You see? Just insults. No substance.

Quite often my fear is that people who make this type of argument, instead of one based on reason and fact, ARE winning.

o.k. I was being insulting. Let me restart, if substance and "showing work" means to you that I cut and paste verses by St Augustine and rattle off facts and figures and names well you are right, I have no substance. I am one man who when he hears about flatulence taxes and taxes on how many times you flush the toilet he becomes suspicious. I am one who when he reads about new data about sunspots and maybe, just maybe that activity having something to do with rises in temperature ,he says huh?! I am one who claims no expertise in any field of these natures, I am just a guy who remembers Flavor Flav's claim of "Don't believe the hype" which I think applies here. Sure there is a middle of the road solution for us , of course there is. I KNOW in my heart that I will stand as a soverign human, as one man against any tyranny ,without the herd behind me.

I can understand your viewpoint and I really do appreciate the skepticism. Science, in my view, is in the business of being skeptical. If you think about it, most of science involves setting up these laws and theories and then trying to break them. It improves our understanding of how the world works.

"Don't believe the hype" is a good place to start. However, the answer to that is not to simply disbelieve but to check the facts. It doesn't take more than a couple of minutes to find out that the flatulence tax and toilet tax were just hype. There is no plan to do either of these in this country. (Apparently, the toilet tax is in Australia.) Questions on sunspots can be answered, too. It might require more searching.

Here's a good site to check: http://www.pewclimate.org/
It is set up by the non-partisan Pew Research Center for People and the Press (http://www.peoplepress.org/) and has good basic information. There are plenty of other sites around and I'd be happy to suggest a couple if you'd like.

I should have said more on the sunspots. Sorry.

One explanation that I found, though, makes a lot of sense. In order to look at the intensity of the sun, we use satellites. (This prevents clouds and other objects and atmospheric conditions from getting in the way.) During the past 30 years, there has been no change in the intensity of the sunlight. No sunspot interference in that whatsoever. However, the greatest increase in global temperatures happened during that time. There have been sunspots. There have been plenty of them. However, they don't seem to have had any real effect.

congrats card....

taht was hilarious...

oh...

i hope you weren't serious..