I consider those making alarmist arguments about global warming to be at least as damaging as the critics 'debunking' it with bad/misleading science.

Lets take "An Inconvienient Truth" for example- overall it does an 'ok' job of presenting the science, but there were parts that made me wince. The movie oversimplifies a lot of the science, I can let that slide since you pretty much have to do that given the format and the audience- heck, Sagan's 'Cosmos' certainly did a lot of that, but no one here will argue that in general it wasnt one of the best science series on TV.

One point in "An Inconvienient Truth" that I take issue with is the way he discusses catastrophic sea level change. Gore never actually says that we could have a 20 foot rise in sea level in the next century... instead what he does is, in my opinion, more dishonest than that... he very carefully says something that is factually correct, but says it in a way that gives the impression that a sudden 20 foot rise is possibly imminent. Getting the facts wrong is a sin, but knowing the facts and intentionally using them to give the wrong impression is a greater sin.

I would prefer that Gore had stayed out of it... I think the movie served the purpose of raising public awareness, and thats good... but it would be better if a politician wasn't the one making the case. The point I think that should be made is this is NOT a political issue, it is a scientific issue. Only harm will come from politicizing it.

In political debate there can be no scientific argument. Political differences are based in intangibles- an individual's values and the priority they give their values. In pretty much every political dispute there really is no scientific proof that someones values are objectively wrong. Take abortion... some arguments can be distilled to what one subjectively holds to have more value: the individual's right to reproductive choice or the 'human' rights of an embryo to come to term. It really comes down to belief, not science- some people belive an embryo is entitled to human rights at fertilization, others set other arbitrary benchmarks... the question ultimately has to be settled by the arbitrary balance of society's current weighting of collective values.

That anthopogenic global warming is happening is a scientific fact, I am sorry if that sounds inflexible and absolutist, but really is the case. If we continue to muddy the waters by making that political we do great harm.

We need to accept the fact like adults and move on to the discussion of how best to deal with that fact. THAT will have to be a political discussion, but that ever more urgent discussion cannot happen until we accept the science, and let the science educate our arguments.