Back to your childish strawmen I see...

The overwhelming scientific consensus is that global warming is both real and very likely due to human activity.

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

This bullshit again?

It is both natural and anthropomorphic. We have accelerated the natural changes, and have increased the amplitude so temperatures will be higher than they normally would have been. Nobody says it's Bush's fault, this has been happening since the Industrial Revolution, and we understood the processes and their impact in the 1970s. The only thing Bush could bear responsibility for is not doing enough to further research into alternative fuels, but he was heavily backed by the oil industry so that's no surprise.

Also, it's not just as simple as 'global warming', which is why we refer to it as 'climate change'. There are other effects apart from rising temperatures and melting polar ice. Atmospheric changes can produce more extreme weather, including colder winters, stronger hurricanes and the like. Is this really a gamble that we should be willing to take? Because if, as seems to be the case, climate change is accelerated by our activity and we continue to do nothing, then issues like immigration, gun control and healthcare are all going to seem pretty piddling by comparison.

There is no harm in researching alternative energy anyway, oil and coal will run out. Even forgetting the environmental benefits, we need replacements.

Yes, and in Galileo's day the overwhelming scientific consensus, dating back to before the Roman Empire, and including the best minds of the previous two thousand years, was that the sun revolved around the earth.

Besides, I didn't argue with the concept, I just thanked Bernie for his detailed explanation of why the teen was wrong. Take your strawman crap and stuff it where the sun doesn't revolve around your brain.

I'm sure he could have, but "You're wrong." is more succinct and just as accurate.

I'm not even going to bother with the rest of your strawman, other than to say the ten hottest years on record have happened since 1998, but nothing to worry about I'm sure.

Many great minds from the Ancient Greeks onward proposed heliocentric models. Copernicus died 20 years before Galileo was born and he proposed a heliocentric model as well. It wasn't scientific consensus that preserved the geocentric model, it was religious ignorance.

Plus, the link in Giantaxe's post was from NASA, not some political think tank. Anthropomorphic climate change is hard science.

So instead of engaging in reasonable debate you once again resort to insults. How... predictable.

Thank you for a more detailed explication of the subject. I wasn't arguing with the concept, despite what Zargof and Giantaxe wrote in their customary arrogant fashion.

I think, however, that when a teen questions the subject, it deserves more than a mere dismissal and "close the subject" along with the mind.

Indeed. The unprecedented rate of change is very compelling.

At this point, the left vs. right schism in American politics is one of smart vs. stupid.

The idea that politicians and grunts who watch Fox News have a better grasp of climate science than PhD's who study it for a living is laughable. The idiots-beat-experts approach to thinking can only appeal to the idiots.

Bernie isn't a scientist though, he's a politician. I think he did the right thing (maybe more dismissive than he needed to be) instead of trying to explain it in a way he might end up getting wrong.

This alone is why it is worthy of further study and research, all else aside.

FFS it was a tweet! You know limited to 140 characters. I haven't seen a transcript, but I'm sure Bernie expanded on this.

Untwist your fcking knickers.

Again, as I wrote above, I'm not denying the subject. But I think, before this country commits itself to a drastically lower standard of living - and continued poverty in the Third World - in pursuit of the dream of slowing or reversing something that might not be controllable, we need something more than some computer models and "consensus."

It could be that it is the left that is stupid. Take that idiot, Leonardo DiCaprio, who pronounced that the oil should be left in the ground. His private jet should immediately have been impounded and the power to his mansion shut off, as a first step on the road to the slowing of anthropomorphic climate change.

In the scientific world, 'consensus' is not a term that is taken lightly, this requires rigorous research, peer review and many other checks and balances. Rather like when something becomes 'theory'; when the scientific world reaches consensus about something, you can be pretty damn sure that what they are talking about is indeed true.

Exactly how does climate change research and alternative energy research contribute to a lower standard of living? NASA might be government funded but there are privately funded organizations involved in the research as well.

Furthermore, in the past 50 years, government funded NASA has put man into space and on the moon six times, put probes on the surface of Mars, reached and photographed Pluto and taken countless photographs of nearby and distant objects with the Hubble telescope. In that time, with all that research, not to mention all the other fields of scientific research alongside it, one can only argue that the standard of living has increased. In many cases increased as a result of technology developed by NASA in the quest for the stars. That one made no sense to me.

While air travel is a major source of atmospheric pollution, we could probably leave his plane alone, and work on switching our power plants from coal and oil to nuclear, thereby greatly reducing emissions and leaving the oil for use in transportation and industry until we can find viable and worthwhile alternatives.

Leaving the oil in the ground is a mistake - if we don't use it up, we'll never move on to the next step in technology.

So because you believe Leanardo diCaprio is stupid, the left is?

I agree that there is no harm, and much good, that would come from further research into alternative energy sources. Eventually, the world's oil and gas reserves will be exhausted. I also agree that nuclear is a major way to go, although the environmentalists don't like it. As for wind, there are two views summarized here:
Wind power generates 140% of Denmark's electricity demand | Environment | The Guardian

and here: A Problem With Wind Power [AWEO.org]

At this time, and in the short run, there is no substitute for cheap fossil fuel power - and especially for the Third World. Only abundant cheap sources of power will lift Africa out of poverty and give their people a decent shot at good health and a comfortable life.

As for us, forcing the closing of our fossil-fueled power plants and replacement with renewable energy plants will drastically increase our energy costs and result in lower standards of living for all but the wealthy and the power elites. In addition, the big brains on the left are talking about huge transfers of wealth from the US by way of carbon taxes and swaps. By themselves, those will do nothing to cut planetary carbon emissions, but they will lower our standard of living.