Hi Paul

It depends how much your sceptic knows.

He's an American who is convinced that Kyoto/Global Warming is nothing
more than a scam to undermine American industry.

That's a good one - Bush will never sign Kyoto and Kerry stands no chance of
getting it through the Senate. So if the rest of the world signs up to Kyoto
and its industrial companies start paying serious carbon / energy taxes who
gets instantly more competitive? Er - American industry....?

How about a graph that shows rising CO2 levels over the past couple of
centuries?

Even that is disputed Paul - take a look at:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/

The problem with this debate is that people (including scientists) on both
sides of it are getting entrenched into their positions and grabbing at
whatever bits of data suit their side of the argument. If that continues
then we end up in a media war in which whichever side is spinning the best
stories is "winning". It's a dangerous game because there is a temptation to
make ever more extreme claims to try to grab the headlines and the research
money. The media love this of course and start playing the "set them up and
knock them down" game. I would like to think that man-made global warming
could be proved or disproved by science. Instead I have a dark premonition
that nobody will care about the science once the Met Office and global
warming gets a nasty trashing during the great freeze of 2005 and public
opinion is channelled by wot the Sun sez...

Martin
Guernsey

--
Paul Hyett, Cheltenham