There's at least one more camp:

* Believes climate change is occurring and it's anthropogenic. Don't think currently-proposed huge, centralized-government-promoting solutions are good ideas.

Hard to say, isn't it, without knowing exactly what cap and trade rule is being proposed. Yet, without knowing any details, you do claim certainty.

Actually, many African nations are looking toward increased industrialization as their way out of poverty. They were some of the loudest dissenters against emissions controls at the world global warming summits.

Yes, exactly. It can be really interesting to work on software that would actually be boring to use. And it can be really boring or stressful to work on computer games that would be really fun to play.

And Sony-Ericsson's market share in the phone business isn't doing that well. If his company goes broke, what happens to his pleasant job.

Look, nobody invented competition (which folks on this thread have been calling "capitalism"). It's just the natural state of the world.

Two replies to this:

* Capitalism or free enterprise or whatever you want to call it isn't really a human-invented economic system. "Capitalism" is just the label that Karl Marx successfully slapped on naturally-occurring economic competitive and cooperative activity among humans.

* What planned, invented economic system would even concern itself with something as non-life-essential as trying to provide a fair, pleasant life to all game developers? A central planner wouldn't even give most game developers a chance to try their ideas out. Have you ever seen the websites showing the toys that the U.S.S.R. toy companies foisted on poor little Soviet children?

You're confusing two different lines of argument. One questioning whether anthropogenic climate change is occurring. The second questioning proposed political solutions to climate change. It's understandable that you confuse the two because there is overlap in the groups of people making the two arguments, but not complete overlap.

The important point is that the second line of questioning is perfectly legitimate. You can't just brush off questions about whether proposed political solutions are a good idea or not by lumping everyone into the category of "denier".

"The Bad Astronomer". You're Phil Plait, right? I've heard you interviewed many times on the Skepticality podcast. I think you're a great guy and on "the side of the angels", BUT...

You seem to have the same mental block a lot of skeptics have when it comes to politics. The climate change debate is about more than whether the science is correct. The science may well be correct, but the political solutions proposed by politicians may be bad ideas. They are SEPARATE QUESTIONS. One can be a supporter of science, but still skeptical about politics.

The Climategate scandal is also about more than whether this or that scientist deliberately engaged in unethical conduct. It has also called into question whether there was just plain old incompetence involved, not necessarily with any deliberate malice.

A couple of questions:

* Who are these people who know what strong regulations should be put in place to make the economy work? How do we tell them apart from your average person walking around?

* Have you heard of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act? Which administration put this huge expansion of business regulation in place?

They better make sure I can get dim sum for breakfast, sushi for lunch, and burritos for dinner, or I ain't going there.

We've been using a new methodology at work where we keep track of the hours of actual productivity, not counting all the distractions. I get an average of 13 hours in per week.