This is a repost of my rant on this issue from last year... Bottom line being that there's really not a lot of hard scientific evidence indicating global warming isn't just a natural progression in the global climate cycle. There have, in fact, been massive temp fluctuations all thru the planet's history.
It's well documented and established that we've had multiple peaks and valleys in the global temperature and climate over millions of years. We've had more than one ice age and subsequent global warmings for exmple, and there weren't any cars or factories on the face of the earth. People should definitely research the subject a bit more before you get to worried about the hype.
There's a good article
here on Paleotempestology. Quote:
"
There are millennial-scale variations in hurricane activity. Our data suggest that there are much longer cycles superimposed on the decadal cycles," says Liu. "We've had a quiet period, an active period, and for the past 1,000 years, we're back to a relatively quiet period."
Then there's William Gray, who is apparently one of the leading authorities on this type of thing in a
Discover interview:
"
You don’t believe global warming is causing climate change?
G: No. If it is, it is causing such a small part that it is negligible. I’m not disputing that there has been global warming. There was a lot of global warming in the 1930s and ’40s, and then there was a slight global cooling from the middle ’40s to the early ’70s. And there has been warming since the middle ’70s, especially in the last 10 years. But this is natural, due to ocean circulation changes and other factors. It is not human induced.
That must be a controversial position among hurricane researchers.
G: Nearly all of my colleagues who have been around 40 or 50 years are skeptical as hell about this whole global-warming thing. But no one asks us. If you don’t know anything about how the atmosphere functions, you will of course say, “Look, greenhouse gases are going up, the globe is warming, they must be related.” Well, just because there are two associations, changing with the same sign, doesn’t mean that one is causing the other."
The tendency for media and various sundry activist groups to blame global warming for any number of the world's ills has a much stronger base in politics than it does science. Global warming is a scapegoat for agenda groups and an excuse for research budgets across the globe.
(Global warming is a pet peeve of mine in case you can't tell.)