You can't ask a climate change evangelist "are you sure?"
Because they are sure, they're convinced, they've seen the light and they want to convert you, poor damned sceptic that you are. So you can't really ask the lay people who are proponents of it, you have to go the experts.

And there, well, they don't really help themselves either. An oversight committee recently criticised the experts for exaggerating the likely effects of climate change, using only the worst-case scenarios and scaremongering.

There was a debate between two scientists I saw on YouTube last year, where the pro-guy had his laptop and was clicking through graph after graph and making his claims and he leaned back satisfied with himself only to be stumped when the other guy said "I see a lot of very nice graphs about greenhouse gases, I see none there about water vapour, which is by far the largest contributor to the overall greenhouse effect by volume such that a 0.001% change in water vapour concentration would utterly swamp all the contributions to climate by all the other gases".

To which the reply came

"We haven't looked at water in this analysis".

And it's that kind of thing that makes me hold back full commital to the apparent consensus.
(Dildo Bugger destroyed a ring on, Fri 2 Dec 2011, 20:37, 1 reply)

Generally I try not to be overskeptical,
if I don't understand the science involved in a particular issue then I've got no good grounds to refute it. At risk of "appeal to authority" I'll defer to those who do understand it. It's the lay people who don't understand it but nevertheless try to pick holes in the evidence that wind me up the most, especially when it's quite obvious what their motives are. My dad is one of these people, he'll parrot the criticisms he's read online somewhere, but it's obvious generally that his main concern is his "way of life" which he perceives to be under threat. Which of course it is!
( Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 2 Dec 2011, 20:51, closed)