[mjbeswick]

The irony is that people are forgetting where all that carbon came from in the first place, before plants captured it from the atmosphere!

Humans are contributing to climate change, but the climate had constantly changed throughout history. During the peak to the Roman empire, parts of the Mediterranean are estimated to have been 2°C hotter than today. The climate cooling is one of the likely contributing factors behind the collapse of the Roman empire, as agricultural output fell as a result.

Climate change is bad for current human settlement and farming, as what is currently primar land for living and farming will change. Such a charge would have dangerous global economic and political consequences.

[defrost]

> parts of the Mediterranean are estimated to have been 2°C hotter than today.

That's not a change in global average tempreture though, that's a local variation.

> but the climate had constantly changed throughout history.

'History' is written history, and no, global climatic parameters haven't changed in written history.

I believe you might be thinking of geological time - and yes, on long time scales climate has changed - and changed with cause just as a stone moves subject to force.

In this particular moment of time climate has started to change within the past century after remaining stable for tens of thousands of years and the root cause of that change is human activity changing the insulation properties of the atmosphere.

[mjbeswick]

There is historical data which suggests that there has been two ice ages in the time of modern humans. The climate only appears to be stable when observed over a short timespan.

I don't think there is any doubt that human activity is contributing to climate change.

It's ironic that modern civilization and population numbers aren't possible without fossil fuels, but their use will ultimately cause it's demise.

[jmopp]

Consider that during the first ice age, humans had not left Africa - and during the second ice age, much of North America and Europe were uninhabitable