I was fully convinced that the science about global warming is settled until I read Crichton's novel "State of Fear" [1]. That one planted some seeds of doubt in my mind. I know, a lot of climate change advocates say the novel was debunked (and maybe it was), but after I read the novel, I started thinking that maybe I should take a closer look and try to draw my own conclusions.
And what I saw was not always good. Not always bad, mind you. To be honest, in the last 2 years or so, I get less and less skeptical, but overall, I still consider myself skeptical.
Let me list a few things
* A large part of Earth's land mass is in remote areas of Russia, Africa, South America. It's likely that more than 50% of the land mass does not have good temperature records.
* Many temperature stations, while somewhat appropriate for reporting temperature for purposes of weather forecast, are not appropriate for climate change science (e.g. they are located in a parking lot, subject to the heat of the asphalt).
* The temperature in a hot desert often drops below freezing during nighttime. Why? Because the air is dry, in other words the greenhouse effect is much lower. That should tell you that water vapors in the atmosphere are a very powerful greenhouse gas. Climate scientists admit as much. More powerful than CO2? Well, you will not get a straight answer to that question. You'll start hearing jargon such as "forcing", and in the end it will sound like CO2 is a more potent greenhouse gas. But behind all the jargon is the fact that CO2 in itself is not such a potent greenhouse gas, but only considering all various feedbacks (including water) that it induces. But those feedbacks are only modeled on a computer, they are not facts. Are they tested, validated, as good science would require? Oh well, it turns out that climate scientists don't believe a whole lot in falsification and validation.
* By the way, did I mention that greenhouse effect is a miss-nomer? Actual greenhouses are not hot because of the "greenhouse effect"[2]
* Bjorn Llomborg [3]. For those who don't know, the guy is a statistician who decided to take a look at the climate science through the eyes of a statistician. He wrote a book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist", which had a pretty moderate tone in my opinion. He was viciously attacked by the climate science community. For example, here's a quote from the wikipedia page: "The Climate Feedback reviewers assessed that the scientific credibility ranged between 'low' and 'very low'". If any scientist gets the modern day Giordano Bruno treatment, it's never climate science consensus scientists, always climate skeptics.
I could keep going, but I don't want to write a wall of text. I'll stop here, and if people want more bullet points, I'll put them in some separate comments.
Oh, and just to clarify. Many times I looked into the science, it did check out. For example, some skeptics point out to volcanic emissions. I spent time finding the numbers, and yes, it turns out that volcanoes emit peanuts compared to what we put in the atmosphere. I could go on with things that check out as well, but as I said above, I don't want to get people bored.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Fear