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Global warming has become the subject of a great deal of media hysteria over the last few years and has even been elevated to something of a religion, and it is time to look at the subject of global warming rationally, logically, and without using loaded words such as crisis' or even problem'.

There are several questions that need to be examined. Firstly, is global warming really happening? Secondly, is it caused by human activity. Thirdly, If it is happening is it bad, and if so, in what way?

Is Global Warming Really Happening?

The answer to this is yes, and there is very solid consensus among scientist about this. The earth's global average temperature is a measurement and not an article of faith, and we can see quite clearly that since the measurements started to be made, the global average temperature is increasing. For a graph of global temperatures for the last 140 years, see: http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mo d/resource/view.php?id=171495

G lobal warming is not new, however. In fact, the earth has been slowly warming up since the last glaciations peaking around 18,000 years ago. Before that there was a what is colloquially termed an ice age, and before that ice age there was a period of global warming, which in turn was preceded by another period of glaciations. The earth has warmed and cooled over and over again, and was warming and cooling long before humans made any impact on the climate.

Geologists tell us that we are most probably in an ice age that has lasted so far for around two million years. (They define an ice age as a period when there is ice at the poles.) Within the ice age there are glaciations (what non-Geologists call ice ages) and inter-glacial warm periods. At the present time we are almost certainly in an inter-glacial warm period. See, for example: http://www.globalchange.umich. edu/globalchange1/current/lect ures/kling/paleoclimate/index. html

For a graph of these periods, including the current time, see:

Geologists and climate scientists have a number of ways of estimating the temperature long before thermometers were invented. During the current ice age, estimates are made based on air pockets in ice core samples. The data are not clear-cut, and estimates of actual temperatures and time-lines vary, but there is consensus that global warming and cooling are natural cycles.

The scientists agree that before the current ice age there was a period of warmth that lasted hundreds of millions of years, and before that there was another ice age. During

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