When I hear or read these "global warming" prophets of doom, I can only smile and shake my head in sadness.
Why ?
They will tout "The hottest year since 1990!" and I will argue "so what?"
Was 2008 hotter than 1492 ?
Was 1861 cooler than 1776 ?
The point is these "Prophets of Doom" only read the data they want to read, and thump their own "Bible" and attack anybody who contradicts them very aggressively.
Why ? Because they KNOW they are pushing a very questionable argument, one which is SO EASY to debunk !
Governments have tarted keeping reliable records of temperatures, precipitation etc. only around 1840-1860.
Before then, data is fragmentary, often unreliable or barely usable as a "historian's reference"
but barely acceptable by climatologists and paleo-climatologists (those who study weather and its patterns in ancient times).
The study of tree rings is a much more reliable source in these cases.
What has paleo-climatology told us ?
1) Britain and Scandinavia were much warmer 100BC than they are now: evidence ?
They grew oats and barley in Scandinavia, and cultivated grapes in Britannia to make wine;
both forms of agriculture would be impossible these days, and certainly NOT because of global warming !
2) The last Ice Age came to an end around 10-12.000 BC, that's what school books teach our kids.
Since then, would you say climate has warmed, or cooled down ?

I'd say that since the Ice Age... ENDED... climate must have warmed up indeed !
And which were the causes of global warming ?

Not modern industry !!!
Quite simply, our planet is heated by the sun and kept warm and cozy by the atmosphere.
If the sun has sunspot tantrums, the warming pattern WILL change.
In a wonderful series of slides that Verslagen once linked us to, it was made evident Planet Earth is subject to three global weather patterns;
- one, which is about 120.000 years long,
- one, which is about 40.000 years long,
- one, which is about 2400 years long.
But I DID manage to find a little something browsing through Wikipedia...

Most unfortunately for professional skiers, and most fortunately for professional surfers,
we are now living in a time when these three patterns are overlapping AND coming to their individual climax at the same time;
in other words, the effects of each is summed to the effects of the others.
In short, the planet will heat up (through no fault of the industry) for the next 50, maybe 100 years, and then go through some 2000 years of global cooling,
and in 2000 years archaeologists clad in furs will wonder in utter disbelief at pictures of bikini-clad surfer girls
and wonder how these maidens could brave the oceans populated by hairy sea lions and woolly whales...

Get my point ?