Hmmm, Global warming is a side effect of climate change? Actualy it is a side effect of trying to reduce polution.
Years ago factories and power plants etc had no regulations about what polutants they could pump out into the air. This was causing a cooling of the worlds climate due to the vast amount of air born polution acting as a heat shield and reflecting the suns heat back out into space. So the world was slowly but surely getting cooler because less heat was making it to us.
Then the governments decided to step in and stop all this polution as it is obviously bad for the world (something I for once agree with) and as the carbon scrubbers and more efficient processes were introduced to industry the level of polution in the atmosphere started to reduce, thus allowing more of the suns heat to reach the earths surface, thus causing the world to warm up. We are still as yet to reach conditions that will match pre-industrialisation.
So, clean up the air, the earth gets warmer, to cool us down mess up the air (very simplified view of the situation but not far from accurate). I remember sitting in school as a small kid being taught about the greenhouse effect of polution, how it was trapping heat in the atmosphere and was going to cause us all sort of problems int he future. I have always had a very logical brain and asked why if the polution was trapping heat was it still allowing the suns heat to get in thus making the world warm up and was told not to talk rubbish as I was too young to understand (my next question of why if I was too young to understand was the teacher trying to tell us about it got me sent to the headmaster for being cheaky, never start a logic argument with a 6 year old

). Actually my question was right as the polution was reflecting more heat from the sun back out into space than we were producing and trapping inside down here.
Climate change is actually a very natural thing, the world does go through cycles (hence the ice age and subsequent warming of the world). It will carry on no matter what we do. If you want to blame humans for it try looking at the fact that the last erruption of mount Etna put more polutants into the air than the developed world did in the previous 50 years. We may be having a small effect on the process in terms of the timescales but we are not the cause and we never will be. Trying to stop climate change is a pointless task and a waste of time, but that is my opinion based on the rubber band theory of natural occourances (the longer you try and stop a natural process from happening the more nature is stretched out and under strain so the more violent that process will be when it finally does happen and naturs snaps back into it's correct state).
Yes, we should stop using fossil fuels, not because they cause polution, but mainly because they are a finite resource that will run out one day. We are currently at the point where we MUST find an alternative that is viable else we face disaster. we should look after the world and stop dumping chemicals etc, not because the world is going to warm up but because I happen to like nature and the beauty of it and I want my kids to feel the same.
I wish the scientists and politicians would stop using what is a natural process to try and raise votes and blame everyone else for the problems of the world. Be sensible, tell us to stop poluting because they want to keep the world a nice place to live and not a major chemical dump, tell us to drive less because it will slow the rate of oil depletion not because the carbon emmisions are going to kill us. Stop telling us to wrap our kids in cotton wool and not expose them to anything like dirt (my generation grew up playing in the mud and enjoying it, and we are healthier than any child these days whose parent freaks if they graze their knee and covers them in disinfectant every night).
Sorry, my rant is now over

'99 3.2V6 Auto Limited.
Some day it will be how I want it to be...