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Well its not a myth, it is happening but the point is that its not a product of mankind and is also beyond our control.

Without going into a load of scientific detail (though you can look it up if you want), I want to make a couple of statements.

1. Release of CO2 into the atmosphere by human activities is miniscule compared to that which is released naturally by the oceans.

2. Tests on ice core samples from the arctic show that changes in atmsopheric concentrations of CO2 plotted on a graph actually LAG changes in global temperature by around 200 years. Temerature affects CO2, not the other way around.

3. It is recently been shown that the temperature of the Earth is more closely related to changes in magnetic activity in the sun which happen over a 100,000 cycle.

4. Carbon, like everything else in nature exists in an equilibrium. When CO2 levels rise the growth of plant life is encouraged often in previously inhospitibale environments. This additional plant life soaks up the excess CO2 and equilibrium is once more maintained.

Ask yourself this, what caused all the big ice prehistoric ice ages to happen? There were no car or factories burning oil back then - but they still happened. Why? Because there is a far greater power at work, namely the sun. We are currently in what is known as an interglacial period (i.e. between ice ages), we are approaching the peak of a warming period and will then start to cool off towards another ice age in a few thousand years. There is nothing we can do about this either, when you are talking about controlling enviroments on a planetary scale we simply do not have the resources to do anything about it.

So why all the fuss? There are a variety of reasons, usually politically or commercially motivated to spread panic about environmental issues. Ever since the 60s people have been becoming more aware of mankinds impact on the environment, and yes we have created a few messes in our time, and any shift in the global conciousness will always be jumped upon by certain people, whether it is politicians looking for votes and taxes, the media sensationalising a story to get more ratings or businesses looking to cash in on so called "green products".

We are quite correct in our beliefs that we should be doing more to look after our planet but we should not be misguided. In the next 50 years we will have gotten fuel cell technology developed to an extent where it will be powering pretty much everything and the hydrocarbon debate will be redundant. In the meantime we are barking up the wrong tree with carbon, we should spend our time tackling more pressing issues such as the effects of GM plant material, or the release of toxic chemicals into the food chain.

Above all we should remember that the Earth has survived for hundreds of million years without us, in far more extreme conditions that we are seeing now. What makes us think we have the power to save it, or even to destroy it?

Learn more about this author, Saul Shackleford.
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