[Alex]

Sometimes I have so little willpower.

I half admire Alex for having the time to do it, and half pity him for having the time to do it.

In my defense I am, by education, an academic reference librarian. Looking up information, and quickly, is pretty much part of my DNA. It really doesn't take that long to do some minimal research into things, the longer part is the writing of what I found.

scaeagles, in your criticisms of Al Gore and Edwards I don't necessarily disagree with you. But there you aren't arguing with science you are arguing with politicians. I don't know many paleoclimatologists flying around in private jets or atmospheric scientists living in 50K square foot homes. You have no idea what life changes the people actually generating the science have made in response to what they feel is happening.

How many paleobotanists who do the actual research and have shifted their lives to use less energy with fewer emissions would it take to counter one hypocritical politician? Why is their demonstration of sincere acceptance counteracted by a few outliers?

Science changes it's mind so frequently about what is good and bad

The hard sciences really don't do this very often. In fact, hard science rarely has any opinion on "good" or "bad" in the first place. It just tries to describe what is. It is when attempts are made to convert science findings into policy that it can seem that things are blowing in the wind. Generally because policy is set with minimal input from the actual scientists and findings get distorted, misinterpreted, maladroitly applied, and hyped.

But yes, sometimes "science" gets it all wrong. And if so, it will generally eventually correct itself. Though that doesn't mean that politicians, journalists, and activists will sway with it.

There's the whole issue of more severe periods of warming and cooling

This is a bit of a logical fallacy. That if there is any other cause of climate change then increases in greenhouse emissions can't be a cause. This is like saying that because exercise increases body temperature that bacterial infection can't.

No scientist will deny that there are other causes of global climate change and that there have been many periods of variability more severe than what we may currently be experiencing. But just because the Milankovitch Cycles may cause global climate change doesn't mean that other things don't as well.

There is that one good sized Pinatubo like volcanic eruption pump more green house type gasses into the atmosphere at one time than man ever has.

Another one for you to research as this is another common claim that simply isn't true. The 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo released at least 42 million tons of CO2, and perhaps twice that (report from the British Geological Survey, see page 17). By comparison Mt. St. Helens released between 5 and 20 million tons.

The really damning sentence, though, is right up front in that report. On page 7 (bolding mine):

The contribution to the present day atmospheric CO2 loading from volcanic emissions is, however, relatively insignificant, and it has been estimated that subaerial vulcanism releases around 300 Mt/yr CO2 [300 million tons], equivalent to just 1% of anthropogenic emissions.

On the next page it mentions that fossil fuel burning releases about 23,000 million tons of CO2 per year. So a Pinatubo-like eruption does not release more greenhouse gasses than "man every has" it barely releases more than man does in a single day (and maybe not even that depending on which end of the certainty range is more right).