Global Warming and the Debate; Yes, There Is One. And What about this Summer Heat?

With all the ruckus over global warming and what we should do about it--not to mention the recent heat wave and odd humid, storm-like weather we have had here in So Cal--some question whether global warming is really happening the way some (like Al Gore) say it is, whether global warming is human-induced (and to what extent), and whether or not the proposals of some (like Kyoto Protocol) are worth the trade-off.

Here are some excerpts of articles/essays on the matter (continually updated): click this red.

UPDATE: Is summer heat the result of global warming? Well, not so in a scientifically-verifiable way:

Is this [high summer heat] the result of global warming—the rise in Earth's temperature fueled by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?

"You can't point your finger and say, This is caused by global warming," said Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
[...]
Jim Laver, the NOAA [U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] climate scientist, said that anytime a summer heat wave rolls through or a hurricane hits, humans naturally want to know if global warming has something to do with it.

"It's normal to bring up those questions," he said. "And we try to explain [the answers] by the best science we have available." For now, a direct link between global warming and short-term weather events is impossible to prove, he said.