet that would kill every mosquito in the world. But the resulting ban (which wasn't effective world wide until the 1990's) has led to rise in deaths from Malaria in third world and developing countries as more environmentally friendly degradable pesticides are more expensive and less effective than the persistent agent.
• And one incident almost begging for more reactive regulation by governments. It has been known for years that single-hulled oil tankers are a menace on the high seas and a environmental disaster just waiting for a place to happen. Several spectacular incidents- the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, the wreck of the 'Prestige' off Spain in 2002, and the 2004 'Athos' spill in the Delaware River were all caused at least in part by human negligence (for example; the 'Prestige' did not receive a required inspection prior to her last voyage), there is ample evidence that if the ships had been double hulled the resulting spills may have been minimized if not avoided altogether.
• One last one which points out the more inexplicable tendencies of government that tends to defy common sense. According to US General Services Administration, smoking is basically banned in and around all US Government Buildings. Neither Employees nor Visitors are allowed to smoke in any Federal Building, nor within a certain number of feet from the entrances under some proposed rules changes. However, there is one exception to the rule, and one class of people it applies to: the new US Speaker of the House has banned smoking on the House Chamber Floor and certain other areas, but it is allowed in the member's own office and a balcony outside the Speaker's Lobby.

      Dr. Sagan was also fond of quoting a line that had been use in many places including various Science Fiction works:
"Arguments from authority simply do not count; too many authorities have been mistaken too often."

      So let's look at the authority of both of the most radical camps on both sides of the issue.
      Both sides are teeing off on the word "consensus" and going from there.
      By definition, science is not a 'consensus' type of undertaking. Especially in the hard sciences. Argument could be made that in the behavioral sciences, especially in the Human Behavioral Sciences, consensus may be the best you hope for, but even then those involved with the research like more concrete definitions.
      Some would say that the United Nations committee the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the first and last authority on the matter. Others will say the committee is nothing more than a political group and mouthpiece for various social engineers and backers of One World Government.
      An honest statement on just who is the best authority and has the bulk of scientific data on their side is impossible. Without a doubt the IPCC rigged their data to support their political view, and in some cases, their data is straightforward. The best examples of this are the infamous 'Hockey Stick' temperature chart that has been thoroughly discredited but is still in use, and the heart wrenching story about drowning polar bears. Well, polar bear populations are actually on the rise, see story linked below from the SCOTSMAN. And without a doubt various debunkers have doctored their results and evidence as well. One of those being drawings and quotes from a Chinese expedition to the Arctic in 1421 which supposedly reported an ice free ocean at the North Pole. In reality, the Ming Dynasty expedition may never have done more than sail along the northern Alaskan and Canadian coastline which is ice free in summer.

      But to play the devil's advocate, let's look at news stories for anecdotal evidence of Global Warming before we look at the hard science things like deep core samples of ocean sediments and glacial ice.

      Because of the hype if you put the words 'global warming' or 'climate change' into a search engine you are buried under thousands of links to everything from the ads for Mr. Gore's movie to debunking sites. So the best you can do is to look for individual stories like melting polar ice caps and CO2 emissions.
      Which is exactly what this writer did in an effort to find source documents.
      Then it got a shock.

"Ice is Nice"
      Yes. The polar ice caps are smaller now than at any time in the history of such observations.
      The polar ice caps.... On Mars.

      "Malin said images of Mars' southern polar cap showed that scarps formed there are retreating at 'a prodigious rate' of about 10 feet per Mars year. Mars years are nearly twice as long as Earth years.
      "The images, documenting changes from 1999 to 2005, suggest the climate on Mars is presently warmer, and perhaps getting warmer still, than it was several decades or centuries ago just as the Earth experienced its own Ice Ages. Malin said scientists had no explanation yet as to why Mars might be warming."
Michael Malin is principal investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera on the Surveyor Probe.
The Houston Chronicle
Sept. 20, 2005
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3362375.html

      Some of the Ice on Earth, namely Antarctica's hard water, doesn't seem to be behaving exactly as we've been told either. According to another article over the last 10 years the Antarctic icepack has grown by nearly 10 percent. http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V9/N45/C2.jsp http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/5730/1898

[Subjective Editorial Statement and Relevant Quote:
      Why haven't we seen those two stories on the various cable news outlets?
      Perchance because Global Warming on Mars cannot be attributed to minivans and that what might be a 'little ice age' in the Southern Hemisphere doesn't play into the various political agendas of various political celebrities and social engineers.

fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt
     "as a rule, men willingly believe that which they wish to" People believe what they wish to be true, even if it isn't.
Attributed to Julius Caesar.
End of Editorial Statement]

      OK. Back to the science and that greenhouse gas we mentioned before.

      One of the largest banners from the Global Warmers is Carbon Dioxide. The 'carbon footprint' of Western Industrialized Societies is undeniably greater by several orders of magnitude than various Bushmen tribes who are living at Stone Age subsistence levels.
      However, something left off the scale of emissions is the amount of CO2 produced by natural processes like plant decomposition and large complex cycles in rain forests. A good article explaining it is here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060621084137.htm (hot link below)
      There are local volcanic processes which are known to release more CO2 than many towns do per day. Just one vent in the giant Long Valley Caldera in California has been releasing 50 to 150 tons of Carbon Dioxide per day since 1996. Which works out to some forty thousand tons per year from the one vent. The Caldera has several vents and large areas of tree kill due to CO2 ground poisoning. http://lvo.wr.usgs.gov/CO2.html (hot link below) also http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html

The Earth's Climate Changes.

      Yes it does.
      That is simply a fact.
      During the time of the Dinosaurs most of what we call the Coastline was under water. Central Europe was an island chain in a sub-tropical sea. China was a swamp. For a time St. Louis, Missouri was beachfront.
      During the last great Ice Age Miami, Florida was several miles inland and Berlin, Germany was buried under ice.
      The Medieval Warm Period and subsequent Little Ice Age are matters of record. Regardless of whether or not the Chinese sailed around an ice free Arctic Ocean in 1421, there is ample evidence that Andean Glaciers had all but melted only to return years later.
      None of these events have anything to do with the carbon emissions of Chicago.

Dinosaurs:

"At the peak of the dinosaur era, there were no polar ice caps, and sea levels are estimated to have been from 100 to 250 metres (330 to 820 feet) higher than they are today. The planet's temperature was also much more uniform, with only 25 degrees Celsius separating average polar temperatures from those at the equator. On average, atmospheric temperatures were also much warmer; the poles, for example, were 50 °C warmer than today."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record links below