ok cb here i go! actually, taking the thing all in all as best as i can tell from here probably the earth is growing warmer because of human carbon emissions. (really, i believe it more in the summer; sad how we keep consulting our own experience.) but i am not really compelled to declare an opinion on this matter: there are plenty of spokemen for that point of view, some of whom might have some credibility or the expertise at least to understand the data to some extent. my own contribution to carbon emissions is infinitesimal, and i'm not gonna really behave much differently either way.

what i am doing is complaining that in this situation it is fundamentally impossible to evaluate the data, and the data is constantly being...engineered to underpin certain sorts of advocacy. i think al gore, for example, actually saw climate change as a way to move into global governance, global regulation, as a motivation for an emerging world-state, a crisis we could only face by 'uniting.' others see it as a way to motivate an ecological rethinking of the way we live on earth: it's a wedge for a vision of sustainability and so on. these folks require the crisis to be as urgent as possible, and honestly they express fundamentally consensus positions on the left. 

there could also be climate-change-denial science, funded by carbon companies. but that stuff has been entirely quarantined from 'legitimate science.' now one has to be suspicious of 'science' funded by people with a huge financial stake in how it comes out. but one also has to be suspicious of the ways that the notion of 'legitimate science' is fundamentally defined by institutions which enforce a political consensus.