About Orson Global warming science has finally broken down the sectarian divide that also characterizes American religion: "You're going to Hell" - "Never! You are...!!" Two years ago, the number of in-person debates between defenders of man-made global warming orthodoxy and their critics could be counted on a single hand. Since then, examples of intellectually stimulating clashes have multiplied, generating - arguably - both heat and light. Sometimes, some places, this change is reflected in the blogosphere. But who has identified and articulated this productive sea-change? Thus, this column's theme - "Debating Global Warming" - is to cover these ongoing clashes and uncovered, underlying problems and opportunities from a more abstract remove than ordinary science blogs: from the perspective of scientific methodology, with a hard-nosed view of evidence that empirically challenge climate scientists. Michael Shermer endorses the orthodox (ie, the IPPC's) conclusion of anthropogenic global warming as a serious world-wide problem based on converging lines of evidence. Outspoken IPPC scientists like Rajenda Pauchauri and paleo-climatologist Thomas Crowley support it based upon "the weight of the evidence." Still others like Roger A. Pielke, Sr, point out that there are no general theories of climate to base such tests against, anyway. And proud catastrophic climate change denier, MITs Richard Lindzen, believes that climate science progress has in fact stalled under ballooning state-funding. With such a range of scientific authorities arguing from such diverse perspectives, is it any wonder that "Debating Global Warming" has gone unidentified and unappreciated? Here we cover the new, the salient, and re-cover the old - when necessary - about this debate. Orson Olson was the youngest founding member of the Minnesota Astronomical Society. Moving to Boulder, Colorado, and chatting up climate scientists from area labs renown or not - from IPCC co-chair at NOAA, Dr. Susan Solomon, Colorado State University’s hurricane forecast pioneer Bill Gray, NCARs Greg Holland, from UCAR, among others - became something of a hobby for Orson. After observing the global warming parade for many years from a scientific and environmental activist hot-house location, he decided to 'man-up'. Today he is an MSc graduate student in environmental management at the University of London. At Scientific Blogging, he tests what he has (or hasn’t yet) learned.

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