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I am not convinced "global warming" is a real phenomenon. Long term climate change needs to be tracked long term (like thousands of years) before conclusions can be drawn. Taking the last 100 years of accurate temperature readings is just not enough data to make any guesses as to what the Earth's climate will be in the next 100 years.
To then claim that any temperature changes are man made is speculation at its most extreme when there are energy sources far more powerful than all of man's combined energy efforts in the last 2000 years (the sun and the earth's core).
This question has become more political than scientific, in my opinion, due to the joining of tree huggers and doom and gloom liberals who are looking for scapegoats even when no problem exists. The general public, unable to analyze complex data, go with an emotional homo-centric response. OMG, smog caused by the bad humans is killing us all!
I look at evolution vs creationism as the flip side of this where the religious right wing tries to set education policy based on faith not facts.
In general. when politicians get involved with science only bad things can result. Science deals with discovering facts, politics deals with obscuring facts.
After saying all this, I do not deny that the Earth could be getting warmer due to factors beyond man's control. Doing something about it might be a good idea. But protecting against an asteroid strike would also be thoughtful. People don't want to spend money on space research or fusion or nuclear power but want the government to fix the Earth's problems nevertheless.
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