What do you think? Share your thoughts!

www.bellaonline.com/articles/art60737.asp

My personal opinion is that the Earth is going through a warm cycle at present- but the actions of humanity are exacerbating it. Due to the money involved it serves certain businesses and individuals to vehemently take sides on the "Global Warming Debate" to make money off of it. A bit like the diet industry really

Global warming is definitely here, without question. If you look at the overall shifts in the climate and weather, it is pretty apparent that summers are getting hotter and hotter while winters are getting colder and colder.

In the case of global warming per se shouldn't that be summers getting hotter and winters getting milder?

Ian, it should more rightly be called Global Climate Change. Global Warming is an unfortunate misnomer.

The crux of the matter seems to be "Is humanity responsible for the climate change?" My view is we are going through a warm spell at the moment, but the greenhouse gases our current civilisation is producing are exacerbating the temperature rise.

According to the cyclical nature of natural climate change we are at the beginning of a mini -or not so mini - ice age!

The problem as i see it - we don't have adequate data to make a determination if this is part of a cycle, or something we created.

I am content to think we are in an ice age intermission and that we are also helping things along by changing the composition of the greenhouse gases and ozone layer.

Great points everyone! Agreed Jilly that this is global climate change, NOT global warming. Mother Nature, in the end knows how to take care of business, so whatever she needs to do in the larger span of time she will do. Thanks for these highly intelligent perspectives!