Global Warming, is it our fault?

[Combwork]

Is the climate is changing long term, or going through a short 'blip'?

In the 1850's the River Thames froze over with ice thick enough to hold a fair on it. Go back further to the middle of the 17th century, and the weather stayed cold for long enough to freeze the sea between Dover and Calais. These events seem to happen on a 200 to 250 year cycle and last for a few years. As far as I can see, man made pollution has little or no effect; in the 1890's to around 1910 most factories had their own coal powered steam engines. Railway engines burned coal, steam ships burned coal. If you wanted to heat a house you burned coal (sometimes mixed with wood, especially in the countryside). If you analise it, coal smoke is pretty foul stuff yet during this period of maximum industrialization, there was no apparent influence on the climate.

What do you reckon? Are we to 'blame' or is it just another government wheeze to shake more money out of us? Research that questions this orthodoxy seems to get its funding withdrawn pretty damn quick.