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What the hell? 2 people already think humans are not the cause and 4 undecided?

Reasons, please?

To quibble in a massively pedantic way; I can see that the data that has been gathered so far overwhelmingly points to global warming actually occuring and that human activity is most likely its main cause.

(1) Similar warming trend on several of the other planets, indicates some other cause.

(2) The evidence seems to be based on a corollary (is that the right word?) timeline, as opposed to overwhelmingly persuasive climatological evidence.

I certainly wouldn't argue that pollutants aren't causing substantial harm to the environment, and by extension human life.  As far as warming goes, though...I don't think it's man-made.

"(1) Similar warming trend on several of the other planets, indicates some other cause."

Best argument against it that I have heard. Can you provide links to this information?

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<-Similar warming trend on several of the other planets, indicates some other cause.->

Even if one accepts this as true, the implied conclusion there is that the warming has the same casual agency (if it didn't then the like-timed warming is irrelevant as a point to dispute anthropogency).

What could be the same casual agency?  Well, the only real viable source would be the Sun, and there has been no meaningful change in the Sun's energy output for the last 35+ years.

More troubling for this argument is the "some" or "several" other planets portion.  If there is an extra-terrestrial cause of planets warming in the solar system, how is it only affecting *some* planets?

Oh screw it, this page tackles this topic much better than I can.

Yeah, I was thinking about using a less assertive statement than "believe", but in the end I decided it would just sound wishy-washy and take up too much space for each option.

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I think the amount of mystery there is for the cause of warming on each of the other planets, is proof that there may be variables on Earth that we aren't aware of.

I'm undecided because I've never been interested enough to look into the matter, and all of the information in the media, pro or con, is from decidedly biased sources and I've seen enough BAAAAAD science accepted as conventional wisdom to remain agnostic about things like that.

All that said, I'm in favor of us not filling our environment with pollution.

That's... an interesting definition of the word "proof".

I would imagine most of the uncertainty is a result of them being other planets, as opposed to the one we are living on right now.

Is it possible there are mysterious factors we've overlooked on Earth? Of course. Is it probable? No.

I'm firmly in the "We aren't necessarily causing it, but we certainly aren't goddam helping" camp.

I find it hard when people argue against it mainly because, well, CO2 is clearly not the best of things to be pumping into the atmosphere, so we really should cut down. I mean, no-one disputed the anthropic influence on acid rain.

Funny, when it comes to chaotic systems like weather and climate, I would say it's vastly probable that there are factors we have overlooked or mis-weighted.

I'm not, however, predisposed to the idea that they could likely be as significant as the anthropomorphic factor.

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That's not a particularly compelling argument though.  That "other planets may warm through means having nothing to do with human activity" is neither disputed nor particularly relevant to the warming seen on Earth (warming that is the most studied and understood).

Given the overwhelming body of evidence pointing to anthropogency, this seems like a little excessive "benefit of the doubt" bending.

<-and all of the information in the media, pro or con, is from decidedly biased sources->

All the media info is from 'decidedly biased' sources?  Really.

(1) Similar warming trend on several of the other planets, indicates some other cause.

See Jason's post

(2) The evidence seems to be based on a corollary (is that the right word?) timeline, as opposed to overwhelmingly persuasive climatological evidence.

Wot? You mean it's wrong making climate models based on historic data and predictions, plus weather data?

Proof carries much less weight than belief for the superstitious Republican folk.

Yup.

Ok, what is 'decidedly biased' about, oh, Scientific American?

And no, you don't get to say "advocating the scientists' POV" is biased.

What is your definition of bias? If scientists study the issue, and I read their work and come to the conclusion that climate change is happening and it's man-made, then become an activist for policies designed to alleviate it, am I biased? Are the scientists biased?

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See, I would think the fact that I was specifically talking about my lack of interest in the issue would make it clear that the media I was referring to was large media outlets like the various news networks or the AP. And not, say, Scientific American and the Journal of Climatology*.

It would be more accurate to say that the big media outlets are not necessarily themselves biased, but they tend to regurgitate information provided them by people who are.

*That said, accepted thinking can lead to even more science oriented media to push out information that deviates from that.

<-It would be more accurate to say that the big media outlets are not necessarily themselves biased, but they tend to regurgitate information provided them by people who are.->

So they're not 'decidedly biased' like you said, they just give air people who are.  Exactly who on the 'pro' side is it that's 'decidedly biased' that they are consistently regurgitating?

There's a vein of false equivalency I hope I'm not detecting here.

An article from MIT once said it's simler to deduce the cause of global warming on Triton than it is on Earth and they've yet to determine an irrefutable cause for it there.

I'm not saying I don't believe it's definitely not the case.  I'm just saying I don't think there's enough data to irrefutably argue one way or the other without politics entering into it.

I'm with you.

Maybe the missing piece of evidence is that these planets out there showing similar signs of global warming *also* have undetected humans on them. Maybe there's giant factories run by ninjas or something. Give me six months, I'll have a paper on it for you.

Get on it.

And can we please have "truth in advertising" here and call it "climate derangement"?

Heh, maybe I should have said "anthropoGENIC".  "Anthropomorphic" is still acceptable I suppose, though it does put in mind giant man-shaped clouds throwing heat around.

Anyhow, I don't think it's right to criticise people like Travis for raising doubts.  People should doubt, they should go out and see for themselves and make up their own minds.  That's healthy and productive.  As long as he's not calling us "warmists" and going on about how the Y2K bug was a false alarm too or how it's really cold this winter so that PROVES there's no warming.  Hell, in the face of that kind of nonsense, Travis' reserved comments should be praised.

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I went with undecided because the Earth has gone through heating and cooling periods before. The last 150 years is such a small period of time to be so certain that something catastrophic is happening.

Articles by doubters collecting headlines with out of  date predictions don't help. The first time I remember every hearing about global warming was around '88-'90, and based on what I remember from school lessons then, we're doing rather well by comparison (even if the ice caps are melting).

I also might have picked a stronger position prior to the e-mail scandal of late last year, as the pro-side came off looking really horrible. Maybe they weren't serious, but WTF was up with talking about deleting data rather than sharing it?

Like Travis and the others who've chimed in about having some doubt, that in no way means I'm against reducing how much humanity pollutes, it just means I'm not convinced about man-made catastrophic climate change.

That email scandal was a shocking media beatup.  Just two slightly suspicious (if taken out of context) emails, out of thousands of not suspicious at all ones, is actually abundant evidence that there's nothing shady going on.

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