The scientific community as a whole has lost it's credibility with the gloabal warming THEORY

First, please define what you mean by the scientific community. Second, the semantics of belief have nothing to do with religion. Beliefs do not have to be based on data, or even grounded in reality. Thats why belief walks hand in hand with mythology or religion because they're very complimentary. Belief also walks hand in hand with ignorance, and is one of the leading oppositions to science. The relatively famous quote, "God does not place dice with the universe." From Albert Einstein was not actually about his religious views, it was his way of denouncing the theory of Quantum Electrodynamics because he didn't like the idea that as a particle travels from point A to point B, it takes every imaginable path, but appears to travel in a straight line. He rejected this notion based off of belief rather than pay heeds to the merits of the data and the conclusion, which earned Richard Feynman and Freeman Dyson their noble prize. And from the looks of it Einstein was 100% wrong just because he didn't like the notion. I asked you to refrain from belief because it has little or nothing to do with whether or not the scientific community is creditable. Third, the question about your scientific training has nothing to do with whether or not you can discuss scientific findings, in fact most scientists are in the business of education and love when their research is discussed by individuals, but often become deeply frustrated when the fine points of their conclusions are glossed over. You have alleged that no scientist should be studying global climate change because you think the media is doing a poor job of reporting the findings. I allege that you should actually go and pick up some peer reviewed articles about global warming that are produced by scientists before you claim that they're all worthless because the media misunderstands their findings. An easy way to begin which won't require a heavy background in science is a website that covered an artic expedition that was exploring some of the effects of global climate change. http://www.globalwarming101.com... My cousin is one of the leading contributors to the site, and is working on her Ph.D. in curriculum development regarding global climate change so that scientific information can be better presented to your daughter in her classroom. An effectively useful part of this website is the top ten global climate change myths. Each one links to a small explanation. Many of the points you made in your opening argument can be found there. http://www.globalwarming101.com... Part of the reason why I want to be able to separate this debate from belief, is because I want you to have an improved understanding of global climate change by the end of the fourth round. I don't just want to present a better argument about why the scientific community hasn't lost creditability, but show you that they are in fact creditable. I'm defying you. http://en.wikipedia.org... I actually think that Senator Inhofe's capabilities of denial ought to be praised. I'm actually a little envious of him because while I spend my time dwelling on solutions, Inhofe spends his time believing (Key word) that there isn't a problem. Taxes already a pretty high, but the money is being spent poorly. About 35 or 36% of the 2008 federal spending is going to go towards paying interest on the National Debt. We're making no effort to reduce the debt, and each year we increase the debt and thereby increase the percentage of our budget that goes towards the interest. The discretionary budget which makes up a little less than a third of all of the federal spending is basically the budget that gets voted on. More than fifty percent of that budget goes towards the Pentagon, and a lot of it is invested in programs intended to fight the soviets, or really just flushed down the toilet in an effort to create defenses for threats we do not have to worry about. We could modernize our infrastructure, invest in all sorts of new technologies, and plan for the future if we were just willing to stop spending our nations money on things that are not important. Global climate change can be fought without raising your taxes, it's just a matter of priority. Right now our government would rather invest in building new submarines than finding an alternative fuels. Al Gore is probably correct. Believe it or not, this debate has been going on for about forty years and the side that is trying to claim that rising carbon levels have nothing to do with fossil fuel usage has been soundly defeated in the scientific community. The issue gets politicized by people like Senator Inhofe who refuse to accept the facts based off of their beliefs. The skeptics to global climate change haven't really produced anything in the last decade that uses the data to disprove the conclusions that global climate change is happening, and that people are related. In fact, they've started attacking the data and the scientists rather than the findings. At this point in time, the scientists without creditability denounce global climate change. Your argument is a product of those attacks. The terrible thing is that I know who is right, and in a couple of decades there will be no denying it but by then the point will be pretty moot because the effects will be pretty devastating. By the way, I never made this statement; "At best a guess based on random and ever changing data" Maybe someone on FOX NEWS did? Historical data doesn't change, it does get updated with new data and since time keeps passing, there's always going to be changing data. I had dinner with an author who used to explain that the resources of our planet were like a bank account with a million dollars in it. You could live pretty comfortably off of the interest that it presented, and if you lived frugally the account could grow. However, if you wanted to splurge a bit you could spend a bit more than the interest, and probably be fine. But, if you started spending a hundred thousand dollars a year or two hundred thousand dollars a year, eventually the bank account would spend to zero. The Earth represents a lot of resources. The oil and coal that we often use were plants tens of millions of years ago. Those resources have effectively been stored by the properties of nature and now we're using them at a pretty alarming rate. This ecologist basically explained that at current human consumption rates, we'd basically need 4 or 5 planets to sustain our usage. We have exactly 1 planet. I don't know how to say this politely, but your daughter is right. Your SUV is contributing to global climate change, and I'll go a bit further and suggest that its contributing to the possible collapse of our economy, government, and maybe even our civilization. The catch is it's not just your SUV. It's everybody's SUV. It's everybody's lifestyle in this country and this planet. Yes, there are things you can do to reduce your impact - buying a more efficient car, or biking to work, but in the grand scheme of things that won't make a difference. Your kids have been told that it does make a difference in school because a lot of educators like to give kids hope. We're going to face a lot of challenges in the future, environmentally, economically, socially, and politically. The root of all of these problems is our fundamental reliance on fossil fuels. We must change as a society, or we will be forced to change by the conditions we will face. One of those changes can be controlled, the other is much more brutal. Scientists don't lack creditability, your government lacks vision and foresight. We are in this together, and our futures are both at stake. Denying global climate change is unproductive for our future.