I've always felt that global warming is much more of a political issue than scientific. The vast majority of scientists agree - the earth is warming. They also agree that it is unclear what the cause of that warming is. Is it more due to a natural cycle or is it more human-produced greenhouse gases? Is it about 50/50? Nobody knows, and they all agree on that. Of course, various experts lean one way or the other, further or not. But they all agree that it's still up in the air (so to speak). Those few who claim to be 100% certain of their position on one side or the other, I believe, have probably allowed their political views to taint their scientific views.
I took a class in college on global warming. The purpose of the class wasn't to teach "facts" as much as it was to do joint research as a group (it was a small class). We scoured all the latest available scientific literature at the time and came to the above conclusion - that the cause cannot be pinned on either climate or human society alone with current information. We just don't know.
Historical data suggests that even within the past 10,000 years, the earth experienced much wider climate swings than we are measuring right now. And most of that was obviously without human waste in the atmosphere. Who's to say this isn't also one of those cycles?
At the same time, our production of greenhouse gases is definitely damaging the environment. We must continue to reduce emissions - even more drastically than we already have. I absolutely agree that we don't do enough to protect the environment, and even if it's only a small possibility that reducing greenhouse gases will measurably reduce catastrophic weather, we should do it. The other benefits to the environment - our home - will be well worth the trouble.
What upsets me about the whole debate is that it's become political. The facts don't ever enter into the equation. People take a stance without looking at data, backing whichever side will help further their beliefs.
You have people on the far left crying that the sky is falling, taking as fact that humankind is solely responsible for the measured increases in temperature. As I heard somewhere else recently, some extremists would undoubtedly blame humankind for killing the environment if it were measured that temperatures were in fact decreasing. It doesn't matter what the scientific facts are, they're just using them as ammunition: a way to reinforce what they've already decided. They act like the current administration in the US is solely responsible for the last century of industrial waste we've dumped into the air, using it simply as another reason to hate their political enemies.
And you have people on the right claiming that there's no such thing. Flat out denying that the earth's temperature is rising, that there's even the tiniest chance that we had something to do with it. Labeling the people concerned with emissions as wacko hippies or something like that. That's just as bad as, if not worse than the other side.
The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle. We don't know whether greenhouse gases are responsible for 90%, 50%, or 1% of the observed temperature increase. To rush to conclusions without rigorous analysis and further data collection would be to deny any scientific validity of the results that were found in the first place. But because this is such a politically charged issue, people like to take one little factoid and run with it for their own purposes.
I believe the US isn't doing nearly enough to curb harmful emissions. We've made serious progress over the last few decades, but we could be doing a lot more. I pin that on the current administration as well as those preceding it. I also believe that using global warming as a rallying cry against current environmental policy is disingenuous at best. Not while the verdict is still out. There are plenty of other, much more tangible ways we can show how the environment is suffering at our hands.
