[RantingSquirrel]

Originally Posted by ChasCreek

After seeming various arguments for both sides, I must admit that I do feel that it is a natural occurence, a cycle in solar activity etc.

However we have been damaging the enviromnet in many different ways for a long time and even if what we have been doing has only been a small part of the whole we still need to do something about our way of living / treating the planet and a lot of the 'actions' being undertaken / proposed under the 'global warming' banner will do good anyway for the planet irrespective of whether they actually are affecting global warming.

I do wonder sometimes if there are alterior motives in things. We had the 'cold war' with Russia back in the 1970's and we now know that Russia didn't have even a small percentage of the capabilities we were being led to believe they had.

I feel that governments need a focus for their population, in the 70's it was the cold war, now it is global warming. It would be far easier to get people to make changes to their lifestyles if you tell them you are going to turn the planet into a desert in less than a 100 years so better be greener, than to say well the global warming is mainly a natural thing, but well we are running out of natural resources so we need to change lifestyles. Shock tactics get responses.

So I think that we are probably only a factor in a much wider natural cycle, however the changes that are being made / will be made under the 'we are responsible for global warming' banner are for the good of the planet anyway so it's good propaganda. And of course the truth is that no one will really know the truth (rather like the cold war) for a good many years until governments can disclose the truth without having a backlash.

The sunpot/solar activity data has been hotly debated for a long time. Recent evidence (by the Royal Society) appears so show that the recent changes in temperatures are not related to solar activity...

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media...pa20071880.pdf

Kind regards