I guess it can be slowed down and all... but isn't it going to happen anyways?

You're going to see several answers that say, "The climate is always changing."

Which is true. But normally over the course of hundreds or thousands of years.

What we're seeing today is very rapid warming.

Not because the sun is brighter, or some other external cause.

But because there's more CO2 in our atmosphere than there has been for thousands of years.

http://www.rkm.com.au/ANIMATIONS/carbon-... <== here's the physics.

For both water and CO2. You really want to understand what it's saying.

The more water and CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the more heat the earth retains.

This is the basic science behind global warming.

Without the relatively small amount of water and CO2 in our atmosphere, the earth would be about 60 degrees colder than it is.

Far below freezing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warm...

Wikipedia probably has the most complete description in one place.

You'll also see lots of excuses -- none of which are true and relevant.

And you'll see several, "It's not warming. Warming stopped 17 years ago. Etc."

Also not true.

Edit: jello has me blocked, so I cannot comment on his posts, but he's pretty eager to comment on mine. SO .... "Just think about this. The planet has warmed just a scant 1 degree in the last 100 years."

Okay. One might also keep a couple things in mind:

1. Even if we were to completely stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere today, the temperature would continue to rise for many decades, due to the 40% increase in CO2 that we've already done.

2. During the Ice Age, the temperature of the earth was about 10 degrees colder than it is now. Seems that just a small change in temperature can make a pretty dramatic change in climate.

If you are asking if there is a switch that can be turned off and then climate change ends, then the answer is no. The only way to stop the progression of climate change now is to reduce the amount of CO2 that is in the atmosphere now. Even then it can only be done before positive feedback mechanisms begin to over ride the warming effect from the CO2 itself.

The purpose of mitigation efforts now is not halt the climate from making further changes. Mitigation efforts now are only beneficial in the sense of reducing the possibilities of the worse case scenarios that are involved with a continuing to warm climate. When you are about to have a wreck the more you slow your speed before impact helps to reduce the damages caused by the impact. You need to keep in mind that once your car is totaled, it is totaled.

Natural climate change is inevitable. But the climate change being caused by humans can be stopped by using clean energy sources, such as solar, hydro and nuclear power.

As far as the effect of carbon dioxide being logarithmic

log(400/390) = 0.010995

log(410/400) = 0.010724

Huge difference.

it hasn't slowed down

the rate of increase has slowed but it's still high and continues to rise.

as long as we continue to spew tons of greenhouse gases into the air daily it is inevitable.

It's basic physics.

This is not natural. It wasn't going to happen anyway.

Look at the data at the bottom of this website's homepage. Conspiracy Freaks think 1.4 degrees isn't of any concern.

http://climate.nasa.gov/

Just think about this. The planet has warmed just a scant 1 degree in the last 100 years. Do you think this is within any realm of being normal variations, or is this something that people need to panic about? People are causing this panic, feeding this panic just because they profit from the research. Nothing more.

Jello is wrong, to be accurate, the planet has warmed 0.8C in the last one hundred years (Linlyons calls that too rapid haha) the effect of CO2 is logarithmic (the law of diminishing returns) and water vapour is the overwhelmingly strongest GHG we have, forget CO2 it is insignificant, no warming is not inevitable and cooling in the future is possible (unfortunately) warming is is infinitely preferable to cooling.

Edit

A cartoon for Linlyons and his very rapid warming