This is spot on. People look at % values instead of the bigger picture, as in what would happen if that 5% wasn't there.

Look at it from another example.

If you were a healthy person and ate a burger and needed 30mins execrise to burn the energy off. Now add 5% more fat to the burger and you still only did 30mins exercise over a LONG time that person will gain weight. Now at the time 5% extra fat doesn't seem like much but it will have bad results on the persons health if he doesn't adjust for it.

Same thing goes for weather. Every few years we get wierd weather so it balances out what nature has contributed to it. However if it cannot blance out the extra 5% humans add to it, eventually that will build up and cause catastrophic things to happen.

Also, when the person gets fatter, and runs the same distance, they will start to burn more calories, because they have to move more weight around. So in the end, it will reach an equillibrium.

There's no such thing as Global Warming... Chuck Norris just got cold, so he turned up the sun.

"This is spot on. People look at % values instead of the bigger picture, as in what would happen if that 5% wasn't there."

No, its not spot on. Its freaking loco. If we add what amounts to a margin of error, then its basically like we add nothing at all. You HAVE to look at the amount added vs the total to realize that our effect on the greenhouse effect is negligable at best

i heard this too!

You've provided a perfect example as to why you're chatting rubbish.

You seem to have some half remembered notions of 95% confidence ratios, and margins of error, that have somehow led you to conclude "its basically like we add nothing at all".

Even if you can't understand what other people are posting, at least try to think about what you're posting.  It's not like we're adding nothing at all.  Is it? 

If other sources of greenhouse gasses have been reasonably constant, and we're now adding to it, then it really makes no difference what level of natural greenhouse gasses were required to maintain previous temperature levels, human emmissions can still have just as much impact, regardless of the ratios between the two.

We only need a tiny % increase in the ammount of heat energy in the world to cause massive problems for humanity. Thinking 'Oh, less than 5% isn't that important' isn't really a sensible way of approaching things.

re warming being caused by solar activity:

"A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change.

It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun's output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.stm

Kytiara- Pardon me for saying so, but the Drake's equation is a pretty daft example. All that does is identify the variables. Not one of them can be quanitified correctly, and thus the probability is completely incalculable.

I'm willing to bet that a good climatology team could put together a similar equation for global warming, tossing in all known major variables, and they'd have a much better chance (though in many cases, not a terribly good chance) of being able to plug in reasonable quantities.

Of course, I'm sure you know one study does not a case settle. We need a string of good cases, from one side or the other, to prove the point. I'm not sure that's been done yet (for the solar argument).