Since the earth has been around for 4.8 billion years, how can we make a good decision on climate change?

Ya, the last guy pointed out some key errors you had in your question, good job. But I do get what you are trying to ask.

I am a trained scientist and look at all sides objectively and a few years ago when I was more younger and impressionable I was on the global warming band wagon. Since then, I have looked at global warming data and I too am not convinced 100% that its "all out fault." Im pretty sure we aren't doing the planet any good by pumping so much CO2 into the atmosphere but what exactly is it doing there? We have theories but to be honest, no one knows for sure.

If you look at the decal pacific oscillation (DPO) you will see that there is a 20-30 cycle of warm to hot climate change influenced by this warming and cooling of the Pacific. The last cooldown ended in the late 70's, early 80's and if you did some research you would see that at the time people believed that all the CO2 emissions were affecting global climates and that we were heading for an ice age. Well things heated up after that and it looks like the we heading to catastrophic global warming. Now it looks like we are getting over that warming stage and things will cool off once again.

Now this is all a theory of course, but its the theory with the most concrete data behind it that I have see so far to explain our shifting climate. If this turns out to be right then that means we are not affecting the earth's climate as much as we think and that also means that the planet and eco-alarmists will cool down. The only unfortunate thing about that though, is that turd, Al Gore, is going to make himself look like a hero when he did nothing at all.

Is it possible that somebody is trying to implement policies that are not designed to have any effect on the climate at all but for some other reason?

Is it all possible that some people are so arrogant that their they think their primary idea is so above the average person and so complex to explain that they need to come up with a much more simple reason, something that the average, stupid, gullible Joe or Jane can understand and support? It should be noted that scaring the crap out of people is a good way to go about this.

By understanding physics.

The planet's temperature doesn't magically change - any long-term changes are caused by an imbalance between incoming and outgoing energy. Such an imbalance is caused by something like increased solar activity or an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases.

Climate scientists understand these causes quite well and the only one which can explain the recent rapid warming is the increase in atmospheric CO2 due to humans burning fossil fuels. See the link below for further details.

CO2 gets released and absorbed in much larger quantities by nature than what humans emit, but it is in balance. This balance has kept CO2 concentrations relatively constant, until the industrial revolution began, in which they began to rise. Look at the fluxes for land and ocean, and notice how carbon in cancels carbon out. This keeps atmospheric concentrations constant.

http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/cu...

We have data. There are ways of determining past temperatures and what caused those temperature changes. Not to mention that the physics that underlie man-made global warming do add up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity#E...

Your're right but it can't hurt to clean up our act even if man made global warming is a farce.

Your thoughts are correct. We live in a non-linear environment. This means that any number of factors can change at any given time and it will produce any given output. For example, in my area, it was predicted to rain at 4:16. Right now, there is no rain.

So in general, you have the correct thinking, it is not possible to predict weather on the limited data we have, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to predict anything that occurs in a non-linear environment because of all of the changes that could occur.

-earth is 4.5 billion years old

http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/geotime/age.html

-humans have been around for 200,000 years

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/05022...

-we've been keeping temperature data for centuries

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blthe...

-we have ice core samples which tell us what the climate was like before we existed

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Paleocli...

-we know that every climate change has a cause; we know the major climate drivers; the only one that explains the current trend is man made carbon emissions

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a2/Clim...

-solar variation has remained stagnant the past thirty years

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/600p...

http://rankexploits.com/musings/wp-content/uploads...

-CFC's were banned by the Montreal Protocol