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When you only ask one side to provide proof of something, that's bullshit.

Human-caused global warming has been predicted by scientists since Svante Arrhenius in 1896 (See this list of early global warming papers).

Many of these papers were produced during the global cooling trend before 1975. Climate scientists predicted global warming before it happened and now over 90% of climate scientists are in agreement on the subject. Numerous studies show humans as the cause of recent global warming. Yet you think mainstream scientists haven't made their case?

Not only is CO2 a weak greenhouse gas

Until you add feedback mechanisms such as the increased absolute humidity that corresponds to increased temperatures (water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas). Then it has a much greater effect.

human production of it doesn't account for the majority of it.

Sort of. We started with 280 ppm in the atmosphere, now we're up to 410 ppm, so I guess humans are responsible for less than half!

However I assume you are referring to the myth that humans release less than 4% of all the CO2 that is "released" each year.

In a very twisted way, this is correct. A glass of water evaporating in a room with 90% humidity does not just "release" water molecules, it also absorbs them from the air. But if someone uses this fact to argue that water glasses will fill up in a humid room, there is something wrong with that, isn't there?

Similarly the ocean "releases" more CO2 every year than humans, but it absorbs more than it releases. Drawing attention to CO2 coming out of the ocean while completely ignoring the CO2 going into the ocean is highly misleading. The ocean's pH is dropping, why do you think that is?

If you want to get into secondary factors, then plain ol' water vapor beats out CO2 by a country mile.

Humidity depends on environmental conditions. When temperatures increase, the water vapor concentration (absolute humidity aka vapor pressure) also increases.

The primary cause of warming and cooling is the fucking sun, by far.

The 11-year average of solar irradiance has varied by only about 0.1% over the last century and solar output has decreased in recent decades.

We've had as much success with our climate models as we have of finally eradicating cancer.

In 1972, J.S. Sawyer calculated there would be about 0.6 C of global warming by the end of the century (the actual amount of warming was 0.5 C as the CO2 concentration was a bit lower than predicted). In 1967, Manabe & Wetherald predicted that doubling the CO2 concentration would increase global temperatures 2 C. (see here for more early papers.)

Neither of these papers were based on a sophisticated computer model, they were based on energy balance calculations - greenhouse gases slow down the exit of energy to space, therefore the surface warms - plus feedbacks such as the relation between temperature and absolute humidity.

The early predictions of global warming came during a period of global cooling. The scientists stuck their necks out and got the right answer then - so if you don't trust computer models, feel free to trust that early pre-computer-model research. It got roughly the same answer the computer models are getting today.

It's true that some models disagree: some say the ECS is closer to 2.0 C, others closer to 4.5 C. Meanwhile the average temperature over land has increased over 1 C since 1975. None of these numbers justifies inaction to fund clean energy.

Which hockey stick graph are you talking about? Here is a list of over 40 hockey stick graphs. Are you saying they're all debunked or just Mann's original one?

Also, theirs is not the only paper that supports the 'hockey stick' graph anyway -- there's quite a few others, too.

But anyway -- we're jumping the peer-review process heavily here. USA Today stories are supposed to happen after the peers do the reviewing ;)

So, when's the correction coming out, now that the original authors and others have demostrated that these "biases" were artifacts created by the re-examiners importing a 159-collumn spreadsheet into a 112-collumn Excel document?

David Appell has been tracking the story and has reports here. Moreover, the authors of the original study have published a response here. The original story should be updated to reflect these important facts, not just to report the fact that another crank published a similar paper two years ago.

You seem, however, to have left out your scientific criticism of their methodology and results.

The original 1998 paper by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes was not in error. McIntyre and McKitrick screwed up their data when they published this paper. Somebody exported the raw data in the original paper to Excel but somehow exported 159 columns of data into a 112 column spreadsheet. M&M did not compare the spreadsheet and produced a "correction" to the original paper that was based on nothing but errors, since the full paleoclimatic data series of 159 columns is required to properly audit the analysis done in the 1998 paper. More information here and here. The world really is melting.

The authors of the original paper have already published a rebuttal to this M&M paper with further details about how M&M faithfully replicated neither the data nor the procedures in their audit.

You seem, however, to have left out your scientific criticism of their methodology and results.

The original 1998 paper by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes was not in error. McIntyre and McKitrick screwed up their data when they published this paper. Somebody exported the raw data in the original paper to Excel but somehow exported 159 columns of data into a 112 column spreadsheet. M&M did not compare the spreadsheet and produced a "correction" to the original paper that was based on nothing but errors, since the full paleoclimatic data series of 159 columns is required to properly audit the analysis done in the 1998 paper. More information here and here. The world really is melting.

The authors of the original paper have already published a rebuttal to this M&M paper with further details about how M&M faithfully replicated neither the data nor the procedures in their audit.