What is Global Warming?

So I continue on my personal crusade to provide thought to people on the misconceptions of global warming, so what is it exactly?

It is a theory. Nothing more. It gained significant traction when James Hansen of the Goddard Space Center said before a senate committee that he believed that the beginning of human influence on the warming of the globe Hansen stated that "global warming is now sufficiently large that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect." To support of his conclusions, Hansen declared that 1988 would be the warmest year on record, barring any "remarkable and improbable" cooling. As it happened to be a very warm winter before and a hot summer these conclusions were lapped up by the press and populous.

The common school of thought which you will hear if you ask "What is global warming?" is "the the world is warming due to Carbon Emissions in the atmosphere." Note the lack of any note that it is a theory, note also the blanket nature of this statement, certainly not in any way a tangible measuring stick, not scientific discussion on the theory itself (and its glaring deficiencies). When I thought about this fact it was a bit disturbing; science should be taken on fact and data; not blanket statements. Further yet if you follow it up with what is the most prevalent greenhouse gas? you will probably hear CO2. Which it is not. But that is only the first of the misconceptions.

In my opinion there is not nearly enough material out there that properly challenges or stimulates society enough the the complexities of global climate change. Because the fact is we know very little; and what we do know seems scarily misplaced in many ways. I'll leave these two tidbits; If global warming is considered a worldwide phenomenon, then all places on the globe should detect a rise in temperature; in fact there are places where temperature has risen over 200 years; less than 50 miles from places that show no temperature rise in 200 years. (Example here is NYC and West Point) Then is the warming due to the concrete jungle and population increasing warming the localized area rather than a global phenomenon? Second the favored fear tactic is that Antarctica is melting; the truth is the continent has been in a melting trend for 6000 years; in fact the larger part of Antarctica has actually shown a DECREASE in snow pack melt over the past 40 years. Again I think the public deserves to hear the full story.

What do you think?