Well seeing as how we are already hitting all the controversial topics we might as well hit global warming.
Most people know the general theory of global warming: carbon dioxide (the result of burning gasoline) and methane (from cow poo) and such are 'green house gases'. They are transparent to visual light (emitted by the sun) but not infrared light (emitted by the earth). This is basically a good thing; without the atmosphere the earth would be -40 or something.
What most people do not know is that that carbon dioxide has a very small effect on temperature. Its like 1C tops or something; I don't know the numbers off of the top of my head. The theory is this: that 1C will warm the planet, causing more water to evaporate from the oceans. Water is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (I guess it isn't as politically convenient to demonize water though). And it is this 'forcing' that creates the 5-10C increases you read about. There are tons of computer models which generate very different answers depending on their initial parameters.
Now, what we know for a fact is that the planet has become somewhat warmer over the past 150 years. What we don't know is why. The earth and its weather are a very complicated system, not to mention changes in solar activity. Unfortunately we cannot use science here (= do controlled experiment, create 100 earths with 50 that have strict green house gas laws and 50 that do not and measure the differences). We only have one planet.
My personal belief is that most of the environmental moment is really about people who hate the fact that corporations can bribe our government to do anything and therefore want to try and fuck them in return, somehow, anyhow. This is moronic at best, but I understand the frustration (this is also why I always laugh at Democrats. The government is *always* on the side of the rich. The more you try and enlarge the government to redistribute wealth, the more the rich win.)
Anyway Hasbin, go look up the data of the earth's temperature for the past 10000 years from the Greenland ice cores. It has gone through huge variations with no influence from man at all. I'm not saying that global warming theory is wrong, only that there are a lot of people with a lot to gain if it is right and the evidence is not (and cannot) ever be there.
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