Have you visited Climate Depot and actually read the information? Or, are you saying because they've been partially funded by Exxon/Mobil they must be the bad guys, and the only good guys are those that believe in Global Warming? I guess the 30,000 climatologist that said, in print, that there was NO general consensus in the scientific community that global warming existed and that man had virtually no impact whatsoever on climatic conditions, are all idiots. And, of course, Al Gore, the guy who is laughing all the way to the bank, and owns the company that trades energy credits for a huge commission, he wouldn't lie--he's a politician. And, we know they all tell the truth.
Don't condemn Climate Depot because of their financial supporters. If I recall correctly, that same group at RealClimate.org was the organization that claimed we were headed into another Ice Age back in the 1970s, and for the same reasons. Hmmmmm!
Cheers,
Gary
Gary... I've had this debate so many times, in so many different venues, that I'm just not gonna do it again. I'll skip my background, and most other talking points, and just address all the things that are wrong with your above post.
1. Yes, I've visited climatedepot, and pretty much every other dedicated site, many times. Yes, I've read what they post - enough to know that it's the same cherry-picked pseudoscience (and sometime outright silliness) that Inhofe et al have been pushing for years. None of it holds up to a true review process. Most of their favorite points (the earth cooled mid-century! So warming can't be anthropogenic!) have been explained ad nauseam using real science.
There's a reason that the folks who post at, say, Realclimate publish their work in peer-review journals (where it contributes to the ongoing scientific process) and the folks who support orgs like ClimateDepot and the Heartland Institute publish THEIR thoughts as op-eds. It's not science. It doesn't stand the very basics of peer review.
2. I didn't say anyone was the "bad guys" or the "good guys". Simply that some of them are actual scientists working with the latest data and models in preeminent research institutions... and some of them are bought-and-paid-for politicians like Inhofe, with a seeming lack of understanding of even very basic atmospheric science. I know who I, personally, would choose to get my science from.
3.The 30,000 "scientists" you refer to published that paper a decade ago - I put "scientist" in quotes and didn't even use your word, "climatologist", because almost none of those people were climatologists and many had no science credentials to speak of. The few who might have had a modicum of knowledge of atmospheric science were not actively publishing in the field, and therefore probably not up to date. That paper was an outright joke to the research community but of course certain media outlets loved it and didn't do their due-diligence in source-checking. And again, it's a decade old. Data-driven consensus has become stronger since then.
Interestingly, Inhofe spearheaded another press release in I think 2007 claiming 400 scientists oppose AGW theory. That number has since been revised upward to around 650 in 2009 I think. Quite a drop from 30,000 in less than a decade, no? And again, the large majority were not qualified to engage in debate on climate science. The way they managed to skew the numbers (and include some actual climate scientists) is by revising the press release title to something like (... scientists disputed man-made global warming claims) and including every scientific challenge to any precept of the latest IPCC report. It's science. There are always challenges. That is as it should be, and in no way indicates that the challenging individuals actually believe there's data to indicate the whole concept of AGW is false (which, of course, is what the press release wants to lead you to believe).
4. I never referenced Al Gore, or his trustworthiness or lack thereof. He is not a scientist, he is a politician.
5. I'm not sure what "group" at RealClimate you reference. It's just a hang-out for publishing atmospheric and climate scientists. Since the internet didn't exist in the '70s, I'm not sure how they could have constituted a "group". But since you've mentioned one of the golden nuggets of the deniers, I'll explain it (this was shown around 10 years ago, but people still hold on to it). Global average temps have been trending upwards since near the beginning of the industrial revolution, with one exception in the mid-20th century. (Note that I'm referring to long term trends, not any one year being warmer or cooler than any other. That is meaningless. There will always be variations.) This was correctly raised as a challenge to the theory of long-term temps trending upwards. The problem was, the models - which had gotten pretty good by the late 90s at modeling global climate (MUCH different than a short term wx forecast) - didn't replicate this temp trend, with or without anthropogenic CO2. Someone finally thought to add another anthropogenic emission to the models - sulfur dioxide. Then the models snapped into agreement with actual data. Sulfur dioxide is an aerosol emission from coal power plants that causes climate cooling. Its forcing ability is much greater than GHGs, so it overcame their influence and actually caused some cooling. It also causes acid rain, and so scrubbers to remove it from emissions were mandated in the 70s. Being an aerosol, sulfur dioxide is quite short-lived in the atmosphere compared to GHGs (it only lasts around 8 mos).
So... the very next year after scrubbers became mandated in many parts of the developed world... temp trends reversed and headed upwards again.
The consensus at the time of most atmospheric scientists wasn't that "we were headed into another ice age". That's more media paraphrasing. They believed it was a normal variation of the earth being in a stable interglacial period according to the Milankovitch cycles, and some cooling being due given the recent trend of warming.
Believe the theory or don't, but know whether you're basing your position on actual science or propaganda. Don't get your information from press releases and industry-funded groups. Get it from the source. Get it from the journals, from the research institutions. Google Scholar is your friend.
Just sayin'.