http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,346310,00.html

“U.N. Forecasters: Global Temperatures to Decrease
Average global temperatures in 2008 are forecast to be lower than in previous years, thanks to the cooling effect of the ocean current in the Pacific, U.N. meteorologists say.

The World Meteorological Organisation’s secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, said it was likely that La Nina, an abnormal cooling of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, would continue into the summer.

If the forecast holds true, global temperatures will not have risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.”

This is based on an Israeli study and I am not surprised.
Karin Kloosterman

As for whether the planet will “heal itself,” that’s certainly a possibility. NASA’s aqua satellite (launched in 2002) actually recently returned with data showing that the earth has actually been cooling, not warming up, since the turn of the century. This throws a bit of a wrench into the global warming theory and the computer models many scientists have been using to predict it. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html

I think a major point I was aiming at with my article above is that we should not be hasty in our approach to such issues; rather, we should wait until there is more conclusive scientific evidence in either direction before making drastic policy changes that can end up harming us as well as others.

Consider, for example, the “global cooling” scare in the 1970s. Here is an article from the April 28, 1975 issue of Newsweek, in which various climate changes led many scientists to conclude that global cooling was a very real threat: http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf Consider the implications to our economy and living standards had we followed the advice of these alarmist (and quite respectable) scientists at the time or pursued some of their wackier policy suggestions (e.g. pouring soot on the polar ice caps to melt them) to curb drastic climate changes.

Right now, efforts to curb man-made carbon emissions, which have been increasing but have not been conclusively shown to be the cause of recent climate change, would stifle the economy of developing countries and thereby condemn the poor people living there to literal starvation. I for one would like to have more accurate and better scientific data before supporting such efforts. There are very serious consequences of the global warming movement, and erring on the side of caution may not mean “going green” just in case the threat is real.