Wether you believe in global warning or not, I still think that everyone has a responsibility to to "their bit" to keep this planet in one piece. After all for now it's the only one we have.

I would suggest that people watch An Inconvient Truth if you want to see what effect The Industrial Revolution has had on the planet.

My house had no heading for 2 years and we had to run electric heaters in that time. I have in the last 6 month put in gas central heating and cavity wall insulation and switched to low power light bulbs and cut my energy consumption by about 80% :!:

Most people don't need to make big changes to make a difference, replacing your light bulbs with energy savers is a good start, not only will they last longer but they use 1/3 less energy. and you don't have to do it all at once, just one a month.

The globe is self-balancing, evidently.
The globe is self-balancing, which is great if you live in an area where you are well above sea level. I good example of the globe balancing itself is if the ice sheet in green land melts (because of the higher temperature) and floats into the north sea it will probably stop the gulf stream which keeps the vast majority of northern europe warm. The end result would be an ice age in europe, which will problably help bring the global temperature down. That's cool if you live in,say the US or Asia, but it doesn't really help the millions of people in europe.

There are also tempature records going back further that 150 years, ice core's taking in the Artic and Antartic can be used to find out the kind of temperatures that were present when the ice was formed. Again the An Inconvient Truth covers allot of this, I would recommend it to anyone who wants to find out more.