Global warming? No, actually we're cooling, claim scientists

[spin]

53. It was first called global warming. ...

but many global warming rallies occurred in record cold temperatures and consequently were ridiculed even by the media.

Climate change is a far better term as it can be used to describe any unusual weather event such as a colder than usual winter or an extremely warm summer. A rash of tornadoes or a hurricane season with a large number of strong hurricanes can be attributed to climate change.

History proves that our climate is always changing. At one time the Sahara Desert was a great place to live.

Sahara Desert Was Once Lush and Populated
Bjorn Carey | July 20, 2006 10:07am ET

At the end of the last Ice Age, the Sahara Desert was just as dry and uninviting as it is today. But sandwiched between two periods of extreme dryness were a few millennia of plentiful rainfall and lush vegetation.

During these few thousand years, prehistoric humans left the congested Nile Valley and established settlements around rain pools, green valleys, and rivers.

The ancient climate shift and its effects are detailed in the July 21 issue of the journal Science.
http://www.livescience.com/4180-sahara-desert-lush-populated.html

Both the American Revolution and the French Revolution occurred during a "Little Ice Age."

The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period (Medieval Climate Optimum).[1] While it was not a true ice age, the term was introduced into the scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939.[2] It has been conventionally defined as a period extending from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries,[3][4][5] or alternatively, from about 1350 to about 1850,[6] though climatologists and historians working with local records no longer expect to agree on either the start or end dates of this period, which varied according to local conditions. NASA defines the term as a cold period between AD 1550 and AD 1850 and notes three particularly cold intervals: one beginning about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, each separated by intervals of slight warming.[7] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report considered the timing and areas affected by the LIA suggested largely independent regional climate changes, rather than a globally synchronous increased glaciation. At most there was modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during the period.[8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

It's hard to attribute such climate changes to pollution caused by mankind. Even before we evolved our earth had many climate changes.

Snowball Earth

The snowball Earth hypothesis posits that the Earth's surface became entirely or nearly entirely frozen at least once, some time earlier than 650 Ma (million years ago). Proponents of the hypothesis argue that it best explains sedimentary deposits generally regarded as of glacial origin at tropical paleolatitudes, and other otherwise enigmatic features in the geological record. Opponents of the hypothesis contest the implications of the geological evidence for global glaciation, the geophysical feasibility of an ice- or slush-covered ocean,[2][3] and the difficulty of escaping an all-frozen condition. There are a number of unanswered questions, including whether the Earth was a full snowball, or a "slushball" with a thin equatorial band of open (or seasonally open) water.
The geological time frames under consideration come before the sudden multiplication of life forms on Earth known as the Cambrian explosion, and the most recent snowball episode may have triggered the evolution of multi-cellular life on Earth. Another, much earlier and longer, snowball episode, the Huronian glaciation, which occurred 2400 to 2100 Ma may have been triggered by the oxygen catastrophe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth

Realize that I am not denying that the enormous amount of pollution our civilization is throwing into our atmosphere might be causing some significant changes in our climate. Even if it isn't, it still causes significant health problems to those exposed to it. I was born in Pittsburgh Pa and my mother often told me that while she lived there she would have to often wash her window curtains as they had turned black from the soot from the steel mills. There were times long ago when the street lights were turned on at noon time because the pollution blocked out the sun.

Pittsburgh

The air in this steel town was once so polluted with coal and coke soot that streetlights were sometimes turned on at high noon. Now, much of Pittsburgh's pollution comes from Ohio, West Virginia and further west, according to Neil Donahue, who studies transport pollution at Carnegie Mellon University.

I grew up in a industrial town in northeastern Ohio. The fumes from the factories were so strong that it ate paint off the cars of the plant workers in the parking lots.

Therefore I am a strong supporter of efforts to find more environmentally friendly means to power our industry than fossil fuels. There are a lot of viable alternatives that are being developed today but unfortunately it may be impossible to greatly reduce our dependence on fossil fuels for another 20 to 30 years. All efforts to find better solutions should be financed and supported and if developed the technology should be shared with the world with little emphasis on financial profit.

What I fear is that the backers of "global warming" or "climate change" are developing a religion. While this approach does garner considerable support for the movement to reduce pollution and the consequent damage to our environment, it may hinder good science. Intermixing politics and science is a poor idea just as intermixing science with religion.

The bottom line is I feel that we both agree that our dependence on fossil fuels has to change. No matter how you look at it pollution has a negative effort on our environment. Our technology is advancing to the point that we can leave this addition behind and find a cheaper and far more efficient method of generating power that will be far healthier both to us and our planet.