As I understand it, man is causing 'global warming' by burning, either fully or partially, vast quantities of hydrocarbons, mostly in the form of oil and coal, thus releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide and water vapor and some other stuff into the atmosphere. Again, as I understand it, these gases are 'greenhouse gases' in that they trap heat from the sun, not letting it radiate back into space and thus gradually raising the temperature of the atmosphere.
To make matters worse, not only is mankind releasing huge quantities of these gases into the atmosphere but he is also destroying large tracts of vegetation which is the mechanism by which these greenhouse gases are extracted from the atmosphere and locked back into solid form.
Do I have the basics right, so far?
If so then the inescapable implication is this; Long ago, when the oil and coal we are currently burning was living plant life, the atmosphere of earth must have been much, much warmer than it currently is. And it must have been cooling more or less steadily, since the beginning of plant life, until man came on the scene and started messing up the whole thing by re-introducing all that carbon back into the atmosphere.
Does the available evidence show this?
I have been told that the earth has undergone several Ice ages. I cannot recall any explanation of why they each stopped. By all the mechanisms being used to blame man for global warming it would seem they should have gone on forever. Especially when you add in the extra reflectivity from all that snow.
Might not there be some justification for the concept that we might be staving off a new ice age by our fossil fuel consumption? That instead of causing gross global over heating, we are simply stopping the cooling trend.
Might it not be that given the rather large global temperature changes that have been clearly going on since way back before we were burning fossil fuels, the effect of man's activity on the atmosphere is likely to be essentially unnoticeable?
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