What really confuses me, is why the hell everyone is all feisty to disprove global warming... WHO CARES real or not, don't be dense, just hey lets stop polluting like massive asshats. Whether the planet is heating or cooling doesn't matter, even if it's not that crap being pumped into the air isn't HEALTHY. It's that simple... So all your lil squiggly lines don't mean jack diddly in comparison to the fact that I can't eat fish out of the river near my house without risking all kindsa scary stuff.....
I mean seriously its these people who continually tout "omg it's so hot! It must be global warming" yeah ok I detect sarcasm since it's only like 50 degrees, but who cares, my city is still covered in lovely haze consisting of likely no less than 8 rather poisonous metal particulates among other nasties.... but hey, long as the earth stays cool, its ok right? Justify that.... it's really a jagoff idea that global warming is the only (real or unreal) problem that may come from pollution, all the arguing ignores the much easier to see BS....
For the control of future policy, why else?
Pollution is not the same thing as CO2. Pollution would usually be CO (Carbon Monoxide), NOx (Oxides of Nitrogen), heavy metals, VOC's (Volatile Organic Compounds)... Frankly, too much human execrement can even be considered "pollution" because it can provide food for algae blooms that can sour water.
Back to policy: I think a lot of folks on either side of the aisle want "their side" to win the argument to conclusively demonstrate that the folks "on the other side" are off their rocker and clearly incapable of being responsible enough to make policy decisions.
To illustrate a possible consequence we can attempt a "thought experiment". Let's say, for instance, that the pro-AGW camp gained enough control of the government to install legislation requiring all coal-fired power plants to install CO2 sequestration technology in the United States. What's CO2 sequestration? Capturing the CO2 emissions and storing them somewhere away from the atmosphere. I've only just started looking into this but some of the strategies intend to capture the stuff, pipeline it to depleted oil wells and inject it back into them to force more oil out or just get rid of it in the first place.
How much CO2 are we talking about? World coal usage produces about 3 billion tons of carbon per year, or about 11 billion tons of CO2 per year. That's 1.82E14 standard cubic feet or about 1,235 cubic miles per year. The world use of natural gas per year by comparison is about 676 cubic miles. Oil, by comparison, comes up to about a cubic mile per year in volume. So, you'd be cramming about twice as much in volumetrically as we'd be pulling out per year in gas and oil with all the immense amount of energy that would require to do.*
Naturally, we'd have to tweak that simplified model and see what kind of economic damage we'd be talking about but I'd think the entire exercise would be rendered academic if the voting public ever figured out beforehand that it'd simply bankrupt them back to the Stone Age. However, due to Peak Oil, that's where we're heading anyhow.
Pidgey
*Disclaimer: I haven't had much time for sanity checks on the math, yet, so feel free!