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I'll agree that human beings have had a seriously-negative impact on the earth's environment (duh - I was an Environ. Engineer and seen the damage up close). To what DEGREE of negativity is debatable. Meaning: While Love Canal and Chernobyl were terrible environ. disasters, their effects on the planet as a WHOLE were quite minimal.
And, you bring up a good point re:Ocean currents. I read a few weeks ago that now oceanographers and the like have discovered that the ATLANTIC Ocean's sudden warming may be causing some of the strange weather patterns we've seen. This, combined with the recent discovery of El Nino/Nina means scientists are now faced with several competing 'global warming/cooling' theories.
Bottom line: Noone knows for sure WHAT the long-term effects of abundant 'greenhouse gases', enigmatic ocean currents and the like will have on this planet, if any.
You can't take a 20-year snapshot (or even a 100-yr one) of atmospheric readings and make assumptions on the climate of the entire planet, which is over 4 BILLION years old. It's like measuring your BP after a 100-yd-dash and panicking that you now have high BP. The sample time is too short to apply to the whole.
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