The debate over climate change has become one between two camps usally termed the sceptics and the warmers in popular culture. If global warming emissions continue to rise unabated, we will see growing costs related to climate change with respect to our coasts, our health, our energy and water resources, our agriculture, our transportation infrastructure, and our recreational resources

According to Greg Craven the various skeptical beliefs consist of the following:

1. The globe isn’t warming.
2. The globe is warming, but humans aren’t causing it.
3. We’re warming the globe, but the change is not significant.
4. The globe is warming, but it’s too big to fix. We’d be better off working to adapt to the changes rather than
trying to prevent them.

The warmers say the globe is warming, we’re the ones doing it, it’s significant, and we can still do something to re duce the severity. The warmers are saying, “Mitigate”, that is focus efforts on trying to make the changes smaller, like keeping the sea level from rising in the first place by cutting carbon emissions).

The skeptics have tended to progress through all the listed points in sequence with most having progressed to number 4, saying, “Adapt” (focus efforts on protecting ourselves from the changes in climate, like building dikes around coastal cities to hold back rising sea levels), while the warmers are saying, “Mitigate” (focus efforts on trying to make the changes smaller, like keeping the sea level fro cutting carbon emissions).

Craven adds:

In practice, both camps generally call for some level of adaptation and mitigation. Most of the warmers are convinced that we’re already in for some significant climate change, so we’re going to have to do some adapting, even if we cut emissions radically to prevent worse changes. And some skeptics (though not all) say that emissions cuts aren’t a bad thing in themselves—it’s just mandatory cuts that are harmful to the
economy and should be avoided. So the difference is on emphasis.