SkepticalScience

The group that has done the most damage, in my opinion, is political ideologues. Whether they're financed directly by vested interests or whether they act for personal motives, it is climate denial motivated by political ideology that has driven the public controversy about climate change, when there is controversy about human-caused global warming amongst the climate science community.

Most important event in the climate debate? I'd say #97Hours but it might be too early to say. Ask me again in 66 hours :-)

I think we do possess the ability to reverse harmful climate change impacts. But mustering the political will to do so is very difficult. That's why it's crucially important that all of us talk to our friends, families, elected officials about the realities of climate change and why this issue is important to us.

We use proxies for temperature from ice cores, stalagmites, tree-rings, lake sediments, etc to build a picture of climate change over millions of years. So we have an enormous amount of data spanning much of the history of the Earth.

Nevertheless, even the data collected over the past 40-50 years (i.e., the satellite record) paints a strikingly consistent picture of a human intervention on our climate. We've observed many human fingerprints through the climate. I mention a few in another comment but a more comprehensive list is available at http://sks.to/agw

As I said elsewhere (several times), attacks on our consensus paper studiously avoid the fact that our 97.1% consensus was independently confirmed by the 97.2% consensus from the authors of the climate papers. This applies to both links you provide.

The common thread in all criticisms of our consensus paper is that the 97.1% consensus that we measured from abstracts is biased or inaccurate in some way. Every one of these criticisms fails to address the fact that the authors of those climate papers independently provided 97.2% consensus.

This is clear evidence that attacks on our paper are not made in good faith.

You had to ask, didn't you? (all the USA Skeptical Science team members have just groaned and facepalmed)

I am an extreme cricket tragic. On the Skeptical Science forum, I often talk cricket with other forum members from cricketing nations. The North Americans go crazy when we start talking about googlies and silly mid off. Earlier this year, I traveled to England for research purposes and while there, had the opportunity to fulfill a childhood dream and play a game of English club cricket. I got to take 3 English wickets and open the batting with a fellow Skeptical Science team member - the perfect day of cricket :-)