I don't know much about climate science. I mean, I've read bits and pieces. But unlike analytic ontology or programming in Ruby, it's not something I spend a lot of time thinking about. I'm reasonably convinced by what I've read that it is a problem and it's something we should be trying very hard to solve. 
But I have a question, having seen a lot of climate change 'deniers' online.
The deniers seem to spend a lot of time getting very concerned about whether or not climate change is "anthropogenic" - that is, whether or not it is man-made.
Would that make any difference? I mean, if there is a problem, the important thing is fixing it, not worrying about the cause. Let's say that sunspots were the cause of global warming rather than human beings. Ceteris paribus, what difference would it make? If everything the mainstream scientists is saying is true except the cause is true, then shouldn't we be concerned? I mean, if, as the IPCC AR4 report states in it's worst-case scenario, we see a 59cm sea-level rise by 2100 and people are going around London on gondoliers, that would be a problem, no? I mean, would large parts of London and many other cities being underwater - or any of the other far more dire problems predicted by mainstream climate scientists - be any less awful because the climate conditions that brought it on aren't man-made?
I mean, if you die because of a hurricane, you are just as dead as if you die from a terrorist bombing, even though the hurricane is a lot less man-made than the terrorist bombing which is completely man-made. This whole debate over whether or not climate change is man-made or not seems like a giant red herring. If climate change is a problem, we should do what we can to solve it regardless of the cause. It reminds me of various right-wing American religious people who fervently deny that homosexuality is genetic, and argue that homosexuality is a "choice" or a "lifestyle decision", and then use that to justify their bigotry. But if you said that feeding Christians to the lions was justified because Christianity is a "choice", they'd tell you that you were completely wrong - even if homosexuality were a choice, that wouldn't justify anti-gay hatred.
But then I'm just a mere ontologist attempting to apply common sense, rationality and logic to a debate. What am I missing here?
