re: #333 LudwigVanQuixote

In the mean time, atoms and molecules do not worry about politics. They do not get paid by oil companies and they really do not care. They faithfully obey rules that men didn’t make.

This sort of comparison really doesn’t help your argument. Yes, we have a very detailed and complete understanding of how atoms and molecules behave; the absorption spectrum of CO2 has been well know for over a century, and the basics of the greenhouse effect - conversion of heat from short to long wavelengths that are subsequently trapped by the optical properties of the atmosphere - are also well understood.

But your statement implies that everything is just this simple and easy, which it most certainly is not. Pumping CO2 into the atmosphere doesn’t produce anything like a simple, linear increase in temperature, or even a well-understood, closed-form increase governed by more complex relations. Increased heat, for example, presumably increases the amount of cloud cover, which increases the planet’s albedo; seawater absorbs a much greater quantity of CO2 as it warms than otherwise; countless other non-linear processes likewise impact the final effects of a given increase in CO2 levels, which can only be modeled as a complex system of differential equations that possess no closed-form solution and can only be solved using numerical methods, which have their own difficulties that are often not easily overcome.

Climate, in short, is nowhere near as well understood as the science of atoms and molecules. I’m not stating that you’re wrong, but this sort of argument does not support your case well because it is based on an incorrect implication.