I say, you are lucky to be in the environment where the truth is leaving anyway. But that was a pure coincidence and you managed to neutralized any conformation bias from this.
Irrelevant. AGW is not some niche belief where evidence is hard to come by. It is a subject of massive scientific scrutiny. So I do what we should all do in these cases: accept the scientific consensus, while widening the uncertainties. Confirmation bias may have made this easier for me, but it was the right thing to do. When you can slap me down for being biased, is when I use weak excuses not to go straight to the scientific consensus. I try not to, but I'm sure I've got blind spots.
No, I don't buy the AGW story. I don't find it particularly probable, since we have no temperature rise in recent years, predicted by it.
Do the terms "hottest decade on record" ring any bells? (See for instance http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/, but feel free to use any large scale temperature record) These scientists have been predicting rises since the 60s, and have essentially been correct.
And even if it was true, it wouldn't be a very important matter.
By the scale of the existential risks I normally deal with, I agree. On a normal human scale, and in terms of the costs it imposes, somewhat important.
Theism is often a default test of irrationality on Less Wrong, but I propose that global warming denial would make a much better candidate.
Theism is a symptom of excess compartmentalisation, of not realising that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, of belief in belief, of privileging the hypothesis, and similar failings. But these are not intrinsically huge problems. Indeed, someone with a mild case of theism can have the same anticipations as someone without, and update their evidence in the same way. If they have moved their belief beyond refutation, in theory it thus fails to constrain their anticipations at all; and often this is the case in practice.
Contrast that with someone who denies the existence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). This has all the signs of hypothesis privileging, but also reeks of fake justification, motivated skepticism, massive overconfidence (if they are truly ignorant of the facts of the debate), and simply the raising of politics above rationality. If I knew someone was a global warming skeptic, then I would expect them to be wrong in their beliefs and their anticipations, and to refuse to update when evidence worked against them. I would expect their judgement to be much more impaired than a theist's.
Of course, reverse stupidity isn't intelligence: simply because one accepts AGW, doesn't make one more rational. I work in England, in a university environment, so my acceptance of AGW is the default position and not a sign of rationality. But if someone is in a milieu that discouraged belief in AGW (one stereotype being heavily Republican areas of the US) and has risen above this, then kudos to them: their acceptance of AGW is indeed a sign of rationality.