Although records for weather have only really been kept for about 200 years at tops. Considering the Earth is around 4,600,000,000 years old, one can't help but feel it is scratching the surface for looking back.
Ding ding, we have a winner. The prevalent problem in anthropogenic global warming "research" (meant in only the very loosest sense of the word) is that there simply isn't enough of it. The British government, and soon my own country's and our neighbour's to the south, stand to make an impressive sum of money from all these ridiculous "carbon taxes"; while the major oil companies can also benefit, though probably not as largely, from debunking their claims. Who to believe? Both sides accuse the other of propaganda, though to be honest the amount of it on the pro-AGW's side is much larger and certainly more threatening and frightening...
there is global dimming as well as warming. Global dimming is caused by all the smog in the air blocking out or reflecting the sunlight, thus reducing the amount of radiant energy hitting the earth. Less sunlight hitting the earth means cooler temperatures.
I recently watched a video regarding global dimming, and I had to come to the conclusion that it is about as correct or believable as is An Inconvenient Truth. One of the central issues in the video is that a planet without global dimming is worse than one with it, but consider this: according to current thinking the Mesozoic Era's CO2 concentration was, for the majority of the time, above 1000 PPM and hovered above 2000 PPM for several million years, and they expect educated people to believe that the 300 or so PPM we have now is going to literally - as the movie implies - roast the biosphere?
Another thing that annoys me is when people go round saying "save the planet", the planet will be fine whatever we throw at it, none of it will make a difference, planet earth has been through every temperature change and atmosphere make up imaginable, the only thing that could happen is that we could only be effecting wildlife along with our own existence.
Certainly. The species that apparently stands to lose the most from an AGW is us. We are the ones that need the most of everything that can be needed. Polar bears, penguins, etcetera will probably survive this current interglacial phase with ease, the same way they survived the Holocene Maximum. The "surprising" growth of the majority of ice sheets (especially in Antarctica, where 90% have been growing) and stable temperatures (if not slight cooling which has apparently been recognized) will probably not hurt them either.
Regardless of whether man-made global warming exists or not, we are driving thousands of types of animals to despair and extinction- we still need to do a heck of a lot more about what we're doing to the planet, like over-polluting it, because we're undoing millions of years of evolution by driving so many animals to extinction etc- what is worse is that we're aware of this, and yet many of us still fail to really do anything about it.
I agree - all these measures to "prevent" an AGW are probably fruitless (according to many current predictions) and highly pedantic, not to mention rather anti-human. By this I am referring to how many problems the development of Africa could solve, a development which AGW prevention acts aim to undermine; 1) the starving and disease, 2) if other developed countries are an example, gradually reduce the population size, and 3) help save the rainforests and other ecosystems as primitive methods of farming such as slash and burn are abandoned. Of course they would still need to follow some guidelines, those same that the other developed countries are trying to follow, with varying degrees of success.