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if the worst category hurricane ever hit a few uninhabited islands in the south pacific, it would be seen as a bad hurricane

Global warming does exist but there are several things that people in this discussion are missing. I'll talk specifically about the evidence that warming does exist in just a minute, but first let me introduce myself as a college student 3 months away from getting a degree. I have been studying meteorology/climatology for 5 years now and have in-depth knowledge on both subjects.

First let's talk about Hurricane Katrina. Someone earlier mentioned temperature of the ocean as a factor. That is correct. This particular hurricane was helped when it went directly over a small area in the Gulf of Mexico where the ocean water temperature at the surface was 94 degrees Fahrenheit, well above the 80-82 degrees required for hurricane formation. This basically made the hurricane explode. Katrina also just happened to hit the most vulnerable, lowest city in the entire United States, New Orleans. New Orleans should have never been built where it was built. I've actually been to New Orleans, in 1999 in fact, and have seen for myself how vulnerable the city was to a future hurricane. So enough about that. Let's tackle other issues and questions.

It's obvious that the earth is warming. The earth has natural cycles of ice ages and warm times. The media has a great impact on how we view global warming. They are not necessarily right in any way, shape, or form. About every 140,000 years there is an ice age. Immediately following the ice age there is a warm-up in temperature which is accompanied directly by a significant increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. That is normal and it is exactly what is happening right now. Believe it or not, this current time period is not the warmest in Earth's history. The warmest time in earth's history was actually when the dinosaurs roamed the planet. Florida-like weather actually extended into Northern Canada. Greenland was once a tropical paradise with palms trees 10 to 5 feet high and grassland. That is why it is called Greenland. The ice currently melting off of Greenland is a part of the Earth's natural cycle.

The next thing I would like to talk about is the temperatures themselves. Yes, the data is obvious that we are a lot warmer than we have been in recent memory. However the Earth 4.6 billion years old. The first recorded temperature that was actually documented for future use was in 1886. That means we have only 121 years of data. That is really small piece of Earth's climate history, so therefore the data we currently have is statistically insignificant. We will need at least 500 years more of temperature records to find out what is REALLY happening. I'll continue with more later. This should be enough for now.