Okay, I've got to ask. It is the one sticking point that I have, but it is an enduring one.

Where is the SCIENTIFIC PROOF that global warming/cooling is not simply a natural, cyclical event, occurring in varying degrees over great periods of time? We have been monitoring our atmosphere with increasingly accurate equipment, but we could not have possibly been monitoring it accurately enough, long enough to rule out the possibility that it is just 'Mother Nature' going through a natural shifting of global climate. The 'Ice Age' may have been the result of one such shift. It has been studied demonstrating that while some areas of the arctic regions are indeed melting, others are thickening.

So, I pose it to you, where is the indisputable scientific proof - not speculation or extrapolation - PROOF?

"..poor nations should also take action.." Poor nations don't belch out all the pollutants that will kill us all. It's not rocket science - the biggest polluters must make the biggest efforts. Yes that includes you USA. It is a sad fact that the if the UK, which is on track to meet Kyoto targets, stopped all CO2 emissions, it would still only make a 2% contribution - we can't do any more!
US, China, and India need to get real about this - they (you will have the biggest social breakdown when it all goes pear-shaped!

There are different standards of proof. There is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, proof through deductive reasoning, and absolute proof, as in indisputable. We should always seek the highest standard of proof but that should not be the criterion for taking action against greenhouse warming. There's just too much at stake. Regardless of nature, we just can't allow human generated greenhouse gases to go unchecked.

Let's say I was not impressed at all by the Nairobi Conference

http://omnologos.wordpress.com/2006/11/17/climate-changes-toothless-circus/

Thousands of delegates have been flown to giant air-conditioned conference and hotel rooms in Nairobi, plus journalists, TV crews, etc etc, all eating lots of food and drinking plenty of water (and more�), neither likely to have been mass-produced locally

And the most likely outcome is�the usual wishy-washy Climate Change rubbish (grand-standing, inconsequential, etc etc)

Is there anything to worry about the Climate Change circus? I am starting to think, there is not

==========

To anybody believing that Climate Change is real and dangerous, the sheer "ecological footprint" of the Nairobi Conference should look like a crime

There is this long lost concept called, "common sense". The Earth is a closed system, so adding millions of tons of carbon is going to alter the system in some way. It is impossible to be otherwise. This whole concept of global warming has been around for over a hundred years when a chemist first proposed global warming theory after observing the beginning of the industrial revolution. Now the overwhelming population of Scientists say it is a fact. Still to this day we have what amounts to the new flat Earther's, still in denial over what is just plain common sense backed by reams of imperical data.

Go figure.

The Earth is a closed system

Is not. Receipt of solar radiation is an external input, albeit a relatively constant one when averaged across four seasons. Be thankful the sun probably isn't a variable star (which are common througout the universe). It's also not known for certain whether or not the Milankovitch hypothesis (look it up) or some variant thereof has some degree of influence.

We may for most purposes treat the earth as a closed system, in that loss of energy to space is balanced by insolation. However, if the earth were a truly closed system with no external input of energy, then it would continue to lose energy to space until it and the surrounding space were the same temperature, and no further energy exchange were possible. This is entropy.

There are other aspects to consider, as well. In terms of "carbon footprint" we can only take from the carbon sink and put it into the atmosphere. It can in turn be taken out of the atmosphere and put back into the sink via uptake by plant life and carbonate rocks. This process has varied through purely non-athropogenic processes for as long as the cycle has been occurring on earth (hundreds of millions of years). We do not have a very accurate bead on precisely how lesser or greater amounts of CO2 have impacted on long term climate throughout the balance of this period - there are many variables to consider (some unknown, and perhaps even unknowable) besides the ratio of CO2 to other greenhouse gases. Complicating this matter is the fact that climate behaves like a chaotic system, which by definition means that you cannot predict the final state of the system based on the initial state of the system. Yet we are asked to believe figures like a 35 degree increase in the next 100 years.

Also consider that if we could transport a Cro-Magnon forward from 20,000 years ago, from his point of view the earth has undergone global warming. Is the warming since the last ice age of anthropogenic origin? (yes, I'm aware that some scientists have speculated that human use of fire warmed the climate - I suppose you could make the same case for every anthropogenic source of heat that exists now, which has got to be rather in excess of the impact of our forebears. What impact this might have on long term climate is unknown, and I don't think anyone is studying that. However, the phenomenon of the so-called "urban heat island" is well-known, so we know that anthropogenic sources of heat can effect local climate. What about several billions of people all trying to keep warm? Day after day, all that infrared radiation escaping into the atmosphere....)

The issue with global warming skeptics (ones like me, anyway) is not that global warming IS or IS NOT occurring. The issue is that it has not been "acceptable" to do "science by consensus" until relatively recently. Scientific questions are not answered by consensus, but through the formulation of hypotheses which may be tested through real-world experimentation and observation, which will in turn either add or take away weight from the hypothesis. If a position must be reached by consensus, the only thing that would necessitate that is because the science isn't good enough. It almost goes without saying that E=mc2 was not arrived at by consensus, but was hypothesized and then put to the test according to the methodology of science. And so on, for ALL scientific ideas and principles that we invest a great deal of confidence in, some to the point of trusting our life to.

The science needs to be better, and scientists need to drop the political agendas, and do science in the manner that it has always has been done since the scientific method became well-honed.

Doing science by consensus is a dangerous precedent - possibly as dangerous to the species' well-being on earth as global warming would be, in the long-run, because when the "gut-feeling" becomes a component, and peer review ceases to be the standard (witness the "demonization" of those who dissent on the global warming issue) it's possible to make mistakes. Potentially serious mistakes, when society is playing with toys as big as the engineers can build based on the findings of science.

Nevertheless, you can ignore all of the above, and take the position that one individual has taken on this thread:

There are different standards of proof. There is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, proof through deductive reasoning, and absolute proof, as in indisputable. We should always seek the highest standard of proof but that should not be the criterion for taking action against greenhouse warming. There's just too much at stake.

Does anyone see the circular reasoning here? What is essentially being said is, "we don't have a high standard of proof that global warming is occurring as a result of anthropogenic inputs, but because the impact of global warming will be so profound we can't afford to have a high standard of proof."

If you don't have a high standard of proof , if you have only "science by consensus," then how do you know global warming is occurring at all, so that you should be so alarmed about it?

What is the ratio of socio-political input to hard-science input in the above-quoted statement?

proof beyond a reasonable doubt, proof through deductive reasoning, and absolute proof

And we are being sold, as "science," NONE of these three.