[Tim Skellett]

Originally Posted by Shelley_c

The earth has been going through extreme climate changes for billions of years.

You could also say that at one point the Earth was a molten sphere, and one day it will be engulfed by solar breakdown, and one day it will be a frozen sphere.
None of that really tackles the point, does it? The point is that global climate change is affecting us now, and will do so much more soon, and most of the ways it affects us are and/or wil be negative.

You don't try shrugging off disasterous droughts by saying droughts have happened before.

You don't ignore hurricane warnings because much worse hurricanes happened 100 million years ago, do you?

It really makes no sense at all to shrug off global warming simply because say for example the Earth was hotter 200 million years ago, just as you don't shrug off a mugger in a dark alley threatening you just because the crime rates in Rio 10 years ago were far worse.

Human contribution doesn't help

Most scientists working in climatology would disagree with you.

Originally Posted by carpefile

Obviously there is climatic change, there always has been, always will be.

Obviously there have always been hurricanes and always will be. That does not excuse ignoring hurricane warnings; nor does it excuse you from looking at anything you do that exacerbates hurricane damage.

To say man has a significant impact on it shows a lot of arrogance on man's part.

Not true. It can be simple, sober, scientific analysis.

A single volcanic eruption puts more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than man does in an entire year.

Not true; the volcanic eruption has to be above a certain size to do that.

Into addition, we simply don't have such large volcanic eruptions happening every year (thank heavens), and if we pump greenhouse gases into the atmoshere in high enough quantities to have a significant effect, then we are adding to the problem.

Adding to a problem is never a good idea.