Both, and sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. For example, some prominent scientists in this issue work for some very large environmental activist groups.

There is Global Warming yes. At least you are not looking at what is going on in politics and talking about that every day that is why political leaders are willing to spend billions on it .The Ice Age killed the Dynosores look how long it took to get to global warming. Oh NO We Are All Going To Dry Up And Die in the next Million Years.

NASA, the Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union and thousands of published scientific research articles say that it's based on science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_...

Fox News, some bloggers, political think tanks and politicians say that it is based on political agendas.

As a working climate scientist I'd say that it's clearly based on scientific research. I've read hundreds of papers, done fieldwork experiments, and worked on the physics behind it.

But if you think that politicians and some of the same propaganda groups that were paid to deny the link between smoking and lung cancer are more reliable, then you'd probably say it's political.

Science. Global warming is happening

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010...

And we are causing it

http://c1planetsavecom.wpengine.netdna-c...

The ten warmest years in the instrumental record are 2010, 2005, 2009, 2007, 2002, 1998, 2006, 2003, 2013 and 2012.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs...

This situation is based on observed data. Melting permafrost is destroying large parts of the Alaska road system. Softening ground, ground that turns to mud simply isn't a surface that a road can be reliably built on. Wave action along the artic coasts that used to be protected by ice barriers are now open water. On the ground observations have recorded a thousand miles of eroded shoreline already. The tree line has moved several hundred miles further north in the last fifty years and coffee crops are already endangered by climate change.

All of this tracks the 100 ppm addition of man made CO2 over the last less than 200 years since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. 'Politics' is how civilized people cope with situations that effect large numbers of a given population. Those people with ties to fossil fuels have a cash cow to protect and at this point are attempting to elect politicians who will protect their interests... others want a logical response to the 'effects' of a world wide added heat index. Science simply tells us what the data suggests. I hope this helps.

Politics and money. They are trying to justify increasing the cost of energy. In fact, the whole "rich Koch brothers are evil and fighting truth" crap is really stupid. Dook himself has talked about increasing the cost of gasoline by $3 a gallon. They all know that this is not the only increase in energy costs that we will see. Sure the Kich brother may lose some money, but others are going to make money with an increase in energy costs, Do you think those billionaires are not supporting this?

If they were simply claiming the the temp has increased by 0.8 degrees over the last 100 years, that would be science. BUT they are claiming that AGW wil cause crop losses, when the crop produciton ahs been increasing faster than population. They are talking about increases in droughts, when there has been no increase over the last 60 years. They are talking about increases in extreme weather with no increases in hurricanes, floods, droughts, or hurricanes observed.

Sure there is data supporting some warming. But they cannot support the scare-mongering idiocy. In fact, when you call them on their lack of data they insult rather then provide the supporting data.

Science took a backseat when the politicians and corporatacracy figured out how many trillions they could make off of scaring the public.

Dook,

Arrhenius? I forget, is that the same guy that said a doubling would lead to only around 2 degrees of warming and warming would be mostly good or neutral for humanity???

Gary F clearly gives the best answer. I wonder if those people that say that it's based on "political agendas" could explain how the theory is more than half a century old? The political landscape of the U.S. and world has changed dramatically during that time, and yet the idea that adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere will raise temperatures is still with us.

When you have leftist ideologues trying to suggest it is only conservatives trying to make it political, what do you think is most likely? Science isn't about politics. AGW is all about pushing a far leftist anti-capitalist agenda. There is underlying science that is exaggerated to push a far leftist agenda. Alarmists would love to believe their cult like belief system is about science and it is just coincidental that they are wacko leftists but as a geologist and a conservative, the difference to me is quite obvious. Incidentally, I am also quite certain I could wipe the floor with Gary F's science knowledge on any day.

Politics, no question. Note the extreme character of the AGW rant...much like that of a religious cult.

Quote by Nobel Prize Winner For Physics, Ivar Giaever: “I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.”



Quote by Nobel Prize Winner For Chemistry, Kary Mullis: “Global warmers predict that global warming is coming, and our emissions are to blame. They do that to keep us worried about our role in the whole thing. If we aren't worried and guilty, we might not pay their salaries. It's that simple.



Quote by Martin Keeley, geology scientist: “Global warming is indeed a scam, perpetrated by scientists with vested interests, but in need of crash courses in geology, logic and the philosophy of science.”



Quote by Eduardo Tonni, paleontologist, Committee for Scientific Research, Argentina: “The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.”

Politics and money is what it is all about. Nothing more, nothing less.

There has been "no significant warming trend in surface average temperature" in those 18 years, said Patrick Michaels, director of the Cato Institute's Center for the Study of Science.

Al Gore and other climate change alarmists will have to concede that their predictions of catastrophic global warming were off by a long shot, Michaels, who has a doctorate in ecological climatology, told CNS News.

"It has to be admitted eventually that too much warming was forecast too fast," he said. "This just has to happen. You can't go on and on and on.

"If the surface temperature resumed the warming rate that we observed from, say 1977 through 1998, we would still go close to a quarter of a century without significant net warming because there's such a long flat period built into the record now."

Michaels pointed to findings by the University of Illinois' Polar Ice Research Center that Antarctic ice "is at its highest extent measured by the current microwave satellite sounding system" since 1978.

"And if you take a close look at the Arctic data, it appears the decline [in polar ice] stopped around 2005/2006, which means we've almost had 10 years without any net loss in Arctic ice."

Michaels spent three decades as a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and was a contributing editor to the United Nations' second Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

based on science

Politics. Pure politics. Not science.

Quote by Ottmar Edenhoffer, high level UN-IPCC official: "We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy...Basically it's a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the major themes of globalization...One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore."

Quote by Club of Rome: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill....All these dangers are caused by human intervention....and thus the “real enemy, then, is humanity itself....believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or….one invented for the purpose."

Quote by Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: “No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.”

'Justice and Equality' are code words for Communism.

Purely political!

If someone says it's scientific, ask them if it will be warmer or colder in 5 years, and ask them how they came to their conclusion. It's just something they believe in, and faith isn't science. Another proof is that they will claim 97% of "scientists" believe in global warming. So what? It just takes one who's right. Science isn't something that's voted on. That's politics.

Arrhenius (who developed the AGW hypothesis over a century ago) was a scientist. Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, Inhofe and Anthony Watts are not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrh...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/rush-...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Beck

https://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Inhofe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Wat...

U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 2010:

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record...

“Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.”

“Choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia…Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.”

“The Academy membership is composed of approximately 2,100 members and 380 foreign associates, of whom nearly 200 have won Nobel Prizes.

Members and foreign associates of the Academy are elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research; election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer.”

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/...

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument...

What policy steps to take IN RESPONSE to the science, is a question involving political agendas, but it is a crude deception to pretend that the question is fundamentally one of "liberals" versus "conservatives." Here is a genuine conservative talking about global warming a quarter century ago, when the science was clear, but less well proven than now: