Cloudscape

There have been thousands of researches into global warming, and for some reason, they all contradict one another. This may mean three things about part of these researchers: either they're careless, they're biased, they're frauds. According to recent research 2% of scientists admit having falsified data, while as much as 34% of scientists admitted having omitted data contrary to their assumptions. Since we cannot know which of the three it is, and we can hardly do our own research all by ourselves, the best thing we can do is to combine the results from all these researches and take the average from their results. It's surreal that we can trust scientists so little that we have to resort to such primitive methods, but it's the best we can do. If the disparity in these results shows us anything, then it is that we should not be too quick to trust researchers. Either how, we can best trust the results that have been replicated the most.

Look up graphs of global temperature, gather a large number of them together, study them carefully and compare them. You will find some sources that claim the last ten thousand years have been exceptionally warm, others that say the last ten thousand years have been exceptionally cool. You will find some sources claiming that the Middle Ages have been warmer than now, others that claim that it is warmer now than in the Middle Ages.

Furthermore, you will find sources that place today's temperature on graphs of the past millions of years, and you will find graphs that show only the past hundred-and-fifty years, so that in either case you cannot tell if man was the cause.

You will also find sources that compare solar activity with temperature claiming it to prove that the increase in solar activity causes the increase of temperature, but either minimize or ignore the deviations in temperature, while you will also find sources that show only temperature, while ignoring solar activity.

And finally, you will find sources comparing temperature with carbon dioxide concentrations. Some will selectively choose periods in which the increase of temperature follows the increase of carbon dioxide as a proof that carbon dioxide is the main cause of temperature increase, while other sources will selectively show periods in which the increase of carbon dioxide increases temperature, claiming this to be proof that carbon dioxide does not increase temperature at all.

If, like these scientists, you are biased, then you will choose whichever source you want to believe and ignore all others. If you are a seeker of truth, then you will search a compromise between these sources. The truth is most likely to lie somewhere in between, as it usually does.  The world is not doomed to turn into inferno, nor is everything perfectly fine.

The average, most replicated results are most likely to be correct, while the extremer, rarer results are the most likely to have been influenced by bias. This is a direct accusation of the scientists that brought these results, and I believe that they should be given any credence (or, for that matter, a license). I write this to warn anyone who does research on any field whatsoever to consult different sources, and conclude that their evidence is correct only if there are no other sources presenting evidence to the contrary. Meta-analysis is highly useful. Some meta-analyses calculate averages between the data of different studies, which likely provide the most accurate and reliable results.

Studies that combine data from different studies indicate a relatively mild increase of temperature — not high enough to portend doomsday, but high enough to be a reason for concern, in that it will have a major impact on the diversity, richness and beauty of the biosphere, and therefore as well as on the quality of our own lives.

Either how, all studies thus far have reveal that anthropogenic greenhouse gases (AGGs) are responsible for the increase of temperature, even the studies that claim the opposite. Some studies have been able to minimize the increase of temperature due to AGGs with the popular "3 watts per square meter" number, but none have come to an actually low number — 3 watts per square meter is actually quite a lot if one does the math, enough to cause an increase in global temperature of 0,9 kelvin (see article below).

That they arrived at this number, without realizing its significance, shows that it is likely to be correct, as these results are not distorted by bias towards the idea of global warming.

See also:

Holocene Extinction Event

If for everything one paid, taxes were levied equivalent to the damage to ecology it entailed, and the money of those taxes were used to negate it, then no further damage would be done to ecology at all. This would be similar to VAT, yet serving to a far more important cause. It is ridiculous not to include one's ecological footprint to the price of products or services.
This could also apply to population growth, for instance in crowded countries such as China: rather than fining families which have more than one child, one could simply make life more expensive so as to discourage familial growth. Increasing the price of residential zones would also save space. If there are families who are willing to tighten their belt to have more than one child, they could do so without causing environmental destruction if they paid the price to undo it.
In this way, all weight imposed upon environment would be reduced to zero. Awareness of ecological footprint would no longer be necessary because it would no longer exist at all: for whatever damage one would cause nature, one would pay the same price needed to repair that damage.
Instead, people would come to prefer more ecological means simply because they are less expensive. Thus, taxing ecological footprint would not only reduce the damage of ecologically unfriendly means, but also reduce their use.
This is viable. There are plenty of ways to undo environmental damage, though they aren't always cheap. The only thing that keeps us from doing so, then, is greed. However, the more technologies to restore environment would be used, the more efficient and therefore less expensive they would become, as their increased use would encourage their further development.
It is an absurdly simple notion, but as it would check the mass consumption of our society, it is unlikely to be implemented with a mindset as we have today. We have acquired the attitude that economy is more important than ecology. We have become so estranged from nature that we have come to appreciate hedonism more than nature's sublimity.