As I see it with the cyclical nature of Earth's climate, as shown by the graphs, the real question is whether mankind's activities will jack it up. There's some mechanism that would seem to cause global temperatures to drop back down and life goes on. Do/will our actions hinder or disable this natural mechanism? Is this period of warming unusually accelerated by a significant margin, presumably by human action, and is that likely to make a difference? I don't know; I haven't looked into the matter very deeply as of yet.
The problem I see is that the issue isn't just scientific anymore. It's left the fairly objective scientific realm and entered the unfathomably backwards political realm. If climate change weren't used as an excuse to expand government power beyond subsidizing clean energy and R&D for it, or if the recommendation were to rely more heavily on nuclear energy, it's fair to say that a lot of its critics would put up a much lesser fight or drop it altogether. Instead the EPA is given sweeping, abuseable, power which limited government types have every reason to fear, hate, and resist.
As far as those national academies go, I hate to pull an ad hominem, but don't you think that the
national institutes have some vested interest in the existence of climate change and all the panic around it given that it means more funding for them to try to fix it and the expansion of
national power.? I'm not saying they're wrong; I'm not saying you're wrong; I'm just saying that the self interest of these people is worth considering. The map you've brought up isn't actually addressing what beachbum's talking about (I think). I believe he's talking about the survey discussed
here. I won't pretend that that's unbiased either, but it's always worth digging deeper into matters as controversial and hard fought as these.
