FTFA: Climate change may or may not be occurring. But there is no dispute that 98 percent of climate scientists believe that it is happening and is man-made.
The problem is in the phrasing of the question. Questions like "are global average temperatures increasing on a decade-to-decade timescale?" and "is climate change at least partly due to human activity?" are very different questions to "is the observed change in climate due primarily to anthropogenic factors?" and "to what extent is this likely to be a problem in the future" and "is it time to agree to [random policy proposal X that might help to cut CO_2 emissions slightly]?" -- but all these questions are treated as if they're the same question.
I'm so glad I work in an area of science where politics rarely intrudes.
The late-twentieth-century warming can only be reproduced in the model with anthropogenic forcing (mainly GHGs), while the early twentieth-century warming is mainly caused by natural forcing in the model (mainly solar).
Our results show significant anthropogenic warming trends in all the continental regions analyzed.
I don't believe that there is consensus around how bad a problem this will be in the future (beyond "bad").
The problem is in the phrasing of the question. Questions like "are global average temperatures increasing on a decade-to-decade timescale?" and "is climate change at least partly due to human activity?" are very different questions to "is the observed change in climate due primarily to anthropogenic factors?" and "to what extent is this likely to be a problem in the future" and "is it time to agree to [random policy proposal X that might help to cut CO_2 emissions slightly]?" -- but all these questions are treated as if they're the same question.
I'm so glad I work in an area of science where politics rarely intrudes.