Joseph D'Aleo has applied the cognitive dissonance theory of Leon Festinger to global warming fanatics. 

"When discomfirmatory (contrary) evidence is presented, Festinger found one condition that often determined whether the belief is discarded or maintained with new fervor by belief with a strongloy held belief. That was whether or not the individual believer has social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand strong discomfirming evidence. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, you might expect the belief to be maintained and the believers to attempt to proselytice or persuade non-members that the belief is correct even in the face of data suggesting otherwise."

The large number of people who have a vested interest in global warming provide support for those who are merely believers in the concept. 

The report by the recent conference by climate skeptics is available online.

The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology states that the English floods of last spring were the result of natural factors rather than global warming.

Hungarian scientist Ferenc Miskolczi has discovered the greenhouse gas equation  Arthur Milne developed in 1922 contains a serious flaw.  Milne mistakenly solved the differential equation involved by assuming an infinitely thick atmosphere.  Miskolczi was working for NASA at the time and NASA suppressed  his report which contradicted NASA's claims.   

Miskolczi resigned in protest, stating in his resignation letter, "Unfortunately my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results."

Miskolczi rewrote the equations and the modified equations don't indicate a runaway greenhouse effect.   His equations indicate a limit to any greenhouse effect. Thus even if there is a greenhouse effect it cannot do what the Rev. Al Gore claims it will do.

Research by Stephen Schwartz also challenges claims of a runaway greenhouse effect.

I haven't studied differential equations for  a few decades, but I do remember that guessing at values for variables is sometimes used to solve differential equations because of their complexity.  However, there are two values that should never be used, infinity and zero.  These two numbers have special  mathematical properties that make them unsuitable for this purpose. For example, you may  remember learning that division by zero is impossible. However, there is one special case in which division by zero is possible, zero divided by zero.  The test to determine if  division is correct is multiplication. Zero multiplied  by any other number is zero so zero divided by zero can be any number.

In the real world it might be possible to a zero amount of any commodity, but not an infinite amount. An infinitely thick atmosphere  would also be infinitely massive, i.e. a  super black hole.  In an infinitely thick atmosphere it wouldn't make any difference what the gases were because the gravitational attraction  would be so high that radiation could not escape. 

In fairness to Milne, his research dealt with stellar atmospheres rather than planetary atmospheres.  Milne unsuccessfully attempted to develop a competing theory to Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

Dr. Donald W. Miller, Jr.,  who teaches cardiac surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine argues that  the peer review process  is stifling scientific research in his essay "The Trouble With Government Grants".  Miller says that   those in charge of approving government grants   "abuse the trust and power of government, which does not know science, to advance their own careers and, in some cases, protect their investments in companies that profit from the reigning paradigm."

He states   "When the [federal government] peer review grant system was established in 1946 people assumed that scientific progress occurs in an evolutionary incremental and cumulative fashion."  Both the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation continue to use this process.  This process discourages funding of those who disagree with the ideas held by those who approve grants such as global warming, according to Miller.

Miller favors switching to the approach used by the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which  was established  after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1958. 

. "Eighty project managers, who each handles $10-50 million, are given free reign to foster advanced technologies and systems that create "revolutionary" advantages for the U.S. military. Managers, not subject to peer review or top-down management, provide grants to investigators who they think can challenge existing approaches to fighting wars."

 

Bell Labs was using a similar approach to research at the time. 

It shouldn't be surprising that  those  in the field of biology would believe that scientific theories developed gradually, because biology made the same assumption about the development of biological life.  Those familiar with the history of physics theories realize that science sometimes precedes abruptly with revolutionary changes in ideas.  In the 19th century physicists believed that atoms were the smallest particles of matter and couldn't be further subdivided.  In 1897 J.J. Thomson forced complete replacement of that theory be demonstrating   that atoms were actually composed of smaller charged particles.  He proved the existence of  electrons  and correctly theorized that atoms also had protons and neutrons.  During the next 20 years physicists like Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr produced more revolutionary theories

 It may come as a surprise to conservatives, but University of Ottawa physics Professor Denis G. Rancourt suggests that the real purpose of the global warming myth is to  hide the threat posed by profit driven corporations:  "I argue that by far the most destructive force on the planet is power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might; and that the global warming myth is a red herring that contributes to hiding this truth. In my opinion, activists who, using any justification, feed the global warming myth have effectively been co-opted, or at best neutralized."

Certainly "power-driven financiers" can benefit from the trade of carbon credits.    

Trade in stocks and commodities carries a lot of risks because prices go up and down. Stock investments can be adversely affected by panic selling.   Carbon credits potentially offer an opportunity (at least for those who enter the market early) for a continued increase in value, at least  so long as they can maintain the global warming hysteria.  However, a continuation of the current cold trend could potentially wipe out the value of the assets if people decide the whole thing is a fraud.  

The global warming hysteria may also divert attention from real ways humans might change the environment  such as by deforestation, although Rancourt doesn't deal with the particular issue.  For example, Al Gore  claims global warming is causing melting of snows on Mount Kilimanjaro when the real cause is elimination  of the rain forest which provides the moisture that becomes snow.

Rancourt makes an interesting observation on the relative impact of warmer and colder weather:  "In addition, whereas there is evidence of negative consequences to populations from sustained regional cooling (e.g., Europe’s Little Ice Age, 1300-1850 AD) and whereas global ice ages (occurring every 40-100 thousand years or so) clearly have significantly affected human populations, there is no known case of a sustained warming alone having negatively impacted an entire population... As a general rule, all life on Earth does better when it’s hotter: Compare ecological diversity and biotic density (or biomass) at the poles and at the equator."