*But however you answer my question, don’t cite me no scientific evidence.
Someone sent me a terrific set of the “deniers rules for debate” from Mercurius. Let me introduce them by way of a February 2008 email exchange I had with a denier over the headline question (see here). The denier wrote:
I have been doing enormous amounts of research in this global warming (caused by man) theories and have concluded that there is not ONE shred of evidence to back it up. Can you PROVE to me that global warming is being caused by mankind?
Hmm. Not one shred of evidence? “PROVE”–in all caps, too! I know this is mostly pointless, but still, it was the day after my daughter’s first birthday, and I was feeling in good spirits about humanity, so I replied:
This one is easy. Either you believe in science — i.e. we went to the moon, you go to the doctor, you have IT equipment you rely on — or you don’t. If you don’t, I can’t “prove” anything to anybody. If you do, then the IPCC reports — which are nothing more than a literature review by the top scientists in the world, commissioned by and summarized for policymakers, signed off by every friggin’ govt in the world — are as much proof as a human being could possibly want.
Yes, I was younger and naive back then. Now I wouldn’t strike thru friggin’. So he replied:
Sorry Joe but your email back to me is not proof of evidence. As for the IPCC report, I don’t buy into what they say. That is not proof. And yes, I very much believe in science which is why I don’t believe in humans have caused global warming. But my question is simple, what scientific proof can you show me, and I am not talking about some report from the UN, that humans are causing the Earth’s temperature to rise. Also, what is the right temperature for the Earth to be at?
Yes, well, the deniers, they believe in “science,” they just don’t believe in scientists or hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific articles or scientific “evidence,” which brings me to Mercurius’s list of things the deniers will accept as evidence:
I learned something new or, rather, old from reading Fallows’ blog. The famous metaphor* — “the fatally slow human response to climate change makes us like a slowly boiling frog” — is not quite right. As Wikipedia 

To avoid maxxing out on my July quota of irony in the first week of the month, I will simply report this as a straight news story. The UK Times 



I’d be interested in readers’ opinion of this silly segment from NPR’s Morning Edition, “

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