Climatologist on NY Times Dot Earth blog

Andrew Lacis defends human contributions to global warming in Part One and Part Two of "A Scientist's Defense of Greenhouse Warming." Lacis is a NASA scientist and one-time critic of the IPCC report (according to the Times he said it sounded like it was written by "Greenpeace activists.") The opening sentence of part one: "Human-induced warming of the climate system is established fact." He goes on to discuss how the atmosphere works and concludes:

"To understand climate change, it is necessary to know the radiative forcings that drive the climate system away from its reference equilibrium state. These radiative forcings have been analyzed and evaluated by Hansen et al. (2005, 2007). They include changes in solar irradiance, greenhouse gases, tropospheric aerosols, and volcanic aerosols. Of these forcings, the only non-human-induced forcing that produces warming of the surface temperature is the estimated long-term increase by 0.3 W/m2 of solar irradiance since 1750. Volcanic eruptions are episodic, and can produce strong but temporary cooling. All of the other forcings are directly tied to human activity."

While these articles are both interesting, do not miss the comments section. If you've ever talked to someone that doesn't believe in global warming, you will recognize the arguments. The majority of my immediate family argue against global warming. They say things such as "It's a natural cycle" or "How do we know warmer isn't better" and so on. My sister says that science has not unequivocally proved to her that global warming exists. I suspect no amount of science will ever convince my family, evidenced by responses like these to Lacis' articles:

1) Eva in California: "North America set its all time record for snow cover last week. Clearly this is due to out of control global warming."
2) Rebecca in Alaska: "Lacis sounds Kerry-esque 'I was against CO2, before I voted for CO2.' No wonder the public is confused by climate advise from scientists."
3) Walt in Pennsylvania: "We have no idea if climate change will end up being a 'disaster' for humans. It almost certainly will not be a disaster for Planet Earth."
4) Harry in Washington: "What is the 'correct' temperature of the earth and why? History would tell us the Ice Ages have dominated the earths climate. I don't think there is anyone who believes that an ice age would be good."