Re: @Crazy guy
@James Pickett
If you can find someone who doesn't believe that climate change happens naturally then I would suggest you try to steer the discussion towards the latest trends in velcro shoes, digital watches and clip-on ties.
One big problem is the conflation of global warming and climate change.
Global warming is pretty much settled - it's happening.
The big questions are around what changes to the climate that warming will cause. This is where 'deniers' and 'skeptics' roam free. They see a prediction that sea levels will rise by X over Y period but instead they only rise by 0.7X. Or they see a prediction that there will be more storms but a study finds instead that there are a similar number of storms but some of these are more intense. Or that there will be a certain amount of land ice loss from a certain area but this was offset by larger-than expected sea ice gain in another area.
And so on.
Of course, there are many natural cycles affecting climate - not all of which we understand or even know about, and it all feeds back in on itself as well. This makes it difficult for scientists to accurately predict what the effect will be of the warming that is occurring as sometimes these previously unknown factors will influence the results.
This was seen relatively recently where a new factor was discovered, with increased winds causing more ocean mixing and thus 'hiding' the extra heat energy lower in the water column than was being measured. The increased heat energy was still there, it was just not where it was thought to be. It didn't mean the radiative forcing effect of CO2 was in anyway diminished, it just meant that the effect on the climate on the surface was less than expected.
There are two facts here, which are that humans are increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and carbon dioxide increases the amount in heat energy retained/reflected back into onto the Earth. There really isn't any doubt in the scientific community about those two facts.
Some argue that carbon dioxide doesn't have as profound an effect as is though and others say that negative forcings (aerosols, albedo from land clearing, etc...) are balancing it out. Neither of those things change the fact that CO2 is a positive forcing component.
From there, the questions are to find out exactly how much heat energy is being added/kept in the system and what effects that will have on the climate. It may end up producing just a subtle shift before settling into a new equilibrium, though this may be hotter, or it may push things over the edge into a feedback loop.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
