I read this sci-fi book once, and I wish I could remember the name. But basically this planet was naturally cooling at a rate that would kill off the intelligent people living there. So they tried to put more CO2's in the air, to increase the greenhouse effect.

The issue is not whether global warming is natural or man made, the issue is that it is harmful to us, and other creatures so intern to us again. We know this, it's not a mystery, and needs no "further investigation." We should do everything we can to reverse it, not because we "feel guilty" or because it's unnatural. We should, simply because we can and it benefits us.

We forget that we are from this earth. We are natural, therefore us warming the globe is obviously natural for us in this stage of our development.

Any time a creature becomes too dominant, it natural kills itself off simply by exhausting all of its resources. This is what we are on the cusp of doing (by cusp, I'm speaking relatively, considering how long intelligent people have been around.) The question is, have we become bright enough to navigate around this? Or are we really just dumb animals, who will use our resources, and warm the earth, until our near extinction?

I think the only problem with managing the environment is working ourselves into that environment, but it is also the solution.

What I mean is, when we think about managing the environment, what is most important? To us, it is anything that deals with our existance. Sure, we look at the polar bear population, and say that it looks bad, and it's probably due to global warming, but really what we are concerned about is ourselves. If the food chain falls apart, we will suffer. We try to keep things together because it might someday become a problem for man kind, not just the rest of the animals.

But then, we are taking only one natural state of the planet and trying to preserve it. Look at Mars, there are no living things there, and so far we cannot tell wether there were living things there at one point or not. There was flowing water on the surface, CO2 up the wazoo, which is great for plant life, and now look at it. It's cold as hell, and dry. It got that way naturally though. If intelligent life were to have evolved there, would they still be fighting nature to stay alive?

I think the problem is that we assume the planet was created for us rather than assuming the planet created us along it's natural cycle, and is now doing something natural, but not benificial to life.

We know that we are contributing to global warming. What we do not know is whether we are the sole cause of global warming. Remember, the planet has gone through an ice age before, and dinosaurs didn't drive Hummers.

What should be done to fight global warming, is to levy taxes on all items that are inefficiently emitting co2 (example: cars that get less than 20 mpg), and simultaneously increase subsidies for technologies like solar and wind power.

Once solar, wind and other alternative energy technologies mature, the cost will go down, which will allow them to compete in a free market with oil.

And once alternative energies are able to compete in a free market with oil, we will be able to pass this technology along to developing countries.

Just because you don't know everything about something doesn't mean you shouldn't try. We know that CO2 emissions contribute to global warming so we can certainly cut down on those. Other methods of dealing with the issue, like trying to bring nutrient rich water to the surface of the ocean to help the growth of plankton may have negative impacts on the ecosystem and should be studied first.

In general we should be doing everything we can to use alternative sources of energy and increased efficiency to help fight global warming.

I think that arogance, or an agenda, would lead someone to believe otherwise.