Hot Air Perhaps?
Ah Global warming ... climate change.
How I'd like to believe everyone, but one can't help being suspicious of any authority that makes money by touting theory after theory.
I haven't been able to read all the scientific papers out there, but as an ex graduating Geologist, actually a Geomorphologist, I tend to look around me, and reflect on known facts.
In Geological terms, as has been mentioned on this thread, our planet is presently in its fourth interglacial period ... ie things will be warming for the next few thousand years until we turn the corner and the fifth cold cycle returns.
Not so long ago, the English channel was frozen over, but it melted long before any humans were around to crank up their gas guzzling cars, or began pumping oil from the middle east.
The coal that was mined in Nottingham, Wales and Kent, was laid down in the carboniferous period and originated when the area we now inhabit was a tropical jungle, certainly a good tad warmer than even the worst forecasts for this part of the globe suggest, so on that basis one might feel that in the longer term, temperatures have been getting lower.
We all know about the frost fairs that were held on the Thames in the 1600s, something not seen since, and once again there has been little carbon emission from the eighteenth and nineteenth century Londoners.
Neither have I heard anything from the experts about the sea of plankton that can be seen from space and which contribute some 25% to the oxygen content of the atmosphere.
Indeed, I have to say that I take the view that only a creature as conceited as man could really believe he can have any significant effect on the natural temperature cycle that has been taking place on this planet for the past four or five billion years.
Nevertheless, as has been said here ... it can't do any of harm if we make efforts to reduce our pollution simply on the basis I like the area where I live to look clean and tidy.
Best wishes to all heli men.
Dennis Kenyon.