The crux of the biscuit is.......are we humanoids directly CAUSING the climate to change? As redanman implied, none of us are in a position to make broad claims about global warming based on our short stay here on the planet....yet, we aren't exactly the dumbest species to walk the earth, either.
Check this out. A couple years back when I was still going to school I took an environmental studies/statistics class. We all know how irrational environmentalists can be, making broad claims about HOW THINGS ARE without any basis to back up their claims. It was very good for me to learn about the nuts and bolts of these issue--examine data, etc.--look at this stuff from a scientific standpoint.
One of the exercises we did was to examine rainfall, something we have plenty of here in Oregon. In the mid 90's, I think '94 and '95, we got absolutely pounded. People in downtown Portland were sand bagging the waterfront preparing for the river to crest. If you've ever been to Portland you will understand how much water it would take to crest the banks. Anyways, when we took the data from these two years and compared it to everything else that we have gathered over the past 75-100 years, we discovered that we had TWO 1 in 10,000 year occurances BACK TO BACK. I'm no Einstein, but this seems to be quite a rare thing to have happen. Maybe when you stretch the timeline out further, as redanman implied, it will not appear to be such a big deal, or a significant event......but are we to ALWAYS believe that it was just a fluke? Are we always to believe that we ARE NOT changing our climate, simply because we cannot put all of the pieces to the puzzle together???
Do me wrong once, bad on you
Do me wrong twice, bad on me