The thing to pay attention to is the rate of temperature rise as opposed to absolute temperature rise. The rate of the global temperature increase is unprecedented in history. As pointed out by NASA in Eric's quote, "The rapid rise in global temperature is unmatched in the last million years." If there is any deception about global warming, it is coming from the so called scientists who are on the payroll of Esso, Shell, GM, Ford, etc.

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Ice core samples give pretty accurate data on many climate data points. CO2 for example. Historical CO2 Records from the Law Dome DE08, DE08-2, and DSS Ice Cores

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But on the other hand, Eric:

Dr. John S. Theon:
Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist, Dr. John S. Theon, the former boss of global warming alarmist James Hansen of NASA, rebukes him declaring “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results."

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Without supporting data from Hansen, he is just stating opinion.

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Dr. Hansen is a foremost climatologist, and very aware of the warming effects. He is on the leading edge of global wamring research.

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If you were a scientist, knowing that the planet is approximately five billion years old and used the words 'last 1 million years' and 'unmatched' in the same sentence you should be laughed out of academia. That's only 1/10th of 1 percent of planetary time, there's no basis to panic from that, to take note of and compare with other periods of time and determine the root cause and future actions sure, but that's all.

Is global warming occurring? Yes, it's been observed with scientifically accepted measuring methods. Has it occurred in our past? Yes, and on a higher gradient than has been observed in the last million years on both the increase or decrease side. 99.9% or more of everything you will ever read about global warming is political in nature and has nothing to do with hard science, the numbers can be tweaked any which way you want them to be when you look at them from a different angle, but not from one which simply wants to understand what the numbers are saying and how they're related to each other. This bull crap about human interest needs to be removed from the picture before the hard science can be studied.

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For much of th 4.5 billion years you keep briging up, the Earth was uninhabitable, so that argument is irrelevant. Humans have only appeared in the last million years or so, thus that is the important perios to look at. No, you would not be laughed at. This is important. Further, records show the most distinct rise in global temperatures during the last 100 years, to correlate with the period of the industrial revolution. And, in the last few decades, that rise in temperature has increased even faster. The numbers aren't lying. This is hard science.

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Can you post a link to this data please? I was not aware of this and always heard the opposite.

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File:Phanerozoic Climate Change.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Geologic temperature record - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's Wiki science mind you.

I'm not trying to defend our environmental responsibility or deny global warming is occurring. But it is a plain and simple fact that we can not possible directly cause an absolutely massive change in the global temperature, we can at BEST influence an existing change in the system which we are of course doing.

At the end of the day, there are MANY competing theories, some better than others, and the truth is that not a single one of them contains the whole picture and only time and study will provide more information about what is actually occurring, and more importantly why. Even within individual models of climate change the number of variables are so high we really only have the vaguest of clues as to what's going on.

Trying to conserve and use energy resources better is the in the best interest of both people and the environment overall. But all the sensationalism on every side of the global warming question just makes me absolutely sick.

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I don't think there were many humans 300 million years ago. What happened to the masters of the Earth from that time? Here's a hint: you can see them only in museums now. The last graph from your "Wiki" link shows something interesting: in the last 10,000 years, the period in which humans made their most dramatic progress, and spread throughout the world, invented languages, mathematics, engineering and so forth, the worlds temperature has been very stable, and cool. That is, until the last 150 years, that correlates perfectly with the beginning of the industrial revolution. During that period, fossil fuels began to be used for the first time in Earth's history. The graph from that period forward only goes up. And the closer to our present time, the faster the graph rises.

Global warming makes sense, not just from a historical standpoint, but also from a physical standpoint. The occurrence of other phenomena that affects Earth's temp does not mean that these effects, man made, cannot produce a change. A younger Earth, with much more volcanic activity and more acidic atmosphere has little in common with Earth today..Once one understands the principles involved, then he can see more clearly how this activity is affecting our climate, and how this correlates perfectly with historical data. The data confirms the theory; our activities are clearly affecting a change in global climate.

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Correlation is not data. It's a link between data sets... In a system which we don't fully understand perhaps we're just missing the data set that correlates more strongly to the true cause? If you look at the graphs on a gross scale, we don't even make a visible effect on it without magnification. Do we effect it statistically, of course. Are we the cause of it on a global scale? Absolutely not, and that can be emphatically stated without contention.

Global warming is occurring, man is influencing it, not the direct cause of the trend. It's a global system seeking entropy nothing more, and we don't understand even a fraction of all the influencing effects especially with an aging ecological system, to state otherwise is irresponsible from a scientific standpoint. Ignoring the data is just as irresponsible, which is why we should be (and are) starting to put some effort to reduce our perceived effects on our environment.

The political and media sensationalism surrounding every facet of our environment is nothing more than an extension of our basic self preservation tendancies starting to kick in on a larger scale. If we do everything we possibly can to understand our effect on the environment, undo what we've done and stabilize the existing system for the next few hundred thousand years we probably still wouldn't be able to stop the existing trend. Should we try? Suuuuuure why not, it's our existence that's really at stake here not the worlds. Even something as bad as what happened to the Dinosaurs or even earlier worse mass extinctions were completly 'natural' in origin. Trust me, if one little species like man is snufffed out, the planet will go on juuuuuuuuuuuuuust fine without us. The alarmism is our own self conscious catching up with us.

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Who said correlation is data? Certainly not me. But the data does correlate to the rise in burning of fossel fuels, and it is irresponsible to ignor that. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The atmospheric content of CO2 is rising, and it's due to the activities of man. As a result of the increased greenhouse gas, global temperature is rising. If you have a better reason for the rise, which correlates perfectly with the increased greenhouse gas, then let's hear it. This is the most widely accepted theory by atmospheric scientists, governments, NASA, US Department of Defense, State Department, etc.

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Those are, of coarse, not linear timescale charts so it is hard to compare the rate of temp rise using them directly. I think the human race needs to err on the side of caution since the stakes are so high.
Shall we talk about H1N1 now?

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Yes C02 content is rising, and it is in PART because of man, the global sources of C02 and the Co2 cycle in general isn't well understood.

As a result of the increased greenhouse gas the temperature is rising FASTER it's not the cause of the inherent temperature increase it's only a part of it.

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Rising CO2 is MOSTLY due to the burning of fossel fuels. And it is extermely likely that it is causing the rise in global temperatures.

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