your point being?

What makes it different this time besides us tracking it?

It is a fact that during the Eocene Epoch the earth was so warm that trees grew in Antarctica and the Artic.

That is what I would call global warming BUT it then cooled.

a. It's changing much faster than in the past due to human emitted greenhouse gases.

b. We have an overpopulated planet with nowhere to run.

As you probably know polar ice is a rare occurance in geological time and takes place less than 10% of geological history. Icecaps develop for a short time between interglacials and then melt.

This time is no different.

The fact that all the above and more has already happened numerous times on this planet before makes little difference to the human population that depends on a stable climate to exist as it now does.

The war on carbon - Arguments of 2009: Can Copenhagen save the planet?

An excerpt reads,

“The stakes at Copenhagen could not be much higher. Global surface temperatures have risen by a tolerable three quarters of a degree celsius over the past century, but the rate of increase is accelerating. The Kyoto Protocol has had negligible impact on greenhouse gas emissions, and projections for the mean global temperature rise in the next century range from 1.1 to 6.4 degrees. Whether fast or very fast, the Earth is heating up.

There will be continued argument about the science of climate change over the next 12 months, but not, except on the conspiratorial fringe, about the threat. Climate change is real and worsening, and there is an overwhelming likelihood that much of it is man-made.”

This is a erroneous report on the climate system! The rate of increase is NOT accelerating. There is absolutely no question that global warming has stopped for at least 4 years (using upper ocean data) ; e.g see

Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55.
http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-334.pdf

and over 7 years using lower tropospheric data; e.g. see

Figure 7 TLT in http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html.

With respect to the surface temperature trends [which have a warm bias in any case, as we have documented in our peer review papers; e.g. see], a good set of analyses on this subject has been posted over the last few years at http://rankexploits.com/musings/ [you should scroll back over the last several months to view; it is an excellent comparison with model predictions]. As discussed on that website, even with the warm biased global average surface temperature trends, the models have over-predicted warming. The GISS data itself even shows recent cooling in the ocean sea surface temperatures [see their figure for Monthly-Mean Global Sea Surface Temperature; http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/ where it has cooled since 2002.

The writers of the Times article, and other journalists who write similar misinformation, damage the likelihood of responsible environmental actions as a result of their overstatement and erroneous communication to the public and policymakers of climate science.

This is untrue.

Why do we "depend on it?"

15,000 years ago there was an ice age. Did the people then "depend" on it continuing?

What are you depending on?

Is the argument that some people in Florida will get displaced?

Ok, move them to Greenland.

To say that a few degree rise over 100 years is a big problem for the two legged rats of the world that infest virtually every habitable cranny is fearmongering nonsense.

Just another reason why the Voodoo Cult of Climate Change is losing members.

Why do we "depend on it?"

In the GISTEMP, HadCRU and NCDC analyses D-N 2008 were at 0.43, 0.42 and 0.47ºC above the 1951-1980 baseline (respectively). In GISTEMP both October and November came in quite warm (0.58ºC), the former edging up slightly on last month's estimate as more data came in. This puts 2008 at #9 or #8 in the yearly rankings, but given the uncertainty in the estimates, the real ranking could be anywhere between #6 or #15. More robustly, the most recent 5-year averages are all significantly higher than any in the last century. The last decade is by far the warmest decade globally in the record. These big picture conclusions are the same if you look at any of the data sets, though the actual numbers are slightly different (relating principally to the data extrapolation - particularly in the Arctic). LINK