With CoP15 looming there is currently a huge push to "do something". Not just a little something either but something really drastic about whatever is the current scary nom du jour for enhanced greenhouse warming. Let's just stop and think for a moment...
There seems to be fairly general agreement that the world has warmed about 0.7 °C over the last 250 years or so (since the Industrial Revolution and the end of the Little Ice Age). That hasn't been a smooth warming but occurred in a series of about 30 year phases with similar "rest periods" of no warming or slight cooling in between.
More controversially there are suppositions this is indicative of looming catastrophic warming. In the past there have been claims Earth had been consistently cooling for a couple of thousand years prior to this small warming (the briefly popular "hockey stick" hypothesis) but investigation has shown this to be nonsense.
In the two decades since the U.S. held its theatrically staged Senate Hearings in the hottest part of the year and with the air conditioning sabotaged there has been one decade of warming temperatures and then one without any warming.
Solar scientists and other sun watchers suggest we are in for a period of low solar activity and another decade or two without warming, if not cooling.
There hasn't been any warming for a decade. We aren't expecting any for at least another decade.
Why should we allow ourselves to be stampeded into panicked decisions while the world stubbornly refuses to heat catastrophically?
