I'm going to reply first to @Sol Zagato for a few of his points then pivot to you, if you don't mind me quoting yours since the meat of this reply will be to you and I don't want to clutter things up in a spaghetti.
For your point 1, Sol, you are right, this is typical academic shenanigans, however I hope you realize just how small the actual field of climate science actually is. It's a few dozen 'respected climate scientists' who control the grant money, research papers in the field, etc, and they freeze out anybody who dissents from their orthodoxy no matter how well qualified they are. For example, look up Dr Willie Soong and what the climate team did to him when he dared to dissent from their zeitgeist. In addition, I strongly recommend following the money trail that is in the climate science field, and looking at their past predictions and comparing them to reality. They're batting .000 so far.
For your point 2, I would argue that climate science is fully corrupted at this point, to the same degree as social anthropology (not physical anthropology BTW, which was my particular interest, although it is amusing watching so many heads explode once we figured out how to read Mayan script LOL) The base pool of scientists is far smaller, they are far more selective in who they admit to the pool in the first place (dissent from the orthodoxy is Not Allowed you evil DENIER you) and they have ready-made constituencies who stand to profit enormously from their work (take a look at the correlation between the financial backers of the climate science crowd and the so-called 'green energy' industry, and prepare to throw up) so long as it fits the narrative. If reality fails to conform, they have models to prove that reality is wrong and their narrative survives.
Now to @Bacle , I apologize for the digression but I did promise Sol a response.
I agree on excessive human development into the backcountry is harmful for truly sustainable forestry practices. However I think you are putting too much stock into cold killing the beetles in the first place. In the past there would be annual fires that would both massively thin out the undergrowth and destroy infected trees (burning out the beetles in the process). Now there is just the freeze cycle. In much of the region the freeze lines have, historically, varied over a rather wide range (take a look at the research into vole ranges done in the California Rockies that show remains of nests well above the modern average snow line from within the last few centuries.) Therefore, reliance on winter freezes over much of the infested area is... problematic to begin with. Combined with the El Nino and La Nina cycles, which have significant impact on Southwestern US climate, and the over reliance on freeze cycles for beetle control becomes irresponsible.
Honestly, while I disagree that climate change is a serious catastrophic issue, things like land use, habitat destruction, etc are critical issues that do not receive nearly enough attention. I would strongly encourage everybody reading this to cut down on or eliminate palm oil from your diet, for example, despite the supposed health benefits. Palm oil harvesting is utterly annihilating critical habitats through Asia and Oceania. I would also strongly encourage people to pay attention to the sourcing for any fish they purchase. These are the little things that can actually have a serious impact (don't get me started on the lunacy about straws and plastic bags in the US. Fun fact, almost none of the plastics in the ocean are sourced from the US, it's China, Malaysia, Indonesia and India where it comes from).
The over focus on catastrophic climate change is wonderful for certain business sectors (green energy fraudsters, politicians, etc) but meaningless. All the latest 15 year number really is is 'we have 15 years to come up with another excuse why we need to change the projection to another 15 years out'. The same people squawking this were saying the exact same thing 15 years ago. According to them, by 2012 winter was supposed to be a thing of the past..
Now to glaciers in Alaska. Many are shrinking, but many are expanding as well, and Siberian glaciers are generally advancing as well. The main culprit isn't temperature (which generally is below freezing) but rather changes in rain/snow fall patterns resulting in the glaciers being starved of water to form ice. Again look at the shifts in the North Pacific Oscillation in combination with the typical El Nino/La Nina oscillations. The NPO is trending further west in the recent past, bringing the precipitation more to Siberia than Alaska. However there are signs that this has happened before (they've discovered evidence of settlements/camps on revealed land after the glaciers retreat, for example, including ancient caches) and thus will likely happen again. My argument there is that we simply do not have enough data to make any realistic trend analysis on a global scale. My suspicion on the Alaska glaciers is that once the NPO shifts back east that they will start advancing again, and there is some evidence that that might be starting (although the data is *very* weak at this point so it's nothing more right now than a hunch).
I'm really waiting to see what will happen in the next five years or so due to the extremely low solar activity of the current Grand Solar Minimum. I've long suspected that the sun is the primary driver of climate fluctuations. Which makes logical sense, as the sun is the primary energy input into the climate system.
As for water issues *sighs* don't get me started on how much the climate scares are distracting from THAT issue. I know hydrologists who've been screaming their lungs out about aquifer depletion and mass subsidence issues in the Southwest due to over drawing ground water, yet are completely ignored because Climate Change is 'sexier'. People, if you live in the desert, do NOT maintain that nice green grass lawn or water hungry trees please! Xeriscaping is both beautiful AND sustainable in a desert climate, and saves enormous amounts of water.
And I agree that anecdote is useful, because it can inform areas of research and point to areas where we need to gather more data. I just do not think it wise to base policy upon anecdote, because anecdote is highly individual. When I hear anecdotal evidence, my reaction is to go 'hrmm' and start trying to dig up actual data to back it up. And if the data doesn't fit, trying to figure out what caused the conditions that led to the anecdote. Sometimes this will be because the data is not measuring the same thing as the anecdote, and careful study will find other sources that explain things.
And thanks, Bacle, that was very kind of you to say about how I write, but in person I tend to ramble and get extremely nervous, especially in small groups. Give me something to read in front of a big audience and I'm fine (I'm a lector at my church, after all) but I freeze up in small groups or if I have to speak off the cuff. Typing like this lets me go back and edit a few times before I'm satisfied with what I've written.
In closing, I'll just say that my single biggest problem with the alarmists and climate science crowd as currently constituted is that they've been screaming WOLF for so long, and been proven wrong so many times, that they are causing everybody ELSE who is involved in environmental issues to be looked at with suspicion. They've squandered just about all of the social credit that science, especially environmental science, has built up in order to fatten their own pockets and the pockets of their backers, and that, more than anything else in my opinion, is truly an environmental catastrophe in the making.
