This started as a comment on Mark's blog regarding the suitabilty of An Inconvenient Truth as classroom material. If you'd like to followup or comment on this post, please go there (be polite or I won't invite you to post on Mark's blog again!)

I believe the "Chicken Little" is an apt phrase to use because it _is_ folk wisdom. Consider: Global Warming, Global Cooling/Ice Age, The Energy Crisis, Y2K, Everyone to get cancer by 50 due to "toxins", Peak Oil, Global Famine by the 1980s, Critical Resource Shortages by the 1980s and so forth. That's not to say that there aren't global crisii; for example, there's WWII, just that there's a lot more predictions of disasters than actual disasters. However, fairly predictably every 5 years or so there will be a prediction of disaster and a call for action. Also predictably, the solution will always be along the same lines: power and choice must be stripped from the citizen and invested in a small class wise men who will make wise choices to steer humanity through the shoals.

But let's talk about AGW, i.e. Anthropogenic -- human caused -- Global Warming. I think I can fairly non controversially describe this as follows (in broad strokes):

1. Humanity is pulling a lever (i.e. primarily C02 emissions) that is predictably making the climate hotter and/or more unstable
2. If we stop pulling that level, the climate will predictably improve
3. The present value of the costs of AGW (- the benefits) is greater than the PV of stopping pulling the lever

There's two aspects that we can examine AGW and the case for doing something about it: either through modeling or though the historical record.

The climate is an unstable chaotic system, with a rough ice-age to ice-age periodicity of about 10,000 years. Our knowledge of how the atmosphere (and the ocean) works is _very_ incomplete; our present knowledge of the _state_ of the atmosphere and ocean is likewise incredibly crappy: we simply don't measure that many data points. Our knowledge of their _past_ state is even more spotty and goes back at most a century. Then add in other factors such as extraterrestrial effects such as solar energy and the effects of radiation and solar energy output (and composition) and where do we end up? AGW proponents claim a model that can predict the climate to within a few tenths of a degree over the course of a century? Sorry, models of chaotic systems with poor data inputs and incomplete system knowledge _do not_ have this sort of predictive power.

So then we look at the historical record. Now, one expects that when one is making the claim that significantly restructuring is needed in our economy/society (see point #3 above, the PV(future expenses - future benefits) > PV(restructuring costs)) one would expect the people making the claims would put their best foot forward. What do we get? The hockey stick is wrong, and almost certainly fraudulent; polar bears aren't drowning, they're at near peak populations; various glaciers being pointed to melted long before atmospheric CO2 attributable to humans was significant; and so forth. I've documented much of this on my blog over the last 5 years. (This looks good too, though I haven't gone through it in depth).

So what's after that. Lomberg gets physically attacked while giving presentations, ad-homenim attacks are considered debate, people like me are compare to Nazis (the point of the phrase "GW denier"), Nuremberg trials are proposed. Is this science? Truth?   No, it's the voice of goons.

I'm one of these weirdos that believes that science is understandable and access able to all, and furthermore, that science isn't about Truth but about methodology. When I'm told to lie back and think of England, excuse me, lie back and accept without question what selected scientists are saying, I know I'm in the realm of politics, not science and certainly not Truth.