This post was mentioned on Twitter by triplepundit: Endgame: Understanding a Global Climate Imperative http://bit.ly/5QPkbv
#susty…

1. The modern theory of AGW (increasing CO2 absorbs more IR and leads to warmer temperatures) was laid out way back in 1896 in a seminal paper by future Nobel Prize winner Svante Arrhenius. He wasn't trying to promote socialism or be a flunky for Al Gore, indeed SA thought the warming would be beneficial – so he didn't promote the theory to scare people.

2. Even a case of actual cheating and cover-up, or even fabrication don't disprove an idea itself. Look at prosecutors “framing guilty men” by “improving” evidence to ensure conviction, look at the Piltdown hoax which sure doesn't mean evolution is false and other evidence couldn't be rounded up. (BTW what CRU did wasn't even that bad anyway, this just emphasizes the irrelevancy of ad hominem issues to the material point. In my bitter experience conservatives are very into projecting from personal factors onto imagined objective ones.)

3. CO2 is a stimulus similar to lowering interest rates are for an economy: the effect is not direct and linear, there are variations and other influences. Tell someone who says, “how come it got cooler during the last ten years” (it may not have, but play along here): How come we had a cool spell e.g. during April, before summer came along? Does that make you doubt the idea that changing axis angle causes seasons?!

4. Most of the things we would do to lower CO2 are good for the economy and national interest anyway: save money on gas and other non-renewables, reduce dependency on other nations (including Muslim ones!), it will run out anyway in decades to centuries, etc.

5. An effect doesn't have to be “certain” or uniformly and highly damaging to be worth trying to avoid – what about terrorist threats, the irony of Cheney et al's “One percent doctrine” etc.

6. The skeptics and doubters are way more dishonest and controlled by money interests. (You need to dig for the evidence there.)