This year 2010, the UK has had Snow!, it's caused chaos because people are not used to it. A recent survey said that the number of people who believe in global warming has fallen by 20%.
50 years ago in January, February and March, Snow and Ice were the expected weather conditions and so people of my generation just grin and bare it, dress for the weather and just get on with it.

My question is

Is Global Warming Fact or Fiction, or is the earth just going through a another slight change as it has done several thousands of times in the last 6 million years?

How do you think the weather has changed in the last 10 years where you live?

The North East USA where I grew up is having a very bad winter. I don't think Washington D.C. has seen snow like this since the days of the horse and carriage.
I know the South American glaciers are receeding, but I think it has more to do with nature than polution.
Air polution is a terible thing and needs to be dealt with from a health point of view.
However I don't think polution has caused gobal warming.

To determine the general trend of temperature through the ages, you surely need to plot the moving average of the temperatures over periods of a good many years ( at least the last 30 years, I'd say, and maybe the last 50).

Although thermometers have been around for three or four hundred years, I think it's doubtful whether much reliance can be placed on meteorological data collected before the twentieth century, even if such data exist (and for most of the world's surface, there's practically no information at all).
Consequently, I don't think we can draw any infallible conclusions about whether the earth today is warmer or colder than it has been, on average, during the time since human beings first appeared.

We can, however, get some general impressions from historical records. We can be pretty sure that at the end of the thirteenth century the north of Europe was generally warmer than it is now. There are records of vines being grown in England as far north as Lincolnshire (there was a vineyard in the garden of the episcopal palace at Lincoln), and the culmination of what was probably a long period of gradual warming was marked by cataclysmic storms on both coasts of the English Channel which must have been considerably worse than what we've seen more recently. The Great Storm of 1287 blew half of the Norman castle at Hastings into the sea, along with much of the cliff, and had long lasting effects on the coastline.

We can also be sure that this was followed by cooling, and that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe were very cold by any standards. There are reliable accounts of “frost fairs” on rivers in England and the Netherlands, and of the freezing up of waterways like the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus.

Wikipedia articles on the “Medieval Warm Period” and the “Little Ice Age” suggest that similar developments probably occurred at the same time in other parts of the world (though of course we have no records for much of the world, including Antarctica).

It seems that the climate does indeed change, in cycles of warming and cooling extending over several centuries. Within those cycles, there will no doubt be individual years or decades that buck the general trend.

My own impression is that we probably ARE in a cycle of gradual warming, which may have begun at some time around 1850 or before, and which may well continue for a century or two yet. But, like MsVikan, I don't think human activities have much if any effect on the temperature: the medieval bishops of Lincoln who grew vines in their gardens didn't get around their diocese in 4x4's or take jumbo jets to visit the Pope in Rome, and the population of the country was less than five per cent of what it is now.

Once I began to discover a set of parallel data posted by independent scientists not paid to come up with a particular result I soon realised we are basically being had. The financial consequences have been no different to anything the Mafia could have thought up- not just the taxes but the carbon credits and trading are no different to what Bernie Madoff did. Except because Al Gore invented it the UN decided to make it law.
The sooner the holes appear until there's nothing left to support it the sooner we may stop haemorraghing our hard earned money on a false cause.

Wasn't it great when William Shatner (Captain Kirk) said at the Closing Ceremony of the Winter Olympics that -30 degrees in Canada was a sign of global warming

Through the 70's 80's and 90's the planet was warming, not due to humans but due to the SUN. The rest of the solar system was warming as well (no humans to blame so not mentioned)
Since 1998 Things have reversed, the sun has cooled off and so is the rest of the solar system.
Since north and south america joined 5 million years ago the planet has been in a near constant ICE AGE interupted every 120,000 years by a 10,000-11,000 interglacial.
What we percieve as normal weather is in fact an abnormal blip that happens every 120,000 years.
And you might not like hearing this but the interglacial time is up, its closing time mates interglacial is over and 110,000 years of ice is here until the next interglacial.
OH and the nice warm current keeping western europe warm will divert south so western europe will be about 10c cooler in a decade or two!
You heard it here first the interglacial is over, no time for a maunder minimum or a younger dryas, time is up plain and simple for the interglacial!

Nightwind, I refer you to the winters in the 1950's/60's, Snow and Ice were expected and we took advantage of them for "Winter Games", Now we have just had a very cold winter and everyone was moaning "it's too cold" now we have had a few days where they are moaning "it's too hot"
I love the British Weather, you dress for the weather you think you'll get but its a 50/50 chance you will be right

Global Warming IMHO is young scientists who didn't expeirence the real winters and real summers in (at least) my living memory.

Global warming is a scam by scam artists sucking in scientists with grant money so they can con the world with a guilt complex and extort money from them one and all every which way!

You can tell when something is a crock of sh****te, when Politicians pick it up and run with it, sure to be bull and sure to cost you!

Knowing where to look is 99% of the answer!

But asking the right question is the foundation of a correct answer!

Nightwind, I refer you to the winters in the 1950's/60's, Snow and Ice were expected and we took advantage of them for "Winter Games",

I vaguely remember that our backyard was a snow trap, we would have 6 inchs of snow on the front lawn but 4 feet out the back, getting the coal from the bunker out back was hard work for an 9yo and I remember the snow tunnel made to get to and from the garage (dad was a taxi driver) this was worthing early to mid sixties!

Been watching a few locations in Aus for a decade now, little places out bush that have not changed much for a century!
The trend is DOWN each year is a little cooler than the last, lower minimums, lower maximums, lower means, and many more minus days!
These are places that have not changed since federation.
No warming here just steady cooling.
2000 was the last scorcher here!

Well in the UK as expected "Hose Pipe Bans" are being enforced because we've had an "Old fashioned Summer" so far. The only thing missing has been the crackling evening thunderstorms that I love!

There are people moaning "It's too Hot", in January the same people were moaning it's too Cold or too Wet!

Uninterrupted Cricket & Tennis - Unheard of! well ..... (I nearly swore!), how did those games ever get off the ground if the weather wasn't suitable for them?
Nearly all the major sports originate from UK (or Europe) in the 16/1700's and they were designed to be played "In Season OUTDOORS" which meant you had to have the right conditions.
Football/Rugby (all codes), Hockey, Skiing, Bobsleds, Curling, Ice Skating all Winter pastimes.
Cricket, Rounders (baseball if you prefer), Athletics all Summer activities.

All this says to me is that "Global Warming" is cyclical, yes if there are records showing an increase over the last 100 years, I might just take notice, all I'm seeing is a return to day's of yore when what we are getting is what was expected.

And loving every minute of it (and I bet if it stays like this then the schoolkids are going to enjoy every minute of the summer, and remember it like I do)

Well, journalists used to like to call cricket "our glorious summer game", but one of the earliest references to it in Sussex is in the Chichester Archdeaconry Court records for 1637, when eight men from Midhurst were charged with "playing at Crickett on February the 26th, being the Sabbath day in the tyme of Evening Praiers". And as for global warming, the seventeenth century was the middle of the so-called Little Ice Age. It looks as if people were rather tougher then than they are now.

All this says to me is that "Global Warming" is cyclical,

Yes Yes it is all cyclical, short medium and long cycles all interwoven.
And the 130,000 year cycle is just ticking over like the rest, the 11,500 year interglacial is over!
Nothing to do with man, he did not cause it and he cant stop it.
Mankind has just got to weather it for the next 110,000-120,000 years until the next interglacial.
Humans have populated britain seven times in the last 800,000 years and at the end of each interglacial have had to vacate britain or perish only to return again next time.

There's a string of logical, commonsense and factual points the believers totally ignore or avoid.

Firstly what you already said about the natural cycles, they have also had CO2 changing drastically from current levels and over ten times higher. Too many factors are involved to isolate the effects from a small rise in a weak greenhouse gas.

But the biggest blind spot of all, irrelevant to science of any sort is the total ignorance of history. You may need science to explain climate influences and effects of said influences, but not the overall results which we all experience personally.

This means they have a range of possible fears from a harmless 1'C rise meaning there is no extra warming over the norm, to 6' which anyone besides Al Gore would put at the chances of winning the lottery. Even if it's a possibility the chances aren't worth considering. So within the mid range we have temperatures comparitive to those within human written history, no proxy data needed but actual documents describing life at the time. And then their logic and verity vanish. There are no records of wild and inhospitable climates. The temperate zones existed as far as Greenland, voyages across the North Pole were possible showing no polar ice (there's less time with ice than without, hence ice ages), and fewer people died of cold. Polar bears didn't die out, and basically none of the nightmare scenarios by Al Gore got the slightest mention. The standard of living has always improved in warmer periods as you'd expect, so the cry wolf PR and alarmism required to program the masses that warmer climates are in some way dangerous flies in the face of everything ever written and found in history.

The best scientific fact I came across which more or less killed their story dead was the CO2 figures from 1961 in one of my own science books. Today's CO2 is about 390ppm, which is said to be from something we've done (whether dangerous or not, which they can't even prove beyond a balance of possibilities) but in 1961 the figures weren't fixed, but a variable 260-400ppm. Claiming CO2 is supposed to be stable had to be used or everyone wouldn't care at all if they realised it was expected to vary between at least these parameters 50 years ago. So if they'd been measured at 390ppm in 1962 everyone would have said 'nothing happening here, everything's fine'. That's what I said when I saw them in 2010, why can't everyone see it?

why can't everyone see it?


Because they are lazy!
Why do any critical thinking or your own research when you can just use other peoples opinions ( this is when it ceases to be science and becomes a BELIEF )

Footy or cricket is much more important!