(This is meant as kind of a placeholder for various climate debate thoughts I've expressed over the years. Full disclosure: I work as an atmospheric science researcher, on matters tangentially related to global warming. These thoughts are mine alone and have no implied relationship to my employer.)
I have probably been involved in pointless internet climate change debates for over fifteen years, on and (thankfully mostly) off. I think I've got to let it go. Though it's an interesting subject scientifically, in terms of politics and public opinion it's going to remain a blue/red shout machine deadlock. Some points which will likely be as true twenty years from now as they are today:
1. The world probably isn't going to emit less CO2 any time soon. There is lots of chatter about whether we should stabilize at atmospheric concentrations of 350 parts per million, 450, or whatever. It all seems fairly academic, like two falling people arguing whether they should start levitating 100 or 200 feet from the ground. If we do not hit 500ppm in my lifetime I will be very surprised. (We're around 387 now, up from 280 pre-industrial.) Barring an unforeseen breakthrough in energy sources, the growth of China and India alone make it almost impossible for emissions to drop. I hate to be that pessimistic; it's just hard to figure that the people and governments of the world will accept any immediate economic pain to avoid harm a generation or more in the future. History is full of unpredictable technological breakthroughs, so maybe we'll hit upon something huge we're not even thinking of right now. It's a tough thing to rely on though.
2. The earth eventually warms around
3°C per doubling of CO2. The number might be 2 or it might be 4 but it's very likely in that range. Note to Americans: 3°C is 5.4°F. That's a very sizable change in global average temperature. I just think we're going to have to live with and adapt to it, and hopefully the consequences are just bad rather than really terrible.
3. The warming will be fitful, with flat or even down periods once in awhile, especially if there's a major tropical volcano eruption. Internal variability of the climate system is very high on the scale of months to years, and an imposed 1 to 3 degree change per century trend does not suddenly remove the large month to month and year to year variability. And that's not even accounting for the fact that the global temperature time series is very, very much smoother than an average over a smaller region, such as the US, never mind an individual city. In short, though there were many times more record highs than record lows in the 2000-09 decade, there were still thousands upon thousands of record lows. All of which it seems like were headlined on the Drudge Report. (As the New Republic blog noted,
it's always snowing on the Drudge Report.) There is no danger whatsoever of
this blog ever running out of material as long as its proprietor wishes to keep it going; people will be making the it's-cold-where's-your-global-warming-now-OMG-LOL joke forever.
4. Mark Steyn, Glenn Beck, Glenn Reynolds, Rush Limbaugh et al. will continue to believe the whole issue is a hilarious, obvious crock. They believe it now, and they will believe it twenty years from now. Half the electorate will also believe it. It doesn't matter what actually happens with the climate over that time; as noted, cold weather will not be banished from your city.
5. Furthermore, those pundits will continue to accuse the accepters of the 3°C/CO2 doubling idea of having a religious faith in that idea, and gleefully describe themselves as heretics. But you know, it's possible that a teeny bit of religion inserts itself on the Limbaugh side of the debate as well:
That's another thing, folks. People said, "I don't get why you believe in God, Rush. Your belief in God, how does that tell you that global warming is a hoax?" Well, belief in God is a very personal thing, but I happen to believe in a loving God of creation -- and I just intellectually cannot accept the fact that a loving God which has created all this beauty and has blessed this country -- I cannot believe that a God like that -- would punish the human being he created for progress, for improving the quality of his life. No longer do we have to follow plow mules in the fields. No longer do we have to have kids out milking cows. We have enhanced human life, the life
experience, the quality of life, the standard of living. I refuse to believe that a God who created the universe would create creatures who, by virtue of improving their lives and making progress, would destroy another part of His creation. It just doesn't compute in a logical sense. If you don't believe in God, then you probably are a global warmist or a liberal..
I mean, this is clearly not a person who is going to be rethinking his position as more data rolls in, and he speaks for at least a very substantial part of half of the American electorate. Unlike perhaps many who "believe in" (terrible term but that's the common English expression) anthropogenic global warming, I am very pro-economic growth. Poverty is an awful soul-grinding business that is the defining fact ruling the lives of billions of people. Economic growth is the sole long term solution to it. But to assume that there can be no negative consequences to growth, even as growth nets out positive for human welfare, is willfully ahistorical. The Industrial Revolution brought Britain to where it is today, which is very good, but somehow God did not prevent a lot of
killer air pollution in London for a century or so. Eventually wealth and technology allows for cleaner local conditions at a high economic level, but it's hardly instantaneous. Hundreds of millions of people have escaped poverty in China over the last thirty years, but a price has been just murderous air quality in the industrialized cities of the east and south. You don't need to be an atheist to note this. Similarly, the absorption spectrum of CO2 in the infrared is well known and obeys the very well supported laws of physics which underlie all the technology and progress Limbaugh supports. God isn't suppressing molecular absorption as far as we can tell. Doubling CO2 leads to an addition of roughly four Watts per square meter into the system. This is uncontroversial. But as he is also a creationist, Limbaugh is very comfortably accepting the fruits of modern science (computers, vaccines, satellites, etc.) while rejecting whole branches of that science.
In sum, I used to believe optimistically that truth eventually outs, that history is a process of people believing more and more true things, fewer and fewer false things. That was very naive in general, and specifically in the case of the climate change debate. I've got to accept that and move on with my life.
My relationship with literature has not been an academic one, outside of high school English and a couple of laughably ghettoized "humanities" courses at Michigan, taught within the engineering college. I've had some peripheral contact with the academic lit community through friends though, and I've gathered that the now late J.D. Salinger is not generally well regarded there. He's considered juvenile, paternalistic, and that most cutting of academic putdowns, middlebrow. 
