The issue is what will happen over much shorter time scales - say a 100 years or a few hundred years. Regional climate changes can have severe political impacts. Also, there are secondary impacts that most people don't consider: CO2 driven temperature changes can results in increased water vapor content and increased cloud cover. This can lead to non-linear effects that are hard to quantify. Your assertion that researchers "tow the political line" is a pretty tired conspiracy theory from people who don't understand the science. The people doing the work are trying to quantify a difficult problem. While some may politicize the issue the folks doing the work are looking for answers.
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Originally Posted by golfing eagles
There probably is some impact from CO2, and there are other sources of CO2 besides the last 200 years of burning fossil fuels.
Given your degrees, you are already well aware that
1) CO2 is not the main greenhouse gas, water vapor is
2) We are, by definition, currently in an ice age for at least the last 3 1/2 million years, with periods of glaciation and interglacial thaws that have been running in cycles of about 60,000 years. That means about 50 glaciations , all of which humans or their ancestors survived
3) Earth is much cooler than say 80 million years ago. The main cooling factor is the rise of the Himalayan and Rocky Mountain plateaus, which act as a heat sink by removing water vapor from the atmosphere
So I agree with your assessment--no doomsday scenario. Unfortunately the political left has stirred up fear for economic and sociopolitical goals, and researchers who depend on grant money have , for the most part, towed the line.
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