Three arguments about climate change that should never be used

Stop me if you've heard any of these before:

"The warming is just part of a natural cycle."

"We've been warming up since the last ice age."

"To think humanity can influence the climate is pure arrogance."

If you haven't heard these arguments before, it's clearly because you've never read any of the discussions attached to our climate articles. One or more of these statements appear in just about every single climate article we run, which is made even more disappointing by the fact that these arguments are ludicrously, laughably wrong. People should be embarrassed to be making them (although I'd imagine most are oblivious to that fact). In an attempt to forestall further public humiliation, I'm going to explain why, exactly, they're such terrible arguments.

“The warming is just part of a natural cycle”

Is this a natural cycle? The most important thing to note here is that cycles imply something... well, cyclical. As in things go up, but come back down again. A look at the temperature records of the last century-plus shows that this is exactly what is not happening. Temperatures go up and flatten out at times, but they never go back down. More specifically, next month, it will be 20 years since the last time we had a month where the global temperature was below last century's average.