Musings of R^2obGrant

I had a pretty interesting conversation with a fellow environmental engineer at my company today, while we were driving to a site for some inspections. I started asking him what his thoughts on renewable energy were, wind energy specifically, and the conversation leaded to global warming. In the brief time we talked, I gathered that he was very anti-global warming, and his opinion was that it is a very exaggerated theory. He was talking about weather trends and how if you simply look back 10 years, you can see how the earth was actually at a cold point, because of sun spot migration, and other naturally occurring phenomenon. I don’t know what to say about global warming because I have not done enough research on the matter. I agreed with a lot of what he said, but I would like to get some more opinions on the topic. What are your opinions on the topic of Global Warming?
After that I brought up the topic of Carbon, and how I felt it was a growing problem, and he concurred. He was telling me about carbon sequestration efforts (planting trees and other plant life to offset carbon usage), and how he felt that these efforts in combating carbon emissions would never be sufficient to have a significant impact on our efforts to dispose of carbon. I agree with him on this point, because I see the sequestration programs as a “feel good” solution to the problem. What I mean is that most people in higher positions know we can not combat carbon emissions easily, because we are so addicted to oil, and also because of vested interests in the oil industry, and they need to do something to make the public feel better about driving SUV’s and burning oil byproducts for energy. Welcome to America….