All of the points in the 'yes' camp are bunkum and easily dismissed

All of the points in the 'yes' camp are bunkum and easily dismissed. 1. There is no scientifically valid mechanism for CO2 causing global warming. Actually, there is, it was first discovered by Svante Arrhenius well over 100 years ago and has been built on by subsequent decades of research, it underpins our understanding of the so-called 'greenhouse effect' [1]. CO2 and other greenhouse gasses are virtually transparent to incoming shortwave radiation, which hits the Earth causing it to warm and emit a percentage of that energy as longwave infra red radiation. The greenhouse gasses are not transparent to IR so as it interacts with GHG molecules the IR is scattered, with a percentage being bounced back to Earth which causes an energy imbalance, more energy is going into the system than is leaving it. As greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere increase so does this energy imbalance. All of this is quantifiable, we can measure incoming and outgoing energy from space and from the surface and construct global accounting models that are very, very accurate, and is backed by decades of research [2] [1] http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm [2] http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect.htm 2. Global temperatures have always been changing despite Co2 increases True but inconsequential as to the question of whether the current warming is being caused by CO2. There are several factors, commonly referred to as 'forcings', that will cause the climate to change - insolation (the sun), albedo, greenhouse gasses, and feedbacks - for the climate to change one of these has to change [1] The ice ages, for instance, are caused by the changes in solar energy reaching the planet due to a combination of its elliptical orbit and precessional wobble [2], the so-called Medieval warm Period was caused largely by an increase in solar activity [3], the so-called Little Ice Age was caused by a combination of reduced solar activity and increased albedo from heightened volcanic activity [4]. But just because there are other factors that can influence the climate doesn't in any way change the fact that an increase in greenhouse gasses will influence the climate as well. Indeed, it is within these past climate shifts that we can see the clear evidence of exactly how the planet responds to changes in CO2.. For instance, it is known that the orbital changes that bring the Earth in and out of ice ages aren't actually strong enough to warm the planet to the degree that it does during an interglacial, the only way you can explain it is if the thawing oceans release a significant quantity of CO2 into the atmosphere which amplifies the change in insolation and warms the planet by a significant fraction [5] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_forcings [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycle [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_ice_age#Causes [5] http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/ [4] [5] 3. The 'Global warming' phenomenon could be caused by other things It *could* be, but then again the Universe *could* be made of pixie dust too. While there are still one or two competing theories out there - cosmic rays and solar cycles are about the only examples that still have some academic backing - nobody has come close to developing any kind of satisfactory alternative model, most of the ideas have been tried and tested and found to be flawed. [1] Whereas the standard 'greenhouse' model is based on 150 years of research and observation, it's physics are very well understood, in fact to overturn the greenhouse model you would have to rewrite physics because everything we know about the heat trapping properties of CO2 supports the greenhouse model [2]. That's why 98% of researchers in the relevant fields agree with the tenets of AGW as outlined by the IPCC [3]. [1] http://www.skepticalscience.com/Svensmark-Friis-Christensen-rebut-Lockwood-solar-paper.html [2] http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm [3] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.abstract 4. Co2 does not hold in heat! It doesn't need to and nobody has ever claimed that it does. As explained above, the so-called greenhouse effect isn't caused by CO2 storing heat, rather the way in which in absorbs and remits IR radiation, which traps thermal heat in the system, most of which is stored in the oceans and not in the atmosphere. [1] [1] http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-we-know-global-warming-is-happening-Part-2.html 5. Oceans regulate the amount of CO2 in the air through absorption equilibrium True but misleading. Oceans also lose their capacity to absorb as the turn more acid from increased Co2 absorption. This is global warming sister crisis, even if CO2 didn't cause the globe to warm we would still suffer an ecological catastrophe as the oceans acidify, as is already being observed, and lose their capacity to maintain life.[1] Add to this the fact that at the same time as dramatically increasing CO2 output we have also significantly depleted the planets biomass, further reducing the natural carbon cycle to absorb the excess being produced by human activity (currently about 60% of our emissions are being naturally absorbed back into the carbon cycle [2]). But at any rate, the whole argument is an inconsequential distraction from the reality of the situation: we know for a fact, quantifiably so, that CO2 concentrations have increased by about 37% since pre-industrial times, which is certainly higher than at any point in at least 800,000 and almost certainly a lot longer than that [3], and we can identify that the increase is a result of human activity through chemical fingerprinting of the gasses [4]. It is blindingly obvious that CO2 levels are rising faster than the planets ability to absorb them. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification [2] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/oco/mission/index.html [3] http://www.csiro.au/news/Climate-Change-Palaeoclimatic-Context--ci_pageNo-2.html#2 [4] http://www.skepticalscience.com/Human-fingerprint-on-atmospheric-CO2.html 6. Measurements are inaccurate The really funny thing about this is that when NOAA went back over their data and applied Watt's methodology they did indeed find an inaccuracy in the record, they found a slight cooling bias, meaning that they subsequently had to readjust their surface temperature record to show that it has been slightly warmer than previously believed. The very graciously thanked Watts for alerting them to this problem, in a moment that must have been a considerable embarrassment for the TV weatherman and his legions of amateur temperature-station photographers! [1] [1] http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2010.pdf