The problem, I think, is that the media does have an agenda, and a lot of the people who view this media take all their reported news as facts. A great example, not to get too off topic: the war in Iraq. How often, honestly, do you hear about operations that go right there? You always hear about the bad. Because people want to hear about the bad. And the media is happy to oblige.
From what I understand, the weather and climate that we've experienced for the past 200,000 years, according to core samples from the polar ice caps, has shown an unusual pattern of stability. Before then, there would be vast changes in temperatures and weather patterns in small (geologically that is) periods of time, the last time anything was this stable was during the dinosaur times. And that all happened before mankind even existed. Plus, look at the geothermal activity of the planet. I forget what it was called, but there was a volcano that erupted during the revolutionary war that put out more pollution in the atmosphere than the entire combined equivalent of human history, the major contributor of the so-called "year without a summer". I regard these things as clear evidence that mankind is not a real significant contributor to global warming.
I think that the planet is changing once again, and these changes are affecting our lives. More and more, people are noticing small changes in their lives, like plants growing out of season or hurricanes stronger and more numerous than before. But how long have these people lived? 70 years, less? Thats a hundreth of a second in geologic time. People are not used to change, and have been since the dawn of man, yet we have adapted. The planet went through that ice age from the 1300s to the 1800s, we survived that just fine. And the planet did that all on its own.
The problem is that the media loves to report doom and gloom, its part of their job, so they conveniently report the facts that support their agendas and leave out the important ones, such as the fact (note the word "fact") that there really is no concensus on what is causing global warming. Mankind is bound to be a contributor, but not the CAUSE. So as long as the media continues this trend, people will believe it. And more and more, political sanctions will lead to exploitation of the poor, all in the name of "preserving our planet".