One modern phenomena that interests me is how passionately many people who have little or no knowledge of science can believe so strongly in Global Warming. It is clear that some sort of psychological mechanism is involved. It is true that leftists are more likely to be global warming believers and conservatives are more likely to be skeptics. The vast majority of these people are picking their position based on faith because they lack basic scientific knowledge, to say nothing of the lack of practical experience in processing temperature data. I am a skeptic, and I am conservative, but I do have scientific training, and have a lot of experience in thermal modeling. My skepticism is based on my own analysis of the problem. I don't know precisely how much impact CO2 emissions are having, and doubt that anyone does, but I an convinced that the UN IPCC is a political advocacy group rather than a scientific body and am certain that they have grossly exaggerated the case for warming. For example NASA has admitted that 1934 was "slightly" warmer than 1998. It turns out that "slightly" is 0.5 degree. How much was the dramatic "significant" temperature increase during the 20th century? Well the increase was 1 degree. I have severe doubts on the entire temperature record because it appears to me that the extrapolate the temperature over the entire globe based on an extremely small data set must lead to errors larger than the effect being measured. Back to psychology: here is a paper that discusses the psychological aspects of global warming beliefs.