While it's true that vigorous scientific inquiry continues on literally hundreds of aspects of the climate system, and that many details are not resolved, there is strong scientific consensus on the following three points:
1. Earth is warming
2. The strongest "forcing" term in the warming, by a large margin, is anthropogenic - arising from a combination of the burning of fossil fuels and land use changes.
3. The consequences of this warming over the coming century are likely to be significant to human civilization - and quite possibly catastrophic.
These three overriding conclusions are simply not under any serious challenge at all in the scientific community. The body of evidence that supports them is very broad and very deep. This is not to say that there aren't a few dissenters, but their number is a tiny fraction of the informed scientific community, and their arguments have been investigated diligently and resoundingly rejected on the basis of a broad body of data.
There is, however, good reason for Teena's confusion. The effort to obfuscate the level of consensus is well-funded, well-orchestrated, and well-disguised. I have literally a desktop full of information on the level of consensus and the efforts to confuse on this issue, if Teena is interested in spending some serious time educating herself, as I have.
She refers to the "National Association of Scientists" in her note below, which is not an organization. I believe she means to say the National Academy of Science. Again, as with any topic in science, there will be a spectrum of views. And again, there are many disagreements on some of the details of climate, and special interest groups are good at making it appear that these disagreements are significant. But the simple fact is - and I have ample documentation to this effect - these details do not impact the "big three" conclusions above. Rather, they primarily impact on the refinement of predictions, not wholesale reversal of them.
As one bit of documentation to my claims, the U.S. National Academy of Science, along with the national academies of ten other nations (Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom) have signed a document called "Joint Academies Statement: Response to Global Climate Change" , accepting wholeheartedly the results of the IPCC reports and calling for immediate and strong action. A copy can be found here:
http://www.academie-sciences.fr/actualites/textes/G8_gb.pdf
Additional, similar statements have been made by the American Geophysical Union - the world's largest organization of Earth scientists (over 49,000 members fm 140 countries)
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/climate_change_position.html
the American Meteorological Society (membership over 11,000)
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/climatechangeresearch_2003.html
the National Research Council (a branch of the Nat'l Academy)
http://books.nap.edu/html/climatechange/summary.html
the Geological Society of America (membership 20,500 worldwide)
http://www.geosociety.org/aboutus/position10.htm
the American Chemical Society (this is the world's single largest scientific organization, w/ a staggering 155,000 members worldwide)
http://www.chemistry.org/portal/resources/ACS/ACSContent/government/statements/2004_statements/2004_07_global_climate_chg_env.pdf
the Geological Society of London (the largest geoscience community in Europe , with a membership of over 9000):
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/template.cfm?name=Global_Warming_Essay
And there are many more. It is very important to note that these are professional, scientific organizations; they are not political entities nor ideological entities. Just science. You will find in these various documents statements that there are many uncertainties in the climate system; this is good science - which always points out the uncertainties. But you will also find in all of them calls for immediate action to mitigate. In other words, everyone agrees that, from a risk management standpoint, no further research is required: the stakes are simply too high, this is not an experiment humanity should conduct, and the conservative, prudent course of action is to act now to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Just for completeness, I was able to find one professional organization of scientists who were not convinced - the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. However, their statement contains many references to the price of oil and economy, which I find less than convincing as a science statement on climate. It also turns out there has been considerable resistance to their stance from their own membership - something I've found no evidence of from the other organizations.
http://dpa.aapg.org/gac/papers/climate_change.cfm
Next, as for the popular media, Teena's statement that the mainstream media is "100% behind global warming" is simply bizarre. While there is essentially no dissent in the peer-reviewed scientific literature on the notion of anthropogenic climate change, a recent study of mainstream media articles showed over half STILL cast doubt in their coverage (in journalism, this is termed "inappropriate equivalence" - like giving equal time to flat-earthers).
Finally, I have to say that if Teena is also questions the science of evolution, as she implies, this is all but a lost cause. For the science of evolution is even stronger than that for climate change. The data are so broad and so deep. It can be difficult for people who are not trained scientists to understand the rigors of the scientific process, and there are many who excel at making arguments that are nonsense scientifically, but nevertheless sound good to the untrained mind. This is my greatest source of outrage: those who deliberately mislead. And we all have our proclivities for one belief over another. If one wants to believe in "creation science" or "intelligent design", so be it - but be clear these are not beliefs based on SCIENCE. Science is falsifiable, and these theories start from beliefs that are not testable through measurement. Similarly, many have ideological reasons for resisting the science of climate change and there are many disinformationists who take advantage. But at the end of the day, on this issue, the science is utterly, crystal clear on the big three questions I mentioned above. Since Teena seems to have a strong predisposition to distrust the overwhelming scientific body of evidence - of consensus - I have strong doubts you will make any headway. At the end of the day, it is my experience that such people , whose decisions ignore facts, based purely on ideological grounds and are so destructive to so, so many others, simply must be fought. Fought compassionately, to be sure - but fought aggressively and relentlessly in the public arena.
Finally, you (and Teena) can find a wealth of well-presented climate information - and more scientific discussion than you could ever want - at the following website:
www.realclimate.org
Another website to help you evaluate information based on the organizations presenting and funding it is SourceWatch - use it like you would use Wikipedia:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=SourceWatch
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Global_warming
Best,
rob
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