There are many serious, non-poliitcized scientists who convincingly argue against AGW.
There are also many serious scientists who completely refute the impact of CO2 regarding climate change.
There's ample evidence of global cooling since 1998. This might have a far greater negative impact on our mutual love of golf than GW could ever have.
Climategate exposed the IPCC and most of the AGW science for what it really is- You-Tube propaganda videos and Wikipedia bias notwithstanding.
The science is far from settled.
Boy, I am probably going to regret this but...
Chris, would you mind posting some of these "ample evidence" for global cooling and "serious scientists" who dispute the role of CO2 in global warming?
I have yet to see any serious peer reviewed scientific paper that has come up with a better theory for global warming. Perhaps, I am just not looking in the right places. I would love to see what you are reading.
At least from the papers that I have seen, there is clear consensus among scientists that there is global warming (I mean, seriously, there is no climatologist of any standing who disputes this). There are questions about the exact cause, but the studies done on the climate over last 500,000 years or so have shown that the increase that we have seen over the last century is quite unique in the rate of change - that is also not in dispute.
The reason why CO2 is the likely culprit is many fold. First, it is the main change in atmosphere over the same time global warming has occurred. While correlation is not necessarily causational, the fact that heat is trapped more effeciently in CO2 makes it very likely cause. This has been backed by numerous climate simulations and temperature patterns of the last global warming where there were higher concentrations of greenhouse gases like CO2. Pretty much everywhere we have looked at, all the evidence points to increase in CO2.
While it is true that other scientist may question some of the logic or evidence related to CO2 and global warming, none have yet to come up with better explanations based on the physical evidences that we have. And if you cannot provide an alternative theory that can be tested or backed up by physical evidence, not matter how much you scream, it is not going to be accepted by the scientific community.
That is how science works. It doesn't matter what you think or what you believe. The physical evidence tells you what the truth is. If someone disagrees with global warming or its cause, all they have to do is to come up with testable theory to disprove it. But no one has yet has come up with a viable alternative so far so the current method of thinking around global warming will continue, climategate or not.
In the end, as I have said before, if you don't "believe" global warming, it makes absolutely no difference. All of the measurements say the temperatures are going up. You can deny it all you want, but it makes absolutely no difference and frankly, no scientist really cares.They are busy doing actual work, they couldn't care less if some significant number of ignorant population don't believe the facts, because facts don't change just because people don't want to believe them.