Here's a great article on what utterly sloppy science is involved. Just shameful...

Statistics needed, The Deniers -- Part I
...
In other words, Wegman believes that much of the climate science that has been done should be taken with a grain of salt -- although the studies may have been peer reviewed, the reviewers were often unqualified in statistics. Past studies, he believes, should be reassessed by competent statisticians and in future, the climate science world should do better at incorporating statistical know-how.

One place to start is with the American Meteorological Society, which has a committee on probability and statistics. "I believe it is amazing for a committee whose focus is on statistics and probability that of the nine members only two are also members of the American Statistical Association, the premier statistical association in the United States, and one of those is a recent PhD with an assistant-professor appointment in a medical school." As an example of the statistical barrenness of the climate-change world, Wegman cited the American Meteorological Association's 2006 Conference on Probability and Statistics in the Atmospheric Sciences, where only eight presenters out of 62 were members of the American Statistical Association.

While Wegman's advice -- to use trained statisticians in studies reliant on statistics -- may seem too obvious to need stating, the "science is settled" camp resists it. Mann's hockey-stick graph may be wrong, many experts now acknowledge, but they assert that he nevertheless came to the right conclusion.

To which Wegman, and doubtless others who want more rigourous science, shake their heads in disbelief. As Wegman summed it up to the energy and commerce committee in later testimony: "I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn't matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science." With bad science, only true believers can assert that they nevertheless obtained the right answer.

...

Read more here:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=22003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6&k=0

Here's from a recent national post article.

Astrophysicist Nir Shariv, one of Israel's top young scientists, describes the logic that led him -- and most everyone else -- to conclude that SUVs, coal plants and other things man-made cause global warming.

Step One Scientists for decades have postulated that increases in carbon dioxide and other gases could lead to a greenhouse effect.

Step Two As if on cue, the temperature rose over the course of the 20th century while greenhouse gases proliferated due to human activities.

****Step Three No other mechanism explains the warming. Without another candidate, greenhouses gases necessarily became the cause.

Dr. Shariv, a prolific researcher who has made a name for himself assessing the movements of two-billion-year-old meteorites, no longer accepts this logic, or subscribes to these views. He has recanted: "Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media.

"In fact, there is much more than meets the eye."

Dr. Shariv's digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no concrete evidence -- only speculation -- that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-- the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort to combat global warming -- is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence. In fact, according to the IPCC's own findings, man's role is so uncertain that there is a strong possibility that we have been cooling, not warming, the Earth. Unfortunately, our tools are too crude to reveal what man's effect has been in the past, let alone predict how much warming or cooling we might cause in the future.

All we have on which to pin the blame on greenhouse gases, says Dr. Shaviv, is "incriminating circumstantial evidence," which explains why climate scientists speak in terms of finding "evidence of fingerprints." Circumstantial evidence might be a fine basis on which to justify reducing greenhouse gases, he adds, "without other 'suspects.' " However, Dr. Shaviv not only believes there are credible "other suspects," he believes that at least one provides a superior explanation for the 20th century's warming.

"Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming," he states, particularly because of the evidence that has been accumulating over the past decade of the strong relationship that cosmic- ray flux has on our atmosphere. So much evidence has by now been amassed, in fact, that "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist."

The sun's strong role indicates that greenhouse gases can't have much of an influence on the climate -- that C02 et al. don't dominate through some kind of leveraging effect that makes them especially potent drivers of climate change. The upshot of the Earth not being unduly sensitive to greenhouse gases is that neither increases nor cutbacks in future C02 emissions will matter much in terms of the climate.

Even doubling the amount of CO2 by 2100, for example, "will not dramatically increase the global temperature," Dr. Shaviv states. Put another way: "Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant."

The evidence from astrophysicists and cosmologists in laboratories around the world, on the other hand, could well be significant. In his study of meteorites, published in the prestigious journal, Physical Review Letters, Dr. Shaviv found that the meteorites that Earth collected during its passage through the arms of the Milky Way sustained up to 10% more cosmic ray damage than others. That kind of cosmic ray variation, Dr. Shaviv believes, could alter global temperatures by as much as 15% --sufficient to turn the ice ages on or off and evidence of the extent to which cosmic forces influence Earth's climate.

In another study, directly relevant to today's climate controversy, Dr. Shaviv reconstructed the temperature on Earth over the past 550 million years to find that cosmic ray flux variations explain more than two-thirds of Earth's temperature variance, making it the most dominant climate driver over geological time scales. The study also found that an upper limit can be placed on the relative role of CO2 as a climate driver, meaning that a large fraction of the global warming witnessed over the past century could not be due to CO2 -- instead it is attributable to the increased solar activity.

CO2 does play a role in climate, Dr. Shaviv believes, but a secondary role, one too small to preoccupy policymakers. Yet Dr. Shaviv also believes fossil fuels should be controlled, not because of their adverse affects on climate but to curb pollution.

"I am therefore in favour of developing cheap alternatives such as solar power, wind, and of course fusion reactors (converting Deuterium into Helium), which we should have in a few decades, but this is an altogether different issue." His conclusion: "I am quite sure Kyoto is not the right way to go."

Yes the climate is always in a stste of change if and its a big if, there is global warming its 99% natural forces at work and possibly 1% man made or influnced. This world has always been in a state of cooling then warming with all sorts of variences in between. Ice ages can only be ended with global warming. It Happened many times befor. and without global warming then you lose the billions (Read $$$$) that the govt. will tax you and give to these people to solve aproblem that dosen't exist to be sloved, Catch 22

Two questions arise from this post. First, who could possibly be still on the doubting side of climate change when it has already begun? Second, how do you expect to 100% agreement on anything subject, especially one that is so heavily politicized.

If we continue to sputter and backfire as a political engine, we will surely stall in a time which requires shift and decisive actions.

To have a chance of any meaningful measures being adopted that will any effect, we have to act now. Let's not wait for the super tanker USS United States to make a slow 180 degree turn which could take years.

Demiseofman, act now for what? To bring to fruition Maurice Strong's desire to crush the first world?
http://www.danegerus.com/weblog/Comments.asp?svComment=9672
{Maurice Strong, secretary general, 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development:
"What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group�s conclusion is "no." The rich countries won�t do it. They won�t change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn�t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn�t it our responsibility to bring that about? This group of world leaders form a secret society to bring about an economic collapse. " }

This climate-change-caused-by-man hoax was a long time in the making. Only the hoax is man made, the actul climate change is not. Google Maurice Strong and see how big of a battle we really have against this nonsense.

Dear Al Taglieri,

Your argument can be explained as "correlation does not prove causality". You are correct in identifying the main difficulty of climatic science. How can you prove something deductively when all we have so far is correlations that at best only put forth a inductive argument which can never be completely proven?

That said, in this context of never completely proving something, it is a shame that most people(not you) discredit & insult the other side without keeping an open mind themselves. And if global warming continues regardless of the cause,we are still may have huge problems in the future especially along the coastline.

dear steven goodhue,

i agree keeping an open mind is good policy. however, i think the point from al tagleria's post of mr shariv's work is that when he (mr.shariv) kept an open mind and did some research of his own, he found out that there is a direct correlation between solar activity and temperature variance...if your argument is that we need a smoking gun for you to become convinced that temperature variance is a natural thing, then you yourself are not being open minded as to the validity of scientific correlation that spans the breadth of geologic time as mr shariv's work did...the problem with all this, is that we are making public policy and wasting my tax dollars to solve the erroneous concept of manmade global warming.