As far as a "piece of paper" if this was physics there would be no argument. I personally give a great amount of credit to that "piece of paper" because it's not just one piece of paper it's at least 3, plus years of experience plus publication of significant work that's highly regarded by your peers.

If you want to take the tack that none of this has meaning then you should probably go to a witch doctor instead of a medical doctor when you get sick, or have your bridges built by interior decorators instead of civil engineers, or have the salvation army fight our wars for us.

This is not the Renaissance where everyone trys to encompass all knowledge. We have advanced way beyond such obvious giants like Leonardo by the technique of *specialization*. I'm an electrical engineer and I design high speed encrypted classified communication equipment and I doubt there's a single person in this thread that could do the same.

Daiwa is a medical doctor and regardless of crap that I have given him in the past about it I cannot do his job and do not pretend that I could.

By belittling the best climate scientists on the planet you are also belittling *your* personal area of expertise assuming that you in fact even have one to begin with. If you claim that you have a better understanding of a field that someone has spent their life in then you must also acknowledge that the same could be true of you and your field.

At least if someone has demonstrated some level of expertise in some other area of life then they do have at least some minimal credence that they could in fact have some reasonable knowledge outside of that area but when someone denigrates "a piece of paper" and has no descernable expertise or even education then forgive me if I consider it merely a case of sour grapes.

Or of at least one AGW activist's if nothing like this happens at all...

I am a firm believer that mankind is generally good at heart. I believe that while there are some bad people in the world, the majority of people want to do good.

Why am I saying this? I say this because there are many many scientists from many groups that do ice core drillings. It is just one person from one group going to these age old ice shelfs and drilling cores for temperature readings. The readings that they are coming back with are all meeting with the same consensus are the readings remarkably accurate relative to the length of time period that they are looking at. In otherwords, they aren't looking to find what the temperature was on a particular day, they are looking to find the global temperature over a given year. In that context, the results are very accurate. The same could be said about consensus with the many other experiments and data that is collected from other sources.

So while there may be handfuls of scientists on both sides that may fudge information to backup their agenda, the majority of scientists are in agreement over the global warming data. Therefore because I feel the majority of mankind is good at heart (across all cultures), I feel that I should trust their judgement and listen to what the scientists say...NOT ignore them!

As has been pointed out, all that will do is confirm rising sea levels (and indirectly, warming), not anthropogenicity.  The brush with which you paint people 'skeptics' is very broad indeed.

Science dead...are you crazy....look around you at the environment...this guy must be a republican. Only they can see no evil speak no evil.... and since most republican boast about there knowledge of God here is a quote from the Apocalypse( or revelations about our times)....

"He(Christ)....should destroy them which destroy the Earth." Revelation 11:18

The Earth is God's and we should care for it not destroy it with pollution and denials of its effects on the Earth and ourselves.

Anyone who knows the history of global warming and NASA knows that NASA has had its fair share of cover ups with trying to hide global warming evidence in the past. So the pot can stop calling the kettle black. Like was said, both sides have had their times of coverups and data manipulation to support their cause. These events do nothing to change the fact that there is overwhelming evidence coming from other sources that support climate change.

Like I said:

clonmac - I do not think the issue of the current temperature is in debate.  It is the trend that is in debate.  Even your ice cores are open to debate as appparently one side has fudged them as well.  Why else try to eliminate the MWP?  The raw data shows a different story.

Finally I will say this to people who are either on the fence/skeptical about global warming or are just looking and waiting for proof of its existance.

Sometimes it takes putting things into a different perspective for someone to realize something. Essentially it boils down to the fact that skeptics are looking for absolute PROOF that the world is really on the brink of a climate crisis. They are looking for complete 100% concrete evidence that the world is really facing global warming challenges. Do you really need to be slapped in the face with that kind of evidence before you allow certain changes to be made? Clearly that is what it takes sometimes. But, they want this type of proof before what? Before we start having to make changes to the way we live no matter how small they are (god forbid)? Are we not morally obligated to take care of the planet we live on regardless of evidence of it being harmed?

Anyone who has seen it first hand knows how much humans can effect the planet. Have you ever tried to breathe in the air in China and realized how polluted it is there? Have you ever seen how much land a million acres of cut down forest trees really is? Have you see the changes to the landscape that diverted rivers can cause? If you have seen some of these things, then it isn't hard to imagine how easy it is for humans to be able to change a layer of the atmosphere that in relativity is extremely thin.

Someone once had (I forget who) an interesting thought that I feel sums up the situation of global warming and the people who are against any type of climate change policy.

If a nucleur power plant has a 5% chance of meltdown, everyone is scrambling to shut the plant down to avoid a distaster. But, if the world has a 50% chance of a climate crisis, then people are idly standing by doing nothing.

So what if there isn't 100% concrete evidence of manmade global warming. I certainly believe there is enough evidence, however, that would warrant a 50% chance prediction of a climate crisis. In that case I feel the above comment is reasonable.

Isn't it better to be precautionary? We don't need to put guns to people's heads or put businesses into red to meet standards. We can do little bits here and there across the whole spectrum of environmentally friendly alternatives that will be good for the planet. Like I said earlier, CAFE standards were unchanged for over 30 years. They needed to be changed and probably would've helped the american auto industry in the long run. But we were resistant to change. Had we increased the standards a little bit 20 years ago, it would've hurt a lot less than having to increase them a lot only one time further down the road. Little changes done incrementally over time equal big changes in the long run. So why not start them now in the event that these changes are needed in the future? They don't need to be big.

Depends on the proposed changes. Because right now unfortunately AGW=carbon cap, yes, we do.

Maybe if the people who are in charge cared actually about AGW a not their personal benefit. But they do not, otherwise they will not be so hasty with capping the carbon emissions, which will do more harm to humanity than any temperature rise over next century. Additionaly for people here in the West it is easy to say: " so what, i would be rather safe than sorry, it is about greener world for children after all."  But try to explain this to some poor people in the third world country...If you needed money to feed your children, what will you care more about? The possibility of slightly higher temp century later or your children?

I do not recall "calling you out" on MWP.  I was merely pointing out that there is debate on the trend.  That I responded to you was for the opening line of agreeing that temperatures in the last 30 years have trended up.  Then pointing out that these "honest" men differe greatly on how long and how much the trend is.  if indeed the MWP is real, then what we are going through now is nothing in comparison since CO2 was not a factor 800-1000 years ago.  Something else was the catalyst, and so far, no one seems to be trying to decipher the catalyst from then, and if it is still in play today.  The answer would go far in determing the causes of today.

Some of them indeed are, but they are the ones that tend to be "grafted" samples. (See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/20/mikes-nature-trick/).  What they did there, was take one type of data - proxy data - for parts of the graph and then change the sample when it did not support their graph (they tacked on actual temperature readings for the up tick).  Thus they again produced a misleading graph, where a graph of one index would not have shown an uptick of the magnitude they were seeking:

The green line represents the continuation of the proxy data, which is hardly impressive, or alarming.

Egads!  The forum fairy duplicated a post again!

Who's looking for absolute proof?

I'm merely looking for it to move from being an untested hypothesis to one that can bear the scrutiny of a prediction.

As has been said repeatedly (but not on this page), CO2 is going to continue to skyrocket this century. There's no way that's not going to happen. A lot of this issue about AGW is purely academic because the question isn't really about stopping it but how can we adapt to it if CO2 really does affect global temperatures in a measurable way.

If the temperature rises to unprecedented modern levels for the next several years, more and more skeptics will come on board.  However, if it doesn't, then that will make things tougher for the AGW advocates.

Right now, CO2 is at something like 383ppm.  By 2020 it should be about 410ppm.  There's your predictive scenario: If the temperature has a steady upward trend (not every year mind you but still reasonably consistent) then more and more skeptics will get peeled off.

Look at this chart:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Satellite_Temperatures.png

There's a line trending upward (thanks to cherry picking the start date).  But if you look after 1998, it's pretty obvious that it's leveled off.

No one is asking for "absolute proof". I think a starting point might be "Hey, CO2 is going up at over 2 ppm every year, is the temperature on a steady upward trend? No? Why not?"