Climate change has and does occur naturally! Why does that matter?

Yes, you've probably heard it already. The Earth's climate changes without human intervention and dramatically so. We've had five major ice-ages, including an event known as "snowball Earth", where, around 650 million years ago the Earth was completely frozen over, so that it was practically a snowball planet.

But, how could we know such things really occurred? Answer...science. The reason for these ice-ages are still open to some debate, but we have some pretty good ideas. The emergence of algae and forests, super-volcano eruptions, methane basins expelling their gases, asteroid strikes, orbital variations of our planet and solar cycles all are obvious suspects for why our planet warmed and cooled over many eras.

If we drill down in the ice of Greenland and take a sample of snow laid down many thousands of years ago, and drill down into the ice of Antarctica and take a sample of the snow/ice laid at the same time, analyse the ancient gas bubbles trapt in the ice and see a methane spike in both, we know we have a global methane event. Such large spikes can be caused by methane basins being emptied, perhaps by an Earthquake, etc. Likewise if we see ash, in both the same layer of the North and South, we have a global volcano, or fire.

Also, the ice cores show us pollen and seeds trapt in the ice, which can tell us that the atmosphere was warmer and allowing plant life to flourish.

So, science is what we use to know the climate can without man, without our cars or pollution.

But, what about know? Well, we still have science, and we still have ice-cores, and we have even more data.

Look up at the sky. Seems to go a long way, and our planet is seems pretty huge. Seems like a lot of atmosphere out there and not much of us to change it. Right?

Now take a deep breath. In that single breath, you just inhaled 7 atoms previously breathed by Albert Einstein. Take another breath. Now you took 7 atoms from Mick Jagger. Well in-fact, you are taking in, each time, 7 atoms from every human being that lived on the face of Earth. How do we know this? The reason this is true, is because there is 7 times more atoms in a lung full of air, then there are lungs-full of air in our atmosphere.

Our atmosphere is actually quite thin relative to the size of our Earth. And we know exactly how much atmosphere there is.

Also, we know exactly the composition of our atmosphere, no mystery there. And we know exactly how many barrels of oil we burn each month and exactly how much we are changing the atmosphere. How much Co2 and methane we are putting into it. That is no mystery either.

And we know the climate is fickle. It can be easily changed, as it has done so many times in the past. So, best not toy with it! But we are. And the math is rather simple.

Lets take another example. Could anything man-made make you sick? A glass of man-made dioxin as an afternoon drink will certainly kill you....but....humans have been getting sick naturally for millions of years! How could anything man-made make us sick?

This is, in a nutshell, the argument that humans can't cause climate change, because it always occurred naturally in the past. It an argument based in complete ignorance of the data.

The sun, our orbit and many other factors can change our climate, but the data doesn't point to any of those factors, and our science of the present is strong thank to our troops. The troops we should support. The hard-working scientific troops in Antarctica, Greenland and all other corners of our Earth that are dedicated to their field. People of all political persuasion, of all religions, of all races, colours and creeds.

To imagine a global hoax is to put a clothe bag over your head, a plug into your ears and a sleeping pill to dream a pleasant dream of ignorance. It is also an insult to the the men and woman that risk their lives in many harsh locations to do the job they love, or our benefit. To ignore them completely is reckless, at best.

The fact that well funded corporations can put so much doubt into the public arena is beyond exasperation. To cast doubt on people doing their jobs, is like casting doubt on the Doctor that tells you, you have cancer, and assuming they are only telling you such because they want to sell some medication. Good luck with that.