NASA has also recently noted that even Mars is undergoing a warming period. I guess took only one year for those solar rovers to destroy the whole planet!
Seriously, the question isn't whether the Earth is undergoing a warming cycle. The question is if human activity is making it worse. Some people even theorize that based on geological evidence, the Earth *should* be approaching an ice age right about now, and industrial activity is the only thing keeping us from freezing.
There are some "facts" that the whackos on both sides of the argument should think about though...
First, the last 200 or so years have been extremely moderate. We have firm historical records of a time when it was much much colder (ice so thick on the Thames river that they could hold a winter market and festival on the river), and records of a time when there was a warm agriculture-friendly climate on Greenland and Iceland.
We know that there should be swings in temperature, but we're not putting the research into important areas. First, we need to pin down rates of change and the actual trends a lot better than we can now. That means investment in sensing technology and raw analysis. Instead, they've dipped a thermometer into the water for a couple of years and declared that the earth is about to die because of freon. That's a pretty damn big step IMO. Second, we ought to do a little research on how we're going to adapt to the changes. Run some what-if scenarios, and see where we need to put government measure in place to minimize the effects. We already know that the earth is warming and probably will continue to do so regardless of what we humans do, so we probably ought to prepare for the effects. The Katrina aftermath is a prime example of where we're falling down on these efforts. It was postulated decades ago that global warming would probably cause more violent storms, yet we haven't engineered more robust storm defenses in our coastal areas. Why not? Because they're too busy bickering over what's causing the global warming before they've even characterized the effects to any degree of accuracy or completeness.
The people who want "something done" have personal agendas and they're using the global warming threat to force through things that they want anyhow. They would be just as well off spending time convincing the govt to take early measures to deal with the inevitable problems that will come about through natural cycles. The other non-obvious measures can wait until we know what we're really trying to accomplish. I say "non-obvious" because some things such as reducing soot emissions, ought to be done anyhow 'cause soot and other pollution in the air is unhealthy. But to force through massive and expensive changes that may or may not actually DO anything, ought to wait until the research is done.
