I posted that a few years ago mainly because I couldn't believe how the conversation went from is there any thing we can to about it to does it even exist. Shows how effective propaganda can be I guess.

You learn about the greenhouse effect and O2-CO2 cycles in grade school. So as we further overpopulate the planet and further deforest it, it should be obvious we have some effect on the situation.  Then throw in the burning of hydrocarbons. Personally I think we ignored the problem too long already and think education is the answer not carbon taxation. I don't think we can effectively change the situation. That doesn't make me deny that a problem does exist however. 

The Oil and Coal companies have to this point defeated the education solution so I simply look at the peak oil problem alone which is a big enough problem on it's own.

Noam has a pretty good grip on "reality" for a linguist. Then again if you know the history of MIT's DoD connection then maybe it's not that surprising.

There is a lot of science out there to back things up. What is uncertain is how fast the changes come, how severe they will be, and which areas will be effected the worse.

Most of the academics are not in the grip of politicians. Science for the most part is still clean. I don't know who came up with the idea that science was somehow one sided. I am extremely skeptical about the pharmaceuticals sector because that is mostly controlled by the corporations but as for most other fields I haven't seen much influence. Look at some of the pundits who bash the "elite" academics. Many went to very same institutions and send their kids to them as well. What sucks is this country really needs more engineers, scientists, and doctors so the pundits and zealots of scientist are really not helping things.

Sometimes you simply have to look at sources of information to see if some corporation or lobby group is behind the scenes. For example looking at a websites domain name registration will often show who is behind a skeptic website. It should be obvious which industries have motive. Oil and Coal in this instance. The lobbies and affiliates from those industries should be distrusted. Politicians from the major oil and coal producing states cannot be trusted. They are protecting the industries which provide jobs for their constituents so I don't blame them, I simply wish they wouldn't lie about it. If you look back through history the skeptics in Congress came mainly from those States and still does now. Overall distrust politicians from the get go and look elsewhere and by politicians I mean the elected ones and their appointed staffs who will say just about anything to get votes. Just because people work for the government does not make them dirty. If you look at the the career people within certain agencies that come out about certain issues and are attacked by the elected officials and appointed dept heads they more often than not end up being the truth tellers. A good example of that was Scott Ritter who was the U.N. Weapons Inspector in Iraq representing the US who kept saying Iraq didn't have WMD's when the rally for war came. There are so many of the types of events and the elected politicians are predominantly the liars. Most of the scientists I know or have met along the way are very passionate about their work and seem to be very apolitical.