[Constitutionalist Conservative]

The planetary warming trend was observable as early as 1885, before automobiles were available.

I appreciate the point you're making, but I think we have a bit of a non sequitur here. It seems that Butler was describing Victorian Britain's dramatic emergence from the Little Ice Age. Temperatures have trended in both directions since then, including the two-decade uptick from the 70s to the 90s that has been the source of our current generation's FUD.

[Bertram3]

You are obviously more well versed in the problem than I. I ran across this in my recreational reading and it rang a bell, because everybody has been belittling Gov. Palin's contention that man did not cause global warming.

Surely, the existence of, and emergence from, a little ice age prior to the age of the automobile indicate that there are many other factors at work besides carbon emissions from fossil fuel.

I will dedicate some more time to research, but I can't promise my next scientific finding won't be from Michael Crichton's State of Fear.