Global Climate Change

Revised Hockeystick graph
     The basic difference of opinion on Global Climate Change rests on the relative accuracy of the above graph.  It is an updated graph of the original created by Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes in 1998.  According to the National Academy of Sciences and the Climate Research community at large, the graph is reasonably correct and demonstrates unequivocably that there is a recent warming trend that is both unprecidented and alarming.
    The dispute of the graph is largely on tree-ring data and it's accuracy.  Fortunately, tree-ring data wasn't the only source.  There is quite a lot of corroborating evidence that supports the graph using temperature data gathered from other sources, some of that data goes back considerably further than the data from tree-rings, yet telling essentially the same story.

    There is another opinion, mostly political opinion from the oil industry that Global Climate Change is occurring, but that it is a natural (and largely inevitable) cycle and we need to adapt to it instead of wasting time and money trying to prevent it.  To date, there has been no credible theory about what could be causing this warming trend other than human intervention.  All of the natural sources have been ruled out as major culprits.

    The "Al Gore" question:  It is becoming increasingly popular to say that GCC is a hoax because Al Gore is a dweeb, or because he stands to make tons of money off of carbon trades.  This argument is illogical.  Al Gore is no scientist.  The data was collected long before he produced "An Inconvenient Truth".  The data is there for anyone to look at.  We can go take a look at it and none of it was collected by the ex-vice president.  If a known bankrobber ran into a store and shouted "fire" you might not listen to him, but if the street outside was filled with smoke and you saw a firetruck parked at the curb, you would have a tendency to take his word for it.  Regardless, whether or not there is a fire does not depend on the trustworthiness of the bankrobber.  GCC does not rise and fall because of Al Gores reputation or any of his actions.  It's merits are completely separate from him.  If he was a confirmed pathological liar, you would do what you should do anyway, look for what the science says and not trust what he, or any other current or ex-politician says on the matter.

    But even if you confine your research to scientists, there is also a question is some peoples minds about the consensus about GCC.  Some will say that even the experts can't agree that GCC is really happening or that it is indeed created by human actions.  This is wrong.  A survey by Doran and Zimmerman shows approximately 97% of the Climatologists who are active in the research on GCC say that yes, GCC exists and humans are likely responsible.

    The "Global Cooling" argument:  In 1970, an errant story of some scientific research claimed that scientists thought we were headed for a small ice age or at least some severe cooling.  This was not the case.

    So what's in store for us as far as warming is concerned?

    Human activity accounts for 26.4 billion tons of CO2 per year (UN IPCC)  350-450 parts per million (Bill McKibben, James Hansen, Paul Brown) will warm the earth by 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, which is supposed to be enough to create a feedback loop in the atmosphere to trigger runaway warming, which will, in turn produce another ice age (at least for the North Atlantic coasts of Europe and America) when the Atlantic conveyor shuts down.  We're at somewhere around 375 parts per million of atmospheric CO2 right now, and either we're close to the tipping point, or we're already past it depending on who you talk to.  Assuming that the current levels persist (and don't increase as all the projections say) we're heading to +1.5 degrees C in the next 20 years.

    According to Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge and Head of the Polar Physics Group, all of the Arctic sea ice will be gone within thirty years.  Within less than 20 years, the only sea ice during the Summer will be around Greenland and Ellesmere Island.  There are already shipping companies planning for when the Northwest passage is navigatable year-round.

    Clean coal has been advanced as the savior of our energy infrastructure, but with current technologies, it will not reduce emissions significantly and it is debatable that it ever could and even the current technology is 30 years (or more) away from implementation [MORE DATA NEEDED].

    Cap and Trade is starting to look like a fake solution.  According to projections by the Energy Information Administration and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the net effect of the House cap-and-trade bill will likely be to slow future job growth. Using 11 different possible future scenarios, EIA projects that future job growth might be constrained by something between 388,000 (under the most optimistic assumptions) and 2.3 million (assuming everything goes badly) 20 years from now. CBO also says employment would likely be lower than it would without the legislation – but only "a little."

Coal
   67% more CO2 than natural gas.
   Accounts for 40% of US greenhouse gas emissions
Methane
   Accounts for 9% of US greenhouse gas emissions

Emails:  The "scandal" involving alleged secret email between climate scientists has been massively overblown by climate skeptics.  According to them, those emails prove that climatologists have been lying to the public in order to trick us into believing that Global Climate Change is bogus and/or that humans are responsible.
    I have only one thing to say about these accusations and about the so-called scandal:  View THIS  This video continues HERE.  Here is a Guardian article on the same subject.
    The findings on the inquiry into emails revealed by Michael Mann are HERE.

Sea ice: Antarctica

This is a partial list of the groups that endorse the idea that man-made Global Climate Change isn't just wrong, but a purposeful hoax perpetrated because of some profit based agenda of the environmental movement.  Some deny GCC altogether.  Others think there is some other cause and that we can't or shouldn't try to fix it.

The United States Chamber of Commerce
The Heratige Foundation
George Marshall Institute
Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine

Note about the Heratige Foundation: Their public policy seems to have shifted from one of denial to one of energy conservation based on the United States freeing itself from dependency on foreign oil, although many of their members still assert that GCC is not real or that there is not enough scientific evidence to support it.