A strong piece of writing from Joe. (I recommend the whole article and at least the first few Salon comments)!

But I wonder who is putting the words into the Republican politicians mouths? Is it really Will and Krauthammer? (Will supports a carbon tax, if my memory serves me. Krauthammer supports nuclear, rationing even.) Would not the fossil fuel industry be the real culprits? In other words, is our problem not structural rather than ideological? Wouldn't campaign finance reform be in order (as Gelbspan suggests)?

And finally this quote from Joe illustrates to me that he hasn't fully absorbed the impact of what fossil fuel depletion will mean to our available energy:

Krauthammer and the conservatives have it backward. The solution to global warming doesn't require rationing energy or anything else. It requires a government-industry partnership to accelerate existing and near-term clean energy technologies into the market. That strategy preserves the energy abundance that has made modern civilization and sustained economic development possible

I'm sure it's the oil companies. I had a poll by telephone that contained questions so slanted I knew by the 2nd it was paid for  by an oil company.
I infer the purpose of the very lengthy poll was to select the talking points the public was most apt to agree with. I concluded a major drilling campaign was about to be unleashed.
Sure enough, a couple of weeks some of the issues addressed in the poll appeared as talking points in the mouths of Bush, Cheney, McCain and some in Congress.
How easily we are manipulated!

The links you provide do not rebut the video link I posted but some other video.

Morality has nothing to do with it.

CO2 IS a greenhouse gas.  So what?!  Man-made CO2 contribution is absolutely DWARFED by natural sources.  And clouds absolutely DWARF CO2 in their ability to counter CO2's greenhouse effect.  The historical record reconstructed by scientists shows over and over again that global warming preceeds increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations by a few hundred years because the sun warms the oceans releasing CO2, a process that takes time due to the huge thermal sink that oceans represent.  When solar output decreases then so does earth's temperature.

I have one minor criticism with the video.  It does not discuss earth's orbital changes around the sun contributing to ice ages, etc., probably because those occur over eons rather than human lifetimes like solar output variations.

But there is no way to attribute climate change to it. Climate change is being attributed to every weather phenomenon now. Anything slightly out of the ordinary and you hear "climate change".

Victory in Pattani

Mac, this thread already has it's share of classic denialist BS talking points. Please move on.

viewpoint are "denialists" and should move on.

I am actually convinced that Climate Change is real, and is a concern. I am not screaming that the end of the world is coming however. And I am conscious that major changes to our economy will have a major and negative impact on poor people everywhere. So while I think we need to take measured action, we have to do that in a way that minimizes it's impact on the global economy.

Lastly, I don't care if you like me in this thread or not. It's called freedom of expression, and even "denialists" are entitled to it.

Victory in Pattani

Just because 5 judges decided that CO2 is a pollutant doesn't make it so.  Without it plants will die, and we will follow.

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO CORRELATION BETWEEN CO2 AND PAST TEMPERATURE INCREASES.  All the science points to this.

CO2 concentrations have been up to 20 times higher than today's level, and runaway warming did not occur.  In fact, ice ages happenned.

The key is this.  Our atmosphere does not warm/cool strictly by radiation.  Convection, and other natuarl cooling mechanisms such as clouds,  which keep the earth from reaching about 170 degrees F (which it would be in a pure radiative environment), render the greenhouse effect theory useless.

Sea level, which is incredibily difficult to even measure is not increasing at an increasing rate.  Our best guesses, and that's what they are, tell us that sea level fluctuates, but has been rising at about 7 inches/century for the past couple.  If you read the latest IPCC report (not the executive summary written by political types), they state that a recent acceleration, albeit small, in sea level rise, from 1992-2003, may just be due to decade variability, then they go on to project higher rates based on models that assume CO2 will cause warming.  This is not science, but fodder.

Oh.. can anyone please point me to a list of scientists that are part of this manufactured concensus?  I only know if 2 lists.  One includes 400 prominent scientists from over 20 counties (many of which contributed to the IPCC reports).  They disagree with the AGW theory.  The other is a list of over 30,000 American scientists and methematicians that agree that CO2 should not be limited.

So where are all these concensus scientists beyond Charles Mann and James Hansen?  Can you even give me a list of 50?

I'm waiting....

When you post comments like this CO2 concentrations have been up to 20 times higher than today's level, and runaway warming did not occur.  In fact, ice ages happenned. please post references. Otherwise we will have to assume you pulled these statements out of your a-holes (since your heads are firmly in the sand)

To listen to all these deniers is kind of interesting. Funny how everyone becomes a climate scientist as soon as they're told they'll have to pay extra for the damage their 10mpg Denali XL is causing.