Are people here really trying to claim we're not causing a greenhouse effect/ increase in co2 or whatever? Literally, 99% of expert opinion says we're at fault, and this same expert opinion is also where the climate deniers get the knowledge that the earth was once hotter (and colder). The other 1% have nothing to say we're not at fault, which hasn't been debunked 100 times over. 99% is enough, that's more certainty than most crucial things we know on which we base our lives on.
The problem with the earth heating up now is that it's doing it at the fastest rate it's ever happened, for a long duration, whilst there's been a large human population (forget the dinosaurs). Of course you could get a major event like an asteroid, or nuclear war, to change temperatures, but we can't assume that, so they're not a valid argument (or excuse for not doing anything).
Now, the world is the most populous that the earth has ever been (and will be more so in 50 years), loads of those live by the coast and there could be massive increases in crazy weather, floods, food shortages etc if things went really t*ts up.
Knowledge on climate has risen at an exponential rate, every day we know more and every day we know we're more to blame, and also have better understanding of previous events and temperatures.
If we carry on as we are, then there will not be enough time to move everyone to safer altitude and safe locations for weather in general, and trying to move everyone will absolutely break the world economy, never mind starve the poorest parts of the world. It's took us over 100 years to build infrastructure to handle the current population and we don't even have the money to maintain it, doing all that again (safely) is impossible, especially in a short duration.
Now, seeing if we can do something about this climate change is another matter again. The UK has largely developed, as has the US, the same as any other developed nation, and most of that development was done using fossil fuels as it was the cheapest/ easiest way at the time. Whether we can try and prevent other nations from developing quicker is not really our call, and neither is trying to force them to use the energy sources we choose. Sure some will choose the greener energy sources themselves, but we can't really get on a green high horse after we've played a major part in the previous damage. Sure we may not have known the damage, but it's still not much of an excuse.
I'm not convinced the developed world can be green enough to offset the developing nations, and they can't afford to subsidise them either, so it doesn't look good. Tech may solve this mind, when we solve the energy storage problem, but if we don't solve that soon enough, as well as cheaper (almost solved) and easier energy than fossil fuels then there could end up being a war between the green nations, against the not-so-green nations.
