Anthropogenic Global Warming

Dr. Clam said (he unusually believed)
4. Anthropogenic global warming is a fact, but we shouldn’t do anything about it.

Then I said:
(4) after a 90 degree turnaround (a few years ago) do believe that global warming is a fact and we shouldn't do anything about it

Then Dave said:
I'm curious about both your views on (4) that we shouldn't do anything about global warming - what's the rationale?

Well before my 90 degree turnaround I believed that there was negligible global warming, but an excess of fearmongering and selective use of statistics for the sole purpose of instigating fear and getting loads of government money for "greenhouse effect" research. Urban bias - ie. most historical temperature data comes from cities, which have been growing as countries urbanise and temperatures within cities are higher than surrounding areas, was my explanation for most longer term studies showing increased temperatures. After reading "Pale Blue Dot" by Carl Sagan, which was rather more objective on the subject and showed that trying models on other planets and finding a signature of the effects of both CO2 and Sulphur on Earth, I could both believe and quantify what the reality actually was. If doing something about it means something like Kyoto, which raises the priority of greenhouse emissions over all other environmental and political problems without it having much chance of achieving its original stated goals - I say scrap Kyoto. The biggest threats to biospherical environment is the tragedy of the commons, nuclear warfare, and rogue asteroids. Increasing the priority of greenhouse gas by doing something about it is not real smart, and we may possibly miss some other factors which need research because of our false sense of security with regards to global warming.