The truth does not have to be complex, unless it's being twisted to serve a purpose.
Sometimes the truth is simple and easy for everyone to understand. Sometimes it's complex. If the truth wasn't complex some of the time, the Norman Conquest would have been fought with jet airplanes.
I can see oil companies having a purpose in damping down public concern over global warming.
But I can also see leftists trying to encourage concern over global warming or any other sort of pollution issue so as to cripple the U.S. militarily. A lot of college-educated people - even engineers and scientists, not just arts grads - are against the Iraq war. So I don't deny that some caution is warranted.
But when you've got the scientific community weighing in, not just advocates like Al Gore and friends, for global warming to be a deliberate hoax is as implausible as for the Apollo moon landing to have been a hoax.
Do we really know that the last few warm years weren't just due to the El Nino/La Nina natural oscillation? Well, in fact, they were due to exactly that... but they were warmer than the last bunch of warm years from that cause, and it's the difference that is being blamed on greenhouse gases. Which are known to be at an elevated level in the atmosphere. And we know we're putting them in the atmosphere at a faster rate than ever before, so it isn't the warmer temperatures that are causing the carbon dioxide or methane levels, except perhaps as an additional feedback mechanism.
Since we don't have an exact, complete, and full understanding of all the feedback systems in the Earth's ecology - prudence demands that we refrain from doing anything to the system the consequences of which we don't understand. We've been lucky so far, because human activity has been on a small scale relative to the environment.
But going back to nature isn't an option. Millions - no, billions - would starve if we gave up modern technology. If, as is more likely, the advanced Western democracies did this, even on a limited scale, the result is that the world would likely descend into an eternal night of slavery, as dictatorships retained their technology and the military might which technology grants.
This would be hopeless. But we have one alternative left. Nuclear power. We can save all our oil for making plastics - and fueling our tanks and personnel carriers and the like in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Let the joke be on the eco-freaks who protested against nuclear power long before they worried about global warming.
We don't have to take a chance on creating warmer weather that would cause some species to become extinct and lead to some Third World nations having crop failures, which would get them disappointed with us. We can avoid that risk entirely, and move towards restoring the historical natural concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that live evolved under for tens of thousands, if not millions, of years - while still keeping our nation strong, both economically and militarily.
Energy independence (although not burning coal either doesn't affect
that) would make us
stronger. And my taste runs to the most risk-averse behavior possible as being the most rational, provided it's enlightened risk-averse behavior, as opposed to being driven by emotions or panic.