Bruce Thomson apparently gets the same sort of email I do.

Thomson, the head of UNM's Water Resources Program recently shared an email he sent to a friend about climate change. The friend had helpfully shared links to a couple of television programs about "the climate change scam." Bruce's response:

[T]he naysayers/disbelievers pick at the margins. They'll find tidbits of contradictory evidence and extrapolate from this to the conclusion that the whole climate change hypothesis is wrong. Certainly the globe has been warmer and colder than today, but the rate of change of temperature, of ice sheet melting & glacial retreat, of changes in biomes & species extinction, of changes in weather patterns, arctic warming, and of CO2 levels in the last 100 years is unprecedented. Both the first and second derivatives are positive and much greater than at any time in the past. 

You can read Bruce's whole response over on Michael Campana's blog.

I've written in the past about how I search for the "bulk of the science" that I use as the foundation for my reporting on climate change, or any other science. My in box is also full of what I call "but what about?" missives - people doing what Bruce would call "picking at the margins". Here's how I explained it a few years of years ago:

In any interesting science— and by that I mean science where research is being done in earnest on unsettled questions, such as climate change or black holes— one finds mainstream views and intriguing mavericks.

The mainstream gets codified in textbooks, representing a "consensus" of scientists working in the field, while the mavericks poke away from the fringe. Sometimes the mavericks turn out to be right, and the mainstream shifts their way. More often than not, they turn out to be wrong.

If the argument is about something arcane, like the underlying nature of a black hole, we can all cheerfully wait to see who is right.

But what if we need to make a decision— now? What if we need to decide, say, whether to vaccinate our children against mumps, or whether action is required to deal with climate change?

(Image of receding glaciers at Glacier National Park, courtesy USGS.)

In that case, we have a longstanding and reasonable tradition of seeking out the mainstream, assembling the best minds and reviewing their understanding of the best science currently available— in other words, trying to figure out what the consensus might be.