You said in your previous comment that the section you quoted was your favourite part of the article, which implies that AGW is "the greatest scam in history".

Since you highlighted this as your favourite, I thought I'd ask you if you shared the belief that AGW was a scam. But you seem unable to answer a simple question, preferring to present a link to an article by a Forbes columnist, without explanation.

I'd still like to know if you agree that AGW is a "scam". But I think it's worth pointing out the flaws in the Warren Meyer article you linked to.

He states that the core theory of "catastrophic" man-made global warming justifies immediate and likely expensive government action. This is not part of the scientific consensus on climate change.

He lays out the core theory in a diagram of his own design, which contains the following statements:

Theory: Doubling CO2 directly increases temperatures by 1C

Well, it's actually nearer 1.2C, but close enough.

Theory: Feedbacks multiply this by 3x to 5x or more

The actual figures for equilibrium sensitivity are 2 - 4.5ºC, with a most likely value of 3ºC.

He suggests that increased plant growth would be a negative feedback; this is incorrect as the carbon absorbed by the plants as they grew would be emitted again as methane when they died and decomposed.

He suggests that increased water vapour would lead to increased clouds which would provide a negative feedback due to the increase in reflected sunlight; this is incorrect as there is little evidence to suggest that increased water vapour leads to more clouds, and clouds can act to trap heat as well as reflect it, so any feedback from clouds is just as likely to be positive as it is to be negative.

There is plenty of observed evidence to support positive feedbacks from increased water vapour, methane emissions from thawing permafrost, and reduced albedo from less summer snow and ice.

Observation: The world has warmed about 0.7ºC in the last century

He states that temperatures have been flat for the last 10-15 years, and are no longer climbing; this is incorrect as the trend for the last 10-15 years is statistically insignificant and cannot be determined with the neccessary confidence level.

He states that flat temperatures create a problem for the core theory; this is incorrect, since there are many causes of natural variability in the surface temperature record that could explain a short-term cooling trend, as has happened several times before, which in no way invalidate the warming effect of CO2.

Observation: All of this (and more) due to man-made CO2

The IPCC consensus actually states that most of the warming since 1950 is due to human activity.

He suggests alternative explanations for recent warming (the sun, ocean cycles, recovery from the LIA), all of which have been refuted in the peer-reviewed literature. A fourth source of warming - land-use change - is explicitly considered in the IPCC consensus, and in any case is still anthropogenic.

He states that we should already have seen 1.5C warming from CO2, implying that the warming effect is instantaneous, which is not part of the IPCC consensus.

He states that the cooling effect of sulphate aerosols is an assumption, whereas it is in fact supported by observed evidence.

In summary, he states that skeptics "argue that the theory of strong climate positive feedback is flawed, and is greatly exaggerating the amount of warming we will see from man-made CO2" and that they are "simultaneously denying that most or all of past warming is man-made, and arguing instead that the amount that is natural and cyclic is being under-estimated". But the evidence supporting these positions is incredibly weak, and it's only by denying the vast collection of evidence supporting the consensus that those arguments can be made.