We live in a political world. And whether we are about to be done in by human-caused global warming depends very much on your political perspective.

David Appell has a good piece in Scientific American over a new study by two scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics that purports to show that there's nothing to worry about. It seems that the consensus view among their colleagues, though, is that global warming is real and the study is deeply flawed.

The best quote: "You'd be challenged, I'd bet, to find someone who supports the Kyoto Protocol and also thinks that this paper is good science, or someone who thinks that the paper is bad science and is opposed to Kyoto."