Scientific debate should be exactly that - a debate. Correspondingly there should be sufficient room in the discussion for both proponents and opponents of the global warming thesis. Indeed many of the major points offered by the counterpoint seem valid - for example why risk economic prosperity for reasons unproven in real scenarios?
Underlying the scientific process is belief. You have a hypothesis that you believe in and then, as a scientist, you attempt to observe the event in a controlled manner, in the absence of interfering effects. Theoretically, if you can isolate the dominant factors for an observation in a logical manner, your belief is validated and accepted by the scientific community.
The difficulty in analyzing the phenomenon of global warming in the context of human generated carbon dioxide is that the Earth’s climate is indeed complex. The data is often fuzzy because the timescale for effects to manifest typically outlast generations. Thus changes in temperature from year to year may lie within the noise. Climate change skeptics have hopped on this, in addition to the notion that predictive climate model prediction have not adequately reproduced reality, to assert that climate change is merely a blip in the road. This is what they believe and what could be true. I disagree, but it may be true.
However we must be careful of what the noise tells us. As scientists, we should aggregate what we know from controlled experiments, extend them to their logical conclusion, and assign probabilities for those events to occur. In the case of global warming the probability is reasonable that there maybe cataclysmic consequences for the environment - not just global warming but changes in oceanic conditions. We should prepare for those consequences. Just because earthquakes occur _unpredictably_ does not mean that we don’t store extra water and food here in southern California. And sure the current physics in our models have not told us everything about climate change. But can’t the same can be said for our econometric models which now all corporations, governments, and populations treat as beacons of light during recessions?
After all scientists, as all humans, make mistakes of belief all the time. Galileo was the right voice dissenting against the beliefs of the geocentrists. But so was Einstein when he argued against the quantum mechanical model. Beliefs have been proven and disproven through experiment and logic. But while we could dawdle and enjoy the ivory towers in those situations, it seems we must move to counteract global warming. While the notion that the world was the center of the universe was important for belief, its impact on the world was slight.. not so with global warming.
[disclaimer: I (Ben) believe that human generated carbon dioxide poses a huge risk for our world and environment: it has been in demonstrated in the lab to be a heat trapping gas and a factor in the acidification of the oceans (anyone getting milliQ DI water will attest to that, noting a pH of 4.7 after a few minutes in air).