Yes, the mangled scaremongering reports in the press concentrate on just one side of global warming, but don't think the climate research scientists are the ones promulgating this. There is a huge amount of serious and minutely detailed research going on into our climate worldwide and how it's changing. Sure, there have been major changes in the past, and scientists are researching that - you can't see a change if you don't understand what's normal. The skill is in interpreting the results to pick out the changes which would be happening anyway, and those which are probably caused by the vast amounts of greenhouse gases we pump out, while destroying the forests which are the lungs of our World. Just because we have had changes before, doesn't mean those changes are benign - rather a lot of life here on Earth has been wiped out by large scale climate changing events.
Yes, be cynical about the press angle, but please don't dismiss the reality of climate change because of that. The changes happening are very real, and very dangerous to the earth. I've said before though, Earth herself will recover and readjust, but humanity won't. We are suffocating our whole species.
Watching the Stargazing special this evening, the astronauts who just went up to the space station parked their Soyuz capsule up there, ready for either a planned or emergency return. No one came back this time, so there was no way or need to return the capsule to Earth.
The guys don't just go up there for a six month vacation spent staring at the Earth from orbit. They spend their time conducting all sorts of experiments in the three labs. One of the very things that makes humans special is our need and ability to question our world and find out how it works. Our understanding of all sorts of science has bounded forwards since the Space Station went up there.
