Can We Be Skeptical About Global Warming?

I have always found that a healthy dose of skepticism does a person good. It prevents humans from leaping before looking, thereby creating less problems. It makes sure that we are using our brains rather than taking an individual's word on a leap of faith. This healthy dose of skepticism has been lost when discussing anthropogenic global warming. The Left never had it on this topic to begin with, especially when you consider the fact that environmentalism has become a secular religion for many on the Left.

As for the Republicans, global warming denial has become just as vehement on the Right as blind faith towards environmentalism has been on the Left. As fellow libertarian Steve Chapman points out, "Conservatives fear liberals will use climate change to justify heavy-handed intrusive regulation and wasteful subsidies, and they are right to worry. But that's no excuse for pretending global warming is a myth or refusing to do anything about it."

Pretending global warming is a myth.....that's what got me thinking.  Is there so much concrete evidence for global warming that any attempt to refute it would put you on par with Holocaust deniers or 9-11 Truthers?  Although this debate is highly extensive and can very easily involve a lot of verbose, scientific jargon that most laypeople don't understand, I'm just going to list a few reasons why we have the right to be skeptical:

1. Money is a great motivator.  It also makes us more cynical about a certain interest group when considering one's motive.  Whether it's Big Business, union leaders, or politicians, when you "do it for the money," the ulteriority greatly erodes the integrity of their motive.  Why should scientists be any different?  The scare of global warming brings in billions of taxpayer dollars in research grants and funds towards "climate change study." More grants and funds means more money, not only to keep their livelihood afloat, but also to keep their wallets full of cash.  
2. Power is also a great motivator.  Those disseminating the message of mainstream environmentalism are predominantly on the Left.  Once Communism was disproved with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the intelligentsia of the Left needed another way to subtly get their feet in the door in order to force their utopian statism on the rest of Americans.  What a better way to gain more government control than with environmental alarmism?  The environment, much like health care, has the potential to cover many facets of consumerism.  If left to their own devices, the Left would completely do away with individual rights, particularly from an economic standpoint. 
3. A study done by the Harvard-Smithsonian Institute for Astrophysics back in 2003 shows that temperatures from the eleventh century were comparable to the twentieth century.  If fossil fuels did not exist during the eleventh century, and we saw a similar flux in temperature back then, can we really say that fossil fuel emissions are the cause of climate change?
4. We are unable to predict the weather forecast for the next week.  How do expect to know what Mother Nature has up her sleeve for the next century?  Even if you want to differentiate between meteorology and climatology, what about those computer models that depict doom and gloom scenarios like the movie Day After Tomorrow? Computer models cannot even accurately simulate past climate changes.  How can we expect an accurate depiction of the future climate?  Furthermore, publications such as the New York Times and Time magazine have flipped back and forth multiple times over the past one hundred years on whether we're in a state of global warming or cooling.  Look at Time Magazine's article back in 1974 about how the same fossil fuels that the environmentalist Left kvetches about was going to bring us into the next Ice Age.  You read that correctly.  Back in the 1970s, there was a fear of global cooling.      
5. Although I can keep going, I am going to conclude with this chart below from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.  In terms of determining causation of global warming, the chart is very telling.  Consumption of energy has skyrocketed post-World War Two.  However, the temperature did not fluctuate as if the temperature were affected by our carbon emissions.  What we see here is that solar activity and surface temperature are, at the very least, correlated, if not an instance of causation.  If you want to be skeptical of my skepticism, be my guest.  However, you run into a problem if you try to unambiguously argue that global warming is in concert with our rate of [energy] consumption.  You just can't unequivocally do that.  Let's keep the debate up, but let's not augment the size of government or demonize consumerism in the name of environmentalism.