I think the positions have changed slightly.
Nobody denies any longer that the temperature is rising and that sea level is going up. The denial now is that it's caused by human activities.
Interestingly, the other side is moving toward the position that, while it's caused by human activities, it's too late and there's nothing to be done about it.
So, in terms of actual pragmatism, the two sides are very close: do nothing beyond seek high ground, and hold on tight.
Andrew,
Climate is always changing. That's what climate does. It's either getting warmer or colder during any period of time, although calculating a precise figure for a global temperature is actually impossible. There's always a wide margin of error, and data is frequently being re-evaluated and manipulated, and temperatures reconstructed.
In the past 2,000 years or more, up to the present time, there have been 3 warm periods that are at least reasonably well documented: The Roman Warm period around the time of Jesus Christ. The Medieval Warm Period during the time that the Vikings flourished in Greenland, around 1,000 years ago, and the Modern Warm Period that we are experiencing today.
Warm periods are generally preferred. Civilizations tend to flourish during warm periods. If it's true that our CO2 emissions are contributing to this Modern Warm Period, then that might actually be a good thing. As the climate descends into another cool period in the near future, in accordance with previous natural patterns, our CO2 levels could protect us from the worst of the cooling.
Of course, the AGW alarmists have done their best to cover up the existence of these previous warm periods in recent history. One such cover-up was Michael Mann's Hockey Stick graph which has been the subject of much 'fraud' litigation.
Another dismissal of the Medieval Warm Period, by the AGW alarmists, is the claim that it was not a global phenomenon. However, such dismissal is based upon a lack of evidence and lack of historic data from other parts of the globe, and as we should all know,
an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. One of my favourite photographic locations is the area around Siem Reap in Cambodia, where the ancient Khmer temples of Angkor are located. I just love walking around the ruins photographing the bizarre mixture of crumbling temples and giant tree roots, but the history of this place is also fascinating.
It's always been a mystery to historians why the Khmer population just relocated after being conquered by the Thais during the 14th to 15th centuries, leaving behind a huge civilization with a vast network of canals and a flourishing agricultural system, which became a lost city in the jungle until it was rediscovered by the French colonialists in the 19th century.
However, the mystery has now been solved by Australian scientists. According to an analysis of tree rings, climate change was the main cause of the collapse of the Khmer civilization. During the same time (approximately) that Greenland was icing over, causing the Vikings to become more isolated and making living conditions more harsh for them, the snows and glaciers in the Himalayas (another favourite photographic location) refused to melt during summer, as they had done in the past during the build-up of the Khmer civilization.
The Khmer civilization was totally dependent upon the water from the melting snows of the Himalayas flowing down the Mekong and filling up their dams. After a number of years of drought due to a cooling climate, the civilization would have been in deep trouble. The population would have begun moving to other locations in search of food. The Thais would have seen this state of affairs as an opportunity to attack, which they did. The local population would have seen no reason to hang around or even return to the place later, so the city became lost in the jungle.
Man-made CO2 would have had no bearing on this disaster, but Shhhh! Don't spread it around, otherwise the development of sustainable energy might slow down.