Well, if you look at it from a thermodynamic standpoint, as I do, if we are in the warming PHASE of a heat cycle, then we really aren't warming up. You have to step back and look a series of cycles, and evaluate corresponding points on each cycle. If you chart the corresponding points on each cycle, and there is an increase from cycle to cycle, then you could say the earth is warming.
The problem with that is that if you step back far enough to look at it over an even longer perspective, they are finding that there are cycles within cycles within cycles.....So how can you possibly look at the cycle we are in now and say the Earth is warming?
It is far too complex for any climatologist to say for certain what is happening, other than the climate is changing, which is exactly what it has been doing since the Earth had enough atmosphere to have a climate.
I agree with you, though, that the biggest problem with GW is the minions of ignorant humanity that will buy into anything thrown at them by the Leftist Propagandists who seek to control them. It is very disheartening to me, as I constantly have to de-program my own kid from the drivel that is force-fed her from the government run school she goes to (this is the only reason I would want to be "rich"--so I could afford to educate her properly). Lucky enough for me my kids are pretty smart, and if I only accomplish one more thing in my life, I want it to be making sure that they think for themselves.
*deep breath*
Yep, cycles within cycles within cycles.
It's worse than an Archimedian orrery.
Scientists just recently discovered an eighty-eight year cycle recorded in Nile flooding activity. Add this to Kondratieff waves, the eleven year sunspot activity cycle, and other phenomena, and you have a very confusing hodge-podge.
Unfortunately, we don't have measured datapoints for anything other than some temperatures and the sunspot activity. But even in those we see more correlation between solar activity and the Earth's temperature than we do the measurements for carbon dioxide.