EnviroEconomics.ca

Lots of traffic on climategate, but the New York times has some good stuff,

The Copenhagen conference itself reflects increasing acceptance of the scientific arguments: the negotiations leading to the talks were conducted by high-ranking officials of the world’s governments rather than the scientists and environment ministers who largely shaped the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Late last week, President Obama changed the date of his visit to Copenhagen to Dec. 18, the last day of the talks.

For many, a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was a marker of a shift in the global warming debate. In it, the panel — a volunteer network of hundreds of scientists from many disciplines who meet periodically to review climate studies and translate the results into language useful to policy makers — concluded that no doubt remained that human-caused warming was under way and that, if unabated, it would pose rising risks.

Over the last several decades, other reviews, by the National Academy of Sciences and other institutions, have largely echoed the panel’s findings and said the remaining uncertainties should not be an excuse for inaction.

The panel’s report was built on two decades of intensive scientific study of climate patterns.

Greenhouse gases warm the planet by letting in sunlight and blocking the escape of some of the resulting heat. “The physics of the greenhouse effect is so basic that instead of asking whether it would happen, it makes more sense to ask what on earth could make it not happen,” said Spencer Weart, a physicist and historian. “So far, nobody has been able to come up with anything plausible in that line.”

Good questions, but perhaps a more base line of inquiry is better,

How can one refute this?