I guess I shall try to be persistant in this argument for now...
"Quite an eye opening series of posts. What's most remarkable to me is the level of self-importance that many place on the influence and impact of human activity. The amount of solar energy striking the earth in one minute's time is greater than all the human produced energy in an entire year. "
Yes, that's an interesting statistic but it's beside the point. A little bit of human generated fossil fuel energy changes the atmosphere to really help that solar energy along.
" And yet, when someone asks if solar output might have something to do with the minor temperature changes being measured, that person is labeled a 'denier'."
All I can say is just look at the numbers. Plenty of very good science going on out there I think. What does it say? You can choose to deny it or not.
"When I was a kid, I was told by my grade school teacher that due to the 'population explosion' by the time I was 30 there would be wide-spread starvation in the United States and all over the world because the earth simply wouldn't be able to support 4 billion people. I spent years being secretly happy when I heard there was an earthquake or some other major disaster which killed a large number of people (that's how much I believed that clap-trap that was fed to me)."
That was your grade school teacher. Yes, lots of people have had misconceptions and sometimes good science has come to wrong conclusions but... usually good science advances and moves towards the 'right explanation' of how things work and what's really going on I think.
"When I was in high school, the next ice age was going to freeze us all, prevent farmers from growing crops, and cause the deaths of millions. Now, of course, noone really believed that but this is different. "
Yes, there's always some bad ideas out there...
" In college, Ted Danson and his ilk were running around telling everyone that if we didn't do something RIGHT NOW the oceans would be massive bodies of raw sewage unable to sustain life by 1990."
Well - he might have been a bit over the top but look what's going on right now with coral reefs - and... world wide fish population. There are some real problems with that stuff and he may not have been too far off the mark.
" I'm sorry, the fear mongers no longer get a free pass in my mind. The simple fact that the majority of the mainstream media are absolutely certain that human activity is the major cause of global climate change causes me to doubt. They have successfully conditioned me to disbelieve them and actively search for my own answers."
I think paying attention to what other folks are doing/discovering - good science is wise, and what they're saying now is interesting in my mind. Some will be fear mongers and try to take advantage of the situation, but I guess we all have to try/read between the lines to some degree. There will always be people crying 'wolf' - there will also always be some real wolfs out there. I think if you consider statistics about world population growth, CO2 emmissions, existing reserves of fossil fuels,... and a few other things ;-) - then there may be some really serious stuff to be considering that's never come along before in the history of this planet.
" I'm not ready to admit that moderate global warming is a bad thing. Who's to say that having a longer growing season further north of the equator is a bad thing? "
I guess that depends on where you live. It will benefit some and be a real pain to others I expect. Hopefully the folks who enjoy the longer growing season have the water they need to go along with it.
" I'm also not self-centered enough to believe that my own life span is so important that if something changes during that time, it must be bad/good/significant. I'm sure we've all heard people say, "Well, it must be global warming since when I was a kid, winters were much colder." How extraordinary."
Yes - I think it really boils down to... are we making a mess and refusing to clean it up or not? We've evolved to be the way we are because of how this planet is/has been - and if a couple of generations of humans are going to make significant changes and not care because they're worried about the next election... or their own life time, then that's a sad thing I think. You make a mess - or realize you've made a mess - it's polite to stop doing it and better yet... try to clean it up! I'm fairly convinced that future generations will think our generations were the most foolish in history.