As a delegate, I joined scientists, business leaders, environmentalists, and other government representatives in the debate over how best to craft the structures, timetables, and approaches to meet this threat. Delegates were successful in forging a plan to move the global process forward. This success emerged in part from a consensus that the issues before us are real and the challenges we face are grave.

But what is even more grave is the issue in this country of how we continue to shunt aside the pressing dangers of global climate change. Too often we cling instead to the discredited contentions of faulty science. We allow wild aspersions to masquerade as substance, clouding the reality that the vast consensus among scientists leaves no doubt of the threats of global climate change.

Take, for example, Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby's assertion that there exists a global warming petition, signed by 17,000 US scientists who dispute the validity of scientific explanations of climate change. This line fails to acknowledge that this petition has been widely condemned because the signatories are listed without titles or affiliations that would permit an assessment of their credentials. Among the signatories on this petition are John Grisham, several actors from the TV series "M*A*S*H," and at least one Spice Girl.

I mean no offense to Cool Britannia, but I can assure you that Baby, Posh, Scary, Ginger, or Sporty Spice were not at the global climate change conference in Buenos Aires. These celebrities were not on hand to make their case against the overwhelming opinion of the scientific community. I did, however, have the chance to meet with Britain's Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who expressed his country's commitment to working through the global climate crisis in a serious and thoughtful way.

I remain distressed that the United States remains the only industrialized nation where legislators and opinion leaders continue to question the validity of the scientific proof of global climate change and its dangers to our future. It is the persistence of naysayers - and their willingness to misrepresent even the flimsiest of pseudoscientific reporting as hard evidence - that is preventing the American people from delving into a serious discussion of worldwide efforts toward sustainable development and mitigation efforts to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

We must be clear: The scientific community is overwhelmingly confident of the reality and seriousness of greenhouse gas-induced global warming. Legitimate scientists rely upon peer-reviewed international scientific reports such as the interparliamentary Panel on Climate Change, which cites 150 years of direct measurements of land and ocean temperatures; evidence from tree rings and ice cores extending back for millennia; and on analyses demonstrating that observed changes are the result of human activities and that these activities pose a serious threat to our future.

Self-professed experts financed by fossil-fuel producers, conservative think tanks, and partisan interest groups, unable to dispute these findings, have decided instead to rewrite science. Their findings don't add up - but then again, they were never meant to. Their goal is to confuse the issues, to trade sound bites for substance, and to convince the American people that global climate change is a left-leaning fantasy. They're wrong.

The results of the 1998 elections were strikingly clear: The American people want a thoughtful resolution of the real issues before us. It will never happen in the absence of a serious and honest dialogue. It's time that we strip away the ideology, reject the partisanship, and accept the best scientific findings of the world's experts. We have a responsibility to move forward. If we fail to embrace this responsibility, our nation will reap a backlash not just at the ballot box but in the continued degradation of the global environment itself. That is a risk none of us should be willing to hazard.